Day 37

9 March 2013

We did not sleep well last night, the park is on a pretty major road and the cars don't seem to stop all night! We did go to the chemist and get earplugs so Joel has been testing them but they don't block the noise completely. Anyway we were both pretty tired and cranky today (not a good combo when you can only hang around each other) so decided to head to the beach to hang out for most of the day!

We found a nice place at Koonya beach at Sorrento and set up our beach umbrella to keep some of the 38 degree heat off us! Water was pretty rough today, especially on this beach, and there are rocks everywhere so bit dangerous.

We had packed lunch so decided to head to Point Napean NP and do a couple of the walks here and have lunch. We took the path to the observatory lookout and came to some picnic tables and a nice spot right on the beach. This area used to be where they would quarantine and test cattle for diseases coming from overseas. Some remains of the bridge that used to bring the cattle from the boats to the mainland are still here.

We had some lunch and continued on the Coles track that takes you back to the carpark. There are plenty of walks here so no shortage of ones to choose from. Back at the car we decided to check out Flinders which is on the other side of the peninsula. Along the road was a little stall selling farm fresh tomatoes...we decided to stop and have a bit of a look, it was like an honesty system, put the money in the box, take the tomatoes.....pretty simple. Funny thing was there was a camera in the little cart that had recorded people who had stole the tomatoes and the owner had printed out a picture of each person and pinned their photo up in the cart! What a shame that someone has to go to this much trouble to sell bloody tomatoes! What is wrong with people!!!

Anyway back on road we checked out the blowhole and mushroom reef and also walked the Flinders jetty. After this we had filled the whole day so headed back to camp for some rest!

Good news, we think the fridge in the ute has shit itself, it was displaying some error and draining the battery. May be that it was just too hot yesterday, tomorrow will tell! Fingers crossed it is fixable!

Carly & Joel

 

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Day 28

28 February 2013

Last night we had torrential rain. The camper is soaked and we are ready to get out of here! We waited till 8am in the hope that the rain would subside however we were not that lucky! Putting on our just dried raincoats, we headed outside to start packing up and get soaked again!

Packed up and back on the road heading towards Mallacoota, just over the Victorian border. The trip was about 4 hours and it did not stop raining the whole time we were travelling! There was not one break in the rain it was so constant.

Made it to Mallacoota and it was surprise surprise, wet and rainy too! We yet again donned our raincoats and set up in the rain! We decided to do a full setup with full annexe so if it did rain the whole time we were here at least we could sit in the annexe rather than being contained to the camper.

Set up and what happens....rain stops! Typical! Had some lunch, did some washing (the new age way), checked out the water and did a bit of shopping at the local shops. Mallacoota is right on the water and is known for its fishing...and that is very noticeable when every caravan here also has a boat attached to it somewhere! So tomorrow we are hoping for a fine day and good fishing! Will let you know if we get either!

Apologies for late blogs, we ran out of power in this shit weather so we are now on a powered site at Mallacoota which is a luxury! Another luxury that we have missed is a hot powerful running shower! (The Coleman 30 sec showers we have been having just aren't cutting it!) I jumped in the shower here, pretty much after we had set up, and it took all my strength to get out! (I really only did, for fear of the lady outside of the shower timing me and yelling at me for using too much water) haha. It was pure heaven and I am already looking forward to the next one! Oh the little things that seem so big right now!

Raining again tonight! Over being wet!!

Carly & Joel

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Day 7

7 February 2013

Now I know what Darryl was going on about in the castle! How's the serenity?!

We were googling all last night on where we should go next and Joel found a place called Dorrigo which has a few tourist attractions and is a bit inland for something different rather than being on the coast. It is approximately 3 hours drive from Ballina and if we could go back we may have researched the route we took a little better than trusting the phone GPS to get us there! Tip for all you travellers out there, more than one road leads to where you want to go but it's not always the right road!

Well let me give you a quick picture of the road we travelled on for about 50 kms....

Seriously have a look at all the winds and corners and turns and crap there is on this road, then add gravel for some of the way, sheer drop offs down the side of the mountain, steep mountain climbs and just never knowing where it is going to end! It was a little bit crazy and probably not the safest route; however the rainforest along this road was amazing and it was a bit of a challenge.

After that road I was a little skeptical at what we might pull up to, as we got closer the big luscious green hills appeared with cattle everywhere and rolling valleys and then a big beautiful lodge house which was our destination! The actual camping ground is called Dangar Falls lodge and camping, there is a lodge at the start of the property that sleeps 10 and is for rent also but behind is a nice fenced off area that looks over all those hills,cows and valleys and this is where you can camp. It's $20 a night unpowered and $25 powered.

