Day 43

15 March 2013

Great sleep last night, very peaceful here. We are getting a bit naughty with sleeping in after 6 weeks on the road, getting up at 7-8am instead of our normal work wake up at 5-6am! This will not serve us well when we start working again!!

Bacon and eggs for breakfast and we were off to have a look around town. First to the jetty and boat ramp here, we were surprised to see that to launch your boat at this ramp you have to pay a yearly fee of $50 or $4 each time you launch. Is anything safe from a $ amount these days??

Next to Shelley beach lookout where we can imagine this to be a really nice spot however the weather of late has made the beaches quite dirty with debris and rough waters. The caretaker told us we could dive for some rock lobster here so Joel was on the lookout for any just walking over the rocks that he might be able to grab, surprisingly we did not see any!

Cape Northumberland is further the road and to the left of the parking area is where fairy penguins can be seen and to the right is where the old lighthouse used to stand and where a famous ship was wrecked. First to the penguin side, and while I had high hopes a penguin (who never normally comes out in the day) might pop it's head out to say hello for the sake of the blog. Haha no luck here either. This area is also the most southerly point in SA.

Over to the old lighthouse site where you can see remnants of it and read stories of when it was in operation. There is also a map showing all the shipwrecks that have happened in this coast. Some ridiculous amount had be wrecked right at this spot compared to other places on the coast. I did wonder whether this is why they got rid of the lighthouse here, obviously it was not helping the boats!?

There are lots of little lookouts you can view from along this scenic road. We came across on that had this sign.....

Joel read it and immediately wanted to check the sign was correct! Result...

Bogged in powder consistency sand! We just sunk and even better the tide was coming up and we didn't have much beach to work with. First let down the tyre pressure, second put her in 4L and third....reverse the hell out of there!

Sign is correct - check!

After exploring we headed back to camp for a relaxing afternoon.

Carly & Joel

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Day 42

14 March 2013

Last night we finally had a decent sleep, besides some drunk girls screaming their tits off, pretty good.

 

Packed up and headed on our new destination.....South Australia!

 

We drove from Warrnambool to Port Fairy, Portland, stopped in at Nelson (last town before border) and then crossed the border into South Australia! We are now settled for a couple of nights at Port MacDonnell. On the way into this town is a couple of little seaside towns which are actually like rural properties but right on the ocean! I mean cows eating hay with a backdrop of the ocean.... Guess I was wrong about seaspray....this is the real area where country meets coast!

 

Other thing I have noticed about SA is the sand is really white and like a powder consistency, very fine! So diverse to Vic that is quite course and a real terracotta colour.

 

There is not a lot to do here, few walks and fairy penguins which I am very interested in hunting down (hunting is probably not the right word!) Caretaker here informed us that whiting is getting caught on the beach at the moment with someone bringing in a 60cm one! That's huge! Whiting on steroids!

 

We have been a little lazy today and have watched TV for most of the arvo, I feel this is fair considering the last time we were able to watch it was almost week ago!

 

Have been throwing around ideas about where we are heading, we are interested in going to Coober Pedy but it is in the middle of nowhere really so if we did maybe we would cut straight up the middle first?! We need help, suggestions! Also working, where is the best place for us to go to source it?! We still think Perth at this stage but maybe you know someone or know something we don't know, help us out....contact us.

 

Carly & Joel

 

 

 

 

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Day 24

24 February 2013

Woke up this morning to severe rain and wind! It pelted down all this morning and I was a little concerned to what we may get up to.

Unfortunately our camper is definitely not rain proof....with the bed areas being canvas it is similar to sleeping under a tent. We got up and Joel's whole corner of his bed was soaking wet! Good start! It seems to drip down these metal bars that hold the canvas up and drip in one corner which then goes into the mattress and sheets etc. I thought I better check mine and it was the same! So we put little containers under the drip to lessen the damage there and rolled the mattresses up hoping the rain would ease off soon.

Luckily it did and the sun came out for the rest of the day so it gave the mattress, sheets and floor time to dry.

