Six Mile Creek

Lookout on Snowy Mountain Highway

Lookout on Snowy Mountain Highway

We continued our journey South East again this morning, heading first to Cooma then onto the marvellously named town of Nimmitable via the Snowy Mountains Highway.
The Snowy Mountains Highway is one of those roads that’s a joy to drive with switchbacks, steep climbs and descents as you cross the Great Dividing Range. At some points you are up at over 1500 metres above sea level with some fantastic views and big drop offs as the road hugs the sides of the mountains.
From Nimmitable we headed South East for a few kilometres before beginning our first “off Tarmac” part of the trip. Following an assortment of graded tracks and four wheel drive only fire tracks we wound our way south into the South East Forest National Park. In all the off road tracks amounted to around 40k with about half of that being 4WD only. Historically the Cattleman’s Track that we followed was a trading route to the coast. The Postman’s Track that made up the last part of the route was a postal service pack horse route.
imageTowards the southern edge of the park we pulled up to set up camp for the night at Six Mile Creek, another free camp site created and maintained by the national park. No phone service in this remote spot – we’ve only seen 2 other vehicles since we left the tarmac about 4 hours ago and we are the only people at the camp site. Hopefully I’ll upload this post tomorrow if we find somewhere with a phone mast !
We’ve not decided for certain on tomorrow’s destination, we’re considering heading South East again to the coast. With a week left before we need to get to Melbourne for the F1 we still have some time to kill and there’s lots to see and experience in this area of NSW and further south in Victoria.

Blowering Reservoir

P1000147Continuing our southward journey we have moved around 150k further south into the Kosciuszko National Park following the Snowy Mountains Highway. There are a number of free camping spots alongside the reservoir.

We’ve stopped for a night at the Pines Camping Area. A nice spot with a few trees to provide some shade and a cooling breeze. We arrived fairly early so took a trip into the local town – Tumut – for some more beer before setting up camp. The new site header pic was taken a few k north at another camp site we looked at, spoilt for choice around here !

Tomorrow we’ll continue through the mountains towards Cowra, not decided on a suitable place to camp yet, too chilled out at the moment to worry about that 🙂

Parkes to Young

Parkes Radio TelescopeAs planned we took a trip to Parkes this morning to take a look at “The Dish”. It’s an impressive piece of engineering and interesting to see the large number of current “cutting edge” projects that it is still taking a leading role in. The fact versus fiction display from the film was a bit of a relief as most of the important parts of the film were true. Even the decision to continue to operate the dish despite the wind speeds exceeding it’s designed specification. If you have no idea what I’m rambling on about – go find and watch the film “The Dish” 🙂

Following our visit to Parkes we had a choice of direction – head further North to see some friends at Trangie or head back South again in the hope that the weather was on the up now. in the end we decided that we’d try the South again.

As a stopping off point so that we weren’t driving too far in the day we chose a site at Young, nice and close to shops so we can stock up on food again. We also refuelled for the first time in a few days and we’ve been averaging 27mpg which isn’t too bad and is within our budgeted figures.

Tomorrow we’re continuing our journey South again and hoping to find somewhere a bit more remote to set up camp.

Gooloogong

Gooloogong pubHad a good day today, the rain finally moved on overnight so we went for a 5k walk around Bungonia canyon in the morning.

After our walk and a shower we packed up and headed North West towards Parkes. A bit of a random move but it’s one of those places I’ve driven past previously and wanted to visit as “The Dish” is one of those films I never get tired of watching.

The journey to Gooloogong, which offers a small community run camp site funded by donations, took a few hours at around 200 miles. All good roads though and for the most part in sunshine which after the last few days of persistent rain was a major bonus.