We set up the camper for a short stay probably two nights so we didn't worry about the annexe etc, which made the set up process much shorter. Which also means that we were able to cook a sausage on the weber much sooner and sit back and relax looking at the amazing view!

What's that we hear? It's the Dangar waterfall and its only a short walk from camp! It is a little steep and uneven but not too bad, we were both in thongs however if we go down again I will put my proper shoes on. The noise is pretty intense from this fall, especially after the rain I assume but it is raging and quite spectacular! There is a short boardwalk which we walked along to get to the falls and then there is some rocky area to walk down to get to the bottom of the falls. Well worth it! We have read of people swimming in here but right now it is friggin freezing! It was quite literally like dipping your toe into ice cold water so unless we get a 40 degree day I don't think we will be doing any swimming in the falls. We took some happy snaps and then walked back to the very top where there is also a viewing platform where you can look down on the falls.

We then walked back through the front of the property where the lodge is and noticed a couple of doors were open....doors led to a flushing toilet and hot shower! Double score!

We have now collected some wood for our fire and we are sitting back and taking in the serenity.... How are we going to top tomorrow?......stay tuned to find out!

 

PS Another tip for fellow travellers - if you are packing up your Jayco camper, always ensure you know where the car keys are! This morning we packed it all up and then Joel says "ok where are the car keys, let's hook it up" and I say "I don't know, last time I saw them they were inside the camper!" There was a few dreaded moments where we thought we were going to have to unpack it all again to find the keys but luckily they were in the car! Good lesson!!

Carly & Joel

 

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Day 6

6 February 2013

Well our morning started off with rain and a fair bit of it. As this was going to be our last full day at Ballina we decided to do a load of washing before we set off.

There is a laundry at the village so we headed over there and set up the machine. $3 for a load and we left it and went to start organising the day.... Hour passed, washing done by now....open lid, clothes sitting in lots of water? Hmmm, front reception lady to then rescue, puts the machine on again. Hour later return to hang out clothes, but they are still sitting in a lot of water and machine stopped! Annoying! Front lady to the rescue again, put washing in different machine, went and watched some tv and whole machine did its job. Unfortunately by this time it was midday and we had wasted half a day doing one load of washing (which is not all that exciting about to write in a blog!) anyway if you stay at the village avoid the middle machine.

We had some lunch and then decided to do a trip to nimbin to seem what that part of town were up to....it took about an hour to get to Nimbin through Lismore (which sort of reminded me of Toowoomba) and the first thing I notice at Nimbin is.... The Nimbin Rocks.... Did you think I was going to say something else? Haha. These rocks are quite beautiful to look at and you can see them as you are driving into Nimbin, there is a "viewing platform" which is actually a small pull off on the side of the road that you can stop and take a look. As we get closer to the town centre, you start to notice all these drawings on the road.... As I saw more I started to realise they were marking where the potholes were and someone from Nimbin thought they would colorfully draw around the potholes and even do a trail leading to the pothole on the road! Some even had love hearts drawn around them, how thoughtful! Quick stop at the sign and I am pretty sure Joel is already looking out for the Nimbins in this photo! Haha

Driving through the town it is very colourful and pretty much what I expected. A lot of loose people walking around but a lot of tourists as well, it was absolutely packed couldn't even get a park. The other side of Nimbin is pretty great green hillsides that seem to roll on forever....it was a really nice drive. There is also meant to be a secret swimming hole here but as we had wasted time with the washing and it was raining we decided not to worry about locating it.

We headed back to camp and spent the rest of the night getting prepared for our early departure in the morning.

Carly & Joel

 

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Day 5

5th February 2013

Tuesday morning and we are awake early and ready for another day trip. Destination - Bundjalong National Park near Evans Head to see the Black Rocks.

We set off, past Wardell, through Broadwater and arrive at Evans Head. This is also a nice little sleepy seaside town... we decided to stop at Shark Bay at a lookout to get a few photos. We walked along the rock wall and took a few photos at the end. We then headed up higher for more great views, some spectacular houses! and black boys everywhere.

We then continued on to our destination which required us to go back onto the highway and take The Gap Road exit to the Black Rocks. There is good signage from the highway to find this entrance so no problems there though we were armed with the GPS just in case!