As soon as we saw the sun thought we better get out there and have a fish while we can. We were going to go off the rock wall where the salmon are but it was like a washing machine in the surf and the waves were crashing against the rock wall which didn't look really safe! We went on the calm side of the wall instead and Joel caught a flathead....well when I say caught.....I mean we saw it stuck on the end of the hook and he tried to pull it up over the rocks and GONE!

We then came back to camp and made a pizza for lunch. We used a leftover wrap for the base which surprisingly worked well and went crunchy so was yummy! Joel's sister posted on Facebook that she made a pizza which cost her $100 for the gas and $60 for the ingredients......well we say this pizza cost us $1 for the gas and $5 for the ingredients, povo pizza!

We then decided to fish again, cuz we have done so well previous to this! Haha... I caught about 6 little whiting and Joel caught another flathead that threw him off just at the beach! So frustrating! We really need to take the boat out and get in some good spots to get some of these fish, starting to get embarrassing! See what the weather is like tomorrow...

Carly & Joel

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Day 23

23 February 2013

Today we awoke to rain and wind. And lesson NOT learnt! We left the roof hatch open last night and had a van full of water again! We are really lucky I think that the water just goes on one side of the van where the bench and sink and flooring is, if the hatch was on the other side, it would be wet couches, wet iPads, wet everything!

After our clean up we headed outside the van to have a look around, at this stage it was pouring and the rain was blowing straight into the annexe area so we couldn't really even stand outside the van without getting wet! We are trying to be resourceful in our bush camping and decided to put buckets under the water flowing off the annexe roof which we can later use to have a shower.

I had read on the Internet about the Moruya Markets and thought they were worth a look even though it was miserable weather. On the Internet it states it is the fastest growing market in central NSW with 120 stalls, so I thought well it will be worth a look surely......

Markets are located on the river, first left after the bridge in the park there, can't miss them. I would say they would have been pushing 10 stalls here, in their defense it was raining, however I am not sure that the 110 stalls that didn't turn up today really exist?! Anyway some nice fruit and vegies if you need them.

We then went for a bit of a drive, not like we had anything pressing to do at the van! Our neighbours had told us about a walk so we thought we would check that out, it was called the Bingi Dreaming Track and it is located at the Bingi Point. The walk we want to do is 5.5km so couldn't do today because of the weather situation but the Bingi Point there is nice and worth a look.







There is a information sign there that says shipwrecked vessels are located in this area etc....Joel was like where? And then he thought he found one.....haha

He also found some shelter from the rain under the shipwreck!

The weather was just not good so we kept driving in the car and decided to have a look at Tinebar where a couple of campers had told us you can get a $5 lunch here at the Sports Club. It is only about 10 mins up the road from our camp and is clearly signed off the highway. Good news the $5 lunch is only on Monday to Friday...haha but we decided to go in and have a look around anyway. It is a really nice little club, wasn't packed or anything for a Saturday, had a beer and some hot chips and gravy and headed back to camp.

Unfortunately the great solar system we have does not work when there is NO sun! So in the afternoon we had to resort to the next source of power - the generator, which is a bit noisy but not much we can do about it. You are allowed to run generators from 8am-8pm here so not breaking any rules.

The rest of the arvo was spent marking on maps where we have been, looking at where we are going, watching TV, cooking pikelets, eating cream haha and settling in for a night of karate kid.

Carly & Joel

 

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Day 21

21 February 2013

There was a bit of doof doof music played last night which us oldies were not very impressed about but it only lasted about 5 mins so we assumed that some cranky old person told them to turn it down! Turns out this is only a tiny bit of the story! They actually reeked havoc stealing people's stuff and cops came out late night and escorted them out! There is always one idiot!! Or in this case 4!

We woke up and headed for a run along the beach, which I prewarned Joel that if he came, he was not allowed to whinge! The sand was hard so easier to run on but it was not great weather and Joel did whinge about his knee, his groin muscle and how he didn't realise how far it was! I don't think he will be coming for a run anymore! Good start to the morning though and we came back to camp and decided to test out the shower tent and hot shower.