A couple of cold ones and a meal at the pub and we’re set for the night. Still not 100% where we’re heading next, we’ll see what tomorrow brings 🙂

Bungonia Conservation Reserve

imageThe weather was rather unkind to us after our arrival at Coledale Beach after arriving in sunshine and going for a stroll on the beach and a paddle. Having booked two nights we stuck it out all day Thursday in the vague hope that the skies would clear and the rain would desist. Sadly none of the above came to fruition and as we got damper, the rain got heavier and the temperature dropped below 20C so we decided to head inland.
There were a couple of sites we liked the look of but we decided to rule one out due to the river crossings that, given the rain we’d had, might be a bit deeper than we wanted to negotiate. The safe option was to head to Bungonia , a drive of about 4 hours after being forced to take a detour after our planned crossing over the Maquarie Pass was blocked by an accident. The detour was quite long but very picturesque as we cut through on the Kangaroo Valley Road instead.
imageOn arriving at the site it seemed we were the only people there and compared to Coledale the peace and quiet, lack of wind and, most importantly, no rain made it seem positively idyllic ! Just in case things take a turn for the worst, we’ve set up in all weather mode with the annex being used for the first time this trip. The main tent is still wet through but starting to dry out at last.
We expect to stay here for two nights now and travel again on Sunday, by Monday the temperatures are forecast to get back up into the mid to high 20s and the skies should be clearing so we can decide where our next leg will take us.

Leaving the city

imageWe spent the first couple of days in Sydney getting acclimatised, checking the Land Rover over and shopping for the essentials that we couldn’t import with the Land Rover. One (maybe the only) drawback of having a roof top tent in Sydney is that it’s full of multi-story car parks with 2.1 metre height restrictions !
Eventually we found the stores we needed and now have food, phone sims and a new gas stove and bottle. The Cadac stove we brought with us wasn’t compatible with the Australian gas bottles/regulators/pipes so we ended up buying the Coleman stove we’d originally wanted but couldn’t get in the UK. That meant dumping the Cadac stove which goes against the grain for an adopted Yorkshire man but we don’t have the space to carry two stoves.
This morning we took a ride over to Narabeen to meet up with an old friend and came away with a good list of places and tracks for our journey to Coledale BeachMelbourne.

We then headed south and out of Sydney to Coledale Beach to spend a couple of nights by the sea before moving on. This is another spot we’d wanted to visit on the recommendation of Celia and Eugene.

We took the scenic route where we could, cutting through the Royal National Park and then following the coast road down to Coledale. With the views, vegetation and scenery it has started to feel more like the Australia we fell in love with on our previous visits. Lane Cove was a bit of a haven in the city but you knew you were in the city still.
I’m sat now looking out over the sea and the beach with an iPad in one hand and a cold one in the other, what more could you ask for 🙂

We’ve landed

20140224-152957.jpgI’m glad to say that our first day more or less went as planned. After setting off on Saturday afternoon from Leeds Bradford Airport we eventually landed in Sydney at about 7am local time on Monday morning.
The start of the trip seems a bit like a shopping list of things that need to be ticked off one by one. The first of those being getting to Sydney with all our luggage !
We picked up a PAYG Sim for Pam’s phone at the airport so we could have a working sat nav in the form of Apple Maps and got a taxi to the shipping agent in Botany Bay.
Another tick on the list was that the 90 had passed quarantine and customs without a hitch so all we had to do was load up the roof tent and drive to the camp site via a couple of stops to get fuel, provisions and a toll road tag. On the latter one, we spent nearly an hour at the licensing office and they eventually decided that it wasn’t possible for us to get a tag so we shouldn’t worry about it.
So by around 1pm we had checked in at the camp site and set up camp for the first night. I suspect an early night is in order as we’ve not had much sleep in the last 24 hours or so.
Right now the reality of what we are doing is starting to hit home and it seems a daunting prospect ! One day at a time though…

Melbourne

Looking at the tracker the container ship is just off Melbourne now, due into Sydney on the 18th February.

Next stop Sydney !

The ship is currently docked in Fremantle (Perth) and is scheduled to leave today on the final leg for our container – the trip to Sydney. Just 2 weeks now before we’re due to meet up with our Land Rover again in Sydney and for the real adventure to begin, that’s scary !