From the highway there is a small bitumen section of road before it turns to a gravel unsealed road and from here it is approx 20 kms to the campgrounds and beach where the rocks are. It was a little bit of a bumpy ride but well maintained. You drive past a few aboriginal camp signs as this has been aboriginal land for many many years. Joel decided he better let the tyre pressure down as it was quite bumpy and we were running 48 pound in them. We didn't realise but just after we did this It was only just around the corner to the black rocks anyway.

The campgrounds here are really well set out and the neatest camp sites I have seen in a while. You have to book to stay down here but if you "forget" to book you can stay in the 24 hour sites for one night without paying. There was one camper in the whole campground so very secluded and very quiet if that's what you are looking for. From the campgrounds there is many beach access tracks that you can walk to the beach so we pulled up the truck in one of the campgrounds and walked to the beach.

The rocks are quite spectacular and worth the drive; however in the photos on the website for this national park there is really cool rocks that make arches and all weird shapes you can stand under but unfortunately these must have been washed away so we didn't get the same photo opportunities as some who have been there before us but still got some good shots.

We then jumped back in the truck and headed back to the highway and headed back to camp. We stopped at three different servos on the way back to camp and not one of them had air to pump the tyres back up! (note to self remember to pump tyres up next time we are near a servo that actually has air : S! what is the bet we forget this!) It rained a little on the way home but seemed to stop once we were back at camp. Got home to camper, opened door a big puddle of water that went from one end of the camper to the other and was dripping down from the kitchen bench....WTF? Rooky mistake... We left the roof hatch door open and rain came in there, splattered onto bench and rolled nicely onto the floor! That's on the checklist now to make sure we don't do this again!

We had some lunch (Joel cooked a pie in the Weber, is there anything this thing can't do?) and the wind seemed to die down so we thought we would put the boat in and go for a fish.

There is a boat ramp about 50m down the road from camp so we put the boat in there and headed out. (You do need a fishing permit to fish in nsw which can be purchased from the shop at camp and will set you back $12 for a month permit, so we were all set). The boat is heaps easier to get on and off the ute now after Joel modified it by taking handles off and making a custom roof rack for it to sit on. I was pleasantly surprised! There is a rock wall that runs along the river where we were trying to get out so Joel was using his "Depth Finder" (see pics below) to make sure we were not going to run into any rocks.....: ) Unfortunately Joel's depth finder was not in use when we ran into that rock wall! Lucky we had just backed off the speed to have a look around so it was only just a love tap! Haha

I am pretty sure that after we had headed out about 100m and were in the middle of the richmond river the wind picked up and waves with white caps were lapping around the boat! We then had to try and get back into a sheltered area which was tough going against the wind and the waves were splashing against the boat and throwing water into our laps. We managed to get back into a sheltered area and looked out at the water we had just come from and the water was like an ice rink, calm as anything! Think the weather is playing games with us! haha Anyway we drifted around for a while with our lines in but nothing and we are really not even sure if 1. we were allowed to fish in this area and 2. if there was even any fish there! haha note to self, map will probably help us out in both these areas! After an hour or so of no bites we decided to call it a day and head back to camp for a Weber pizza.

Tomorrow will be our last full day in Ballina as we will be heading off early on Thursday morning to get to our next destination. At the moment we are tossing up between going straight to Coffs Harbour or staying a couple of nights in Grafton (we are waiting to hear back from someone in Grafton).

Carly & Joel

 

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Day 4

4 February 2013

Good news, we both slept really well last night, wind wasn't too bad and maybe we are starting to get used to sleeping under canvas!

Morning breakfast of bacon, eggs, mushrooms & tomatoes was a good start to the day! Again the Weber hasn't let us down yet...

We had decided yesterday that we were not going to go into town today as we have for the last couple of days, we would just hang around camp. We had a bit of a clean up, and rearranged a few things. When you pack you think "Oh I won't need that for ages so I will shove that in the smallest pokiest spot so it is out of the way!" (a jumper for example) turns out you need those things a lot sooner than you expected so a little rearranging will be required regularly I would say! Joel decided to be handy and fix the tap in the camper trailer, I read a few of the millions of stories we have cut out and bought with us from Joel's camper trailer & 4wd magazines to try and work out good places to visit on our next stay.

If we could go back, we would have only booked Ballina for 3 nights as we were pretty much ready to leave this morning and move on to the next place; however we have paid for six nights and we are not going to waste that. So back in the pool for a midday swim, water was freezing as it has been very windy here today! To keep warm I decided to do some laps, ended up swimming 50 laps with a few well earned breaks in between but I was absolutely buggered after it! Might try and top this tomorrow....