I went first which really wasn't the smartest idea as we hadn't really tested it before this, which means ultimately I was the test dummy! I jumped in, beautiful and warm, soaped up, shampooed my hair.......freezing cold water is pumping out of the shower head....."JOEL? WTF?" .......gas ran out, so I am standing naked in a freezing cold shower tent with soap everywhere and shampooed hair waiting for Joel to sort the gas out. Eventually got it back to warm water again, rinsed off and quickly got out of there for fear of the water turning on me again! Thanks test dummy, shower should be perfect now.....Joel gets in.... Warm shower .....then..... "CARLY? WTF?" Cold again, conclusion something wrong with coleman hot water on demand, should be called hot water when it feels like giving it! (Doesn't have the same ring to it I guess!)

It works, but you have to keep switching it on and off to get it working again. So big pain in the ass! And nowhere near a BCF store to take it back so we are just working with it at the moment. At this stage would not recommend this product to people!

We had a big fishing session just in front of our campsite today, on low tide you can walk right out to the middle of the water and fish, so we pumped some yabbies and headed out there. I caught a couple of little whiting and one keeper! Finally a fish! But we didn't get any other keepers so decided to let the caught one go and wait for enough for a feed another day. Also I again forgot to take a picture before we put it back so I have no proof of this fish, which is becoming a habit! Getting a bit slack with photos all around actually, will work on improving this.

Had a good chat this arvo to a couple from the Sunshine Coast that go away for 3 months each year and have given us some good tips like - if you find a nice spot, pull up, sit down have a chat for a bit and see if other people turn up or the noise level, people around you etc, if you don't like it can just jump back in the car and find another spot. At the moment we just pull up and start setting up, once we have done this it is a pain to pack up so we have no real choice but to stay, so good tip! They also went through free and safe places to camp and cheap and marked them all in our camp 6 book for us. Very helpful!!

Another fire tonight, rissoles for dinner and Joel has attempted scones in the camp oven. The result being......

Yes they were as good as they looked! Nobody needs to know that on the way from the camp oven to the kitchen bench they may have landed in the dirt! Haha still good.

Carly & Joel

 

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Day 15

15 February 2013

Another chilly morning and we did sleep in a little, but we had to be out of the park by 10am so we had to get up and pack to head off to our next town.

We were making tracks to Katoomba for 2 reasons, 1. We wanted to avoid Sydney at all costs and 2. This town passes near the Blue Mountains and there are some nice attractions to be seen in this area.

Campervan in tow and we are off. Good news, we managed to last 3 nights and 4 whole days without stuffing up the boom gates or amenities codes and had seamless entry and exits from the park and toilets!

Katoomba is about 4 hours from Nelson Bay so it was a little bit of a hike to get to Katoomba however there is more good news in that the "mole" i referred to a couple of days ago got us to Katoomba Falls Caravan Park with no issues whatsover, so thanks mole. haha.

The freeways were ok to here, some were a bit rough and there is a part on the Greater Western Highway that I started to think, what the hell is Sydney doing, it was like the Nicklin Way on Sunshine Coast except with all freight trains and idiot drivers everywhere! We did come out of it unscathed so I am not going to complain! On the flipside some of these freeways are really scenic as there is huge rock walls along the edges and also through the middle of the freeway. These roads are of course toll roads, as nothing is free anymore! To pay these tolls you have to set up a visitor Epass via the roam.com.au website which lasts 30 days and takes the tolls from your credit card as you pass through them.

Anyway, made it to the caravan park and unpacked the van on our site. From this park there is quite a few attractions that you can walk to... Scenic World, Katoomba Falls, Echo Point, Three Sisters etc. We had researched Scenic World as it has cableways, skyways, walks and is normally the home of the steepest railway in Australia (however at the moment this is closed : ( ). We had some lunch and decided to head to Scenic World, it is a short 10 min walk through bushland and you are there. Now it is Friday, a day that as far as I know is a work day, and it was super busy!! Tour buses everywhere!! It is $28 per adult to get unlimited rides and access to Scenic World so we decided to go with this option.

Skyway first and this is suspended in the air above the Katoomba Falls and you can also see the Three Sisters and Orphan Rock. There is also a glass floor in the middle of the cable car which is quite trippy when you stand on it and look down.

 

Katoomba Falls

The Three Sisters

Orphan Rock

Once at the other end you can hop off the car and take a walk to the Katoomba Falls or a lookout on the other side; however we were a bit buggered from a long drive and decided to be lazy and stay on the skyway to go back to the main building and then hop on the Cableway.

This photo doesn't look real but I took it today!

 

The cableway is downstairs and drops down into the rainforest floor below, it drops you at a boardwalk that goes in all different directions to rainforest walks or to the old coal mine. We chose the old coal mine walk which is only about 15 mins. There was so many people along this boardwalk at one point we stopped to let a stampede of elephants (tourists) past so we didn't get trampled! The coal mine had a tunnel which was called the ventilation tunnel, which allowed air to filter through the mine when workers were down there, you could look into the tunnel and when you did, the temperature of the air coming from the tunnel was at least 10 degrees colder than the boardwalk!




At the end of this walk is where the railway normally goes, however at the moment it just looks like a construction site with a lot of bright coloured t shirt men standing around looking like they are doing nothing. (I always wonder as we pass roadworks also, if all the people that were standing doing nothing at these areas actually did something constantly, would it be finished by now??) Would have been pretty good to go on the railway but just came at the wrong time! It was built in 1947 so it is probably due for a replacement!

We then walked back and lined up to get the Cableway back up to the main building. Took the quick stroll back to our van and we are now huddled in the van with our sleeping bags as it is pretty cold here today, this is also as there has not been any sun today and has been a bit rainy all day. I would definitely recommend Scenic World to people in the area, it was a good way to see a bit of everything all at once and you can spend the whole day there travelling back and forth on the cableways and skyways if you want to, there is also a cafe and a souvenir shop to keep you busy.

We are off again tomorrow to Oberon (we think) as this is closer to the Jenolan Caves and it is a lot cheaper than Katoomba to stay.

Carly & Joel

 

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Day 14

14 February 2013

Woke up and it was a little chilly this morning so we decided to hang around in bed watching some tv! Once it warmed up a little we crawled out of bed and headed for our first adventure of the day - Tomaree National Park walk.

There is a few different tracks you can take, we decided to do the summit walk which suprisingly enough takes you to the summit! It is quite a strenuous walk, (however on the nsw environment site, they say its an easy stroll, I would beg to differ with this) it is easy in that the tracks are well paved however it is quite steep, I would compare it to climbing something like Mount Coolum. There are steel stairs and boardwalks that make some of the steeper sections a little easier... I was sweating by the end, however again you forget about the walk when you get to the top and take in the view.

WOW would be one pretty good word for it, it is 360 degree views with a few different viewing platforms you can look out. There is also interesting information about Port Stephens along the way, e.g Tamaree Lodge used to be a military base but was built to look like a fishing town, (sneaky aussies) it was then turned into a pychiatric hospital and is now a disability recreation lodge....and at the summit is ruins of an old radar that used to detect enemies within 120kms of it. I found these things interesting.

Another interesting thing to look at on the viewing platforms is all the padlocks attached to each pillar of the railings, each padlock is engraved with someones name, or a couple that was engaged there etc etc, it was quite cute, unfortunately we did not get the memo about this so we were unable to add our engraved padlock to the others there....maybe next time.

If you look out you can see a big sand bar between the two land masses (as seen in photo below), on low tide you can walk across here and go and visit the ruins of the PS lighthouse, I think this is pretty cool but unfortunately we didn't have time to do it!

We then walked back down and back to camp which all round was about a 2 hour walk. We then were running a little late for our next adventure, the dolphin cruise! so we had to jump in the car and head down to Nelson Bay and we had just enough time to order and eat fish and chips before hoping on the cruise. When we arrived at the bay we were a little concerned that our boat would be crowded as there was a lot of tour buses parked on the road. However we chose the right boat, because there was only about 8 people on our boat compared to this.......on the other boat!!!!! Right boat chosen - tick!

We headed out to the dolphin region, while you are travelling you can take a quick dip in the spa and have a Jim Beam if you like ... don't mind if I do....



Now this looks super nice and relaxing however the photo does not depict the temperature of the water which was FF (that is a technical term for very cold) as it was sea water. There was a few moments whether we wondered whether the dolphins had decided to leave for the day but of course as if on queue they showed themselves!!! Love dolphins, so great to watch them, dolphin cruise complete for me.... however fun not over!