This afternoon we decided to test the Weber Q by trying to cook a cake. When we were at Aldi the other day we bought just a cheap packet mix to test the cake cooking theory out in the Weber. Another interesting thing about Aldi that I forgot to mention in the first blogs is that Aldi here has a Aldi Liquor shop in it also, sells weird and interesting wines and beers and also the odd staple drink like Jim Beam.... Moscato bottles were only $4.99, I am wondering now why I didn't buy one to try?! I have been to a few Aldi's in QLD and have never seen a liquor part of it...correct me if I am wrong....

Anyway back to the cake, mixed it all up, put in cake tin, on top of trivet with alfoil under the trivet (in the hope that this would stop it from burning on the bottom), timer set for 40 mins, temperature in Weber sitting on 160-180C, perfect. Smelling good, didn't want to open the lid to much as the heat would escape but at the 30 min mark thought we would just double check.... Cake everywhere!!! Pan may have been a little small for the amount of cake mixture... aside from that cake looks perfectly cooked on one side but still runny on the other side. Cut off excess cake overflowing from tin, rotated cake and left for another 10 mins. Pulled cake out with high hopes....looked good......

Cut around the edges, turned the tin upside down onto a waiting plate and.......NOTHING, cake was burnt nicely to the bottom of the pan and wasn't shifting. On the bright side the cake was cooked beautifully in the middle and on top but just burnt the bum out of it. I still feel like it was a good effort for the first time.

After the cake episode I decided to take a few photos of camp and again try out the time delay on my camera. You can see the results below, it was quite funny actually....

NOPE

NOPE

FINALLY! Need some practice!

We then went for a walk along the beach which would normally be quite relaxing but the tide was in quite high, there was no beach to walk on and we had to crawl along the dunes to get anywhere, which Joel thought was great and was trying to make the dunes collapse underneath him! The 4wd track to the beach that we mentioned in the earlier posts is now even more washed out and a bigger drop onto the beach so don't see us being able to drive along the beach anytime soon. You can actually drive from here right down to Evans Head which would have been nice, assess it again tomorrow and see if there is any chance!

We then caught up on some news in the camp kitchen and have now resided back to our camper for dinner. Chicken and Cashew Stirfry is on the menu tonight....

Anyway a fairly uneventful day today, which I'm sure you can tell after reading this, as the highlight was cooking a burnt cake! Stay tuned things will get more exciting.... haha

Oh hang on there was another exciting moment in today, we were outside the camper relaxing on our camping chairs and next minute Joel is running after something.... WHAT THE....Yea boy, found $5!

Carly & Joel

 

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Day 2

2 February 2013

A little bit of rain last night, but everything held up ok and no leaks which is a win!

Got up and grocery shopping was our first point of call today. We headed in to town and luckily the barge opened this morning and we were able to cut 30 mins off our trip! The barge is $4.60 each trip and is only about a 5 min journey across the river. This pretty much brings you straight into the Ballina Town Centre.

As you are probably aware there is a BIG thing in Ballina. So of course we had to go and see this. Well this BIG prawn was one BIG disappointment! It is faded, F$&cked and far from being any sort of tourist attraction. I read on an internet site that they were actually going to demolish it; however Bunnings bought the site and they decided they would restore it and include as part of their building so at the moment it looks like a demolition site with a BIG prawn in the middle of it.



There are two major shopping centres here, Ballina Fair & Ballina Central. We decided to head to Ballina Central as there was a Big W. In the Ballina Central shopping centre, there is also a cafe called Coastal Cafe which we would highly recommend as it was $5 for a "budget breakfast" which was pretty much the correct amount of food that we should be eating not the HUGE meals you get everywhere else for $15! So head here if you need a cheap breakfast!

We then grocery shopped at Aldi and picked up a few odds and ends. Back on the ferry and straight into the pool! Loving this life! haha

Lunch, walk along the beach, drinks and now dinner. Joel is now making us a pizza on our Weber Baby Q... Thanks Babe!

Tomorrow we are going to head to Byron Bay for markets and look around.

Hope everyone is well.

 

Carly & Joel

 

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Day 1

1 February 2013


So while we are a couple of days late in starting our adventure, the rain, wind and storms that happened in the days leading up to our original departure date (30 January 2013) not only put us back in packing and preparing the camper, they also hammered the NSW coast, and we were unsure whether we would even be able to make it to our first destination.