Dolphin sightings equals boom net down to get the oppurtunity to get closer to the dolphins. Yes please we are in, again the water was FF temperature, however it was worth it and it became warmer the longer you sat there, unfortunately no dolphins wanted to swim with us but was still an experience.

And lastly the waterslide on the back! We were already FF temperature so why not ride the slide into the FF water below! I would highly recommend to anyone attempting the slide that you hold your nose before heading down the slide.... it is quite steep and you are really rocketed into the water, which results in water rush up your nose in your mouth, in your ears and this can result in somewhat of an ear ache!! Once was enough for me, Joel went a couple of times but again it was an experience.

As there was only a few people on the boat we had a bit of spare time so the driver took us out into the Tasman Sea and around to the opposite side of the Tamaree National Park Walk to this awesome cave, he actually drove right into it while waves were crashing around which was somewhat scary but he had obviously done it before! We were hoping....

This is where we climbed to this morning.

Then back to the dock and we were both happy with the ride, it was good fun and would highly recommend it for the cost of it, it is well worth it! After this we had once again worn ourselves out and settled into camp for an early night and dinner. We also had a chance to chat to our neighbours who were lovely people and gave us a few pointers for getting to our next destination.... Katoomba.

Carly & Joel

 

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Day 13

13 February 2013

Took me a while to get to sleep last night as the waves crashing just over the road kept me awake.... I know it's a tough life.

Woke up early and went for a run along the beach to some rocks, it was tough going as sand was too soft so ended up hopping back onto the road for the way back. Went right down to the opposite end on the road until the Tomaree National Park, there is a couple of walks you can do here (which will hopefully do tomorrow).

We then decided to head to the information centre at Nelson's Bay to ask about beach driving and to get a permit for Stockton Beach. (Now you used to be able to camp here as well but has been closed due to storm damage). We came across a bookings centre before that and went to ask about a couple of activities that we were interested in doing. Ended up booking a Stockton Beach sandboarding tour & dophin cruise combo which was $39 each. Visitor Centre to get our permit which is $10 for 3 days or you can purchase a yearly pass for $30. Maps in hand, ready to go, but now high tide and will have to wait till low tide at 6pm!

Decided to do our sandboarding, so headed to Anna Bay on James Peterson Street where there is a carpark and this is where the tours leave from. There is a couple of different buses you can go on, so make sure you get on the right one! We were on the zebra bus so easy to spot!

There was only us and a family on the bus which was good, no crowds! The dunes they take you to are only about 10mins away but there are some nice views on the way out there of the dunes and water etc. You see some cones on the dunes and this is where the sandboarding takes place. They provide the board and give you a few quick instructions like sit on it and slide down the dune...and some rules like no standing up on the board (Joel's face dropped when he said this!)

First hurdle, climbing the bloody dune so we could sandboard down it! Hard going but made it to the top and everyone had to take a few moments to catch their breath before heading down! Joel of course wanted to go on the biggest baddest dune first and I wanted to go on the little baby dune first haha.

We then repeated this process about 6 or 7 times till we were worn out from the walk up the dune and decided to just wait for the bus to come back to take us back again.

The dunes are pretty spectacular when you are in the thick of them, total contrast to the big green rolling hills in the country.

We picked the right tour, as to the left of our dune was the "red bus" tour and there would have been 50 people trying to get their asses up and down the dunes at the one time, it looked hectic! We had a total of 6 people....

Had lunch at a park up the road from our camp and a swim in the bay across the road from home. Freezing but bearable as it was a relatively hot day.

We then decided that we hadn't worn ourselves out enough yet so we went and hired a double kayak at Nelson's Bay and headed out for an hour paddle. We couldn't quite agree on the right timing of the strokes and have decided in future that 2 single kayaks will work better for both our sanities!

Now we were buggered!! We had actually planned to drive along the beach at 6pm but we were to wrecked from the rest of the day so that will have to be tomorrow. Dinner, Home & Away, Sleep and we are out......until tomorrow.

Carly & Joel

 

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