On the morning of 30 January 2013 we rang the holiday village at Ballina where we were booked in, believing that they would tell us that either the ferry to the park or the roads would be closed. However the lady on the front desk assured us that all roads were open and the ferry was operating and the park was not flooded and was ready for visitors. Unfortunately we didn't think that this would be the case so we had stalled our packing in the days leading up to Wednesday and there was no way we were going to be ready to leave straight away! We decided to delay for 2 days to ensure we were totally packed and ready and to give the floods a little more time to recede.

Morning of the 1st Feb 2013, we both were wide eyed and bushy tailed at 4.30am! We decided that we were ready and although we couldn't technically check into Ballina until 2pm we were going to get on the road because we couldn't wait a minute longer to start this trip!

Car is packed, Cheryl has had the rundown on the house, camper is hooked up ready to go, last thing to do..... leave our little snapper! : ( A lady at work asked me how i was going to say goodbye to snapper, and i said well it will go something like this... CYA SNAP! haha. That is not actually how it went at all, i started to get quite stupidly emotional and felt like i was leaving my only child at home! We took him up to the granny flat so Cheryl could keep him entertained while we left, Cheryl suggested that she bring him down to wave goodbye; however Joel said NO MUM i don't want to see him as we drive away, (which is exactly what i was thinking but didnt want to say it!)

Anyway, I may have already told some friends and family but if you don't already know I am obsessed with the "BIG things" in Australia and would like to visit as many of them as I can. So where better to start then the BIG pineapple!

Big thing photo taken...now on the road for some serious driving. Of course leaving early has it's advantages; however it also has disadvantages like peak hour traffic by the time you hit Brisbane/Gold Coast area. Now while we were well aware of this when we left we were desperate to just get on the road and start this trip so were willing to sit in traffic where required. For future reference though we need to learn to sleep in and mosey about (like real retired people do) and wait until everyone is already at work and then head off.

While on the road I remembered that I had left my Etoll tag in my Toyota Echo which we sold to a lovely lady in Caloundra. I decided to message her and just ask if she would be able to post the toll tag back to us etc. She replied and said that was no worries... and proceeded to thank us for the little notes we left in the car. I looked and Joel and thought "What Notes??" and then i realised that my last day of work, my fellow workmates thought it would be funny to toilet paper the whole inside of my car and leave little paper notes saying goodbye, good luck and thank you! While I obviously removed all the toilet paper and thought I had removed all the notes...the buyer of my echo thought we had put the notes in there for her to say thanks for buying the car!!! Well after I picked myself up off the floor of the car from laughing so hard I decided I better break the bad news to her and tell her the notes actually weren't for her! She took it well and it was a little bit of amusement on the road!

We experienced our first rolling blockade today also, with 4 "safety" cars holding up the whole four lanes of the M1 highway so that further up the road a truck driver could remove the remnants of his tyres from the highway. That was interesting and slow but didn't take long and we were on our way.

We stopped once on our way to Ballina and it was at the Sleepy Hollows Rest Area as we both needed to use the bathroom. I would highly urge you not to stop at this rest area! There was an attractive line of portable loos which looked quite innocent from the outside but the smell from the truckers that had stopped to drop off their load earlier was dry reaching material! And I did not breathe the whole time I was in there! After I resurfaced the only question I had was "does anyone have any hand sanitizer" (note to self put this on the shopping list) YUCK!

We came to the road that leads to the ferry to take us across to our holiday park destination and look at what we see.....

While this is not the end of the world it adds another 30 mins onto the trip so we were a bit disappointed! (thanks front office desk at the holiday park for the heads up! not!)

30 mins later we arrived at Ballina Holiday Village at 11am and set up camp, beautiful day but quite hot setting up in the middle of the day. We then relaxed on the deck and ordered a beef burger (one of the best beef burgers I have had).

After lunch we checked out the camp kitchen, amenities and pool area. Being so hot we couldn't resist the look of the pool and spent a good hour swimming around. I would have to say my pool skills are not what they used to be... I couldn't swim more than a couple of laps, my eyes got sore, my ears were blocked, my dives were belly flops and let's face it I must be getting older! haha.

Camp Kitchen

Sign for Snapper

Tipi Huts - Form of Accommodation

We then headed for a little drive to see what was around us. Unfortunately the water is not as pristine as it would normally be from the floods, actually the best way to describe it would be poo water! It looks awful which is a shame. There is also beach 4wd access here so we headed to the track only to find that the ramp had been washed out and a big drop from the sand dune was required to even get on the beach. We decided to hang around the camper for the rest of the afternoon and research some things to do and see in this area and where we are going to head to next!....... Any suggestions???

Go Out & Make A Difference

Carly & Joel

 

 

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