continuing travels

Sunday 15th Feb
Lin here...first of all I need to apologise for Brent's poor grammar and spelling mistakes!!! Guess he's out of sorts too.

Anyway the rain poured down all night and we both slept fitfully, worrying that the tent might be washed away. Brent here. Decided to go for a drive towards the Blue Mountains. Weather still very overcast so visibility up high was not good. One bright spot was a lovely little cafe on the main road where we sampled some of the coffee and cakes. Headed back to the campsite feeling that we had seen a little more of Australia.

Monday 16th Feb.
Woke up to try and get on line to see if we had been successful in booking a camper van. Frustratingly the hotmail showed the responses but we didn't seem to be able to open them. There was one from the company we had queried – was it yes or no ? I suggested that on our way into Sydney at Chatswood we look for an internet cafe to check there. Our luck was in – we found a good one in the town. On opening the mail though they said there was no availability. Back to square one. Time was running out now as the car was due back tomorrow so we had to get something sorted. The cafe had skype so we made some calls and luckily got sorted for the next day – hurray. Took the train into Sydney. Today we explored the Botanic Gardens and walked through the parks. Very beautiful trees and plants. The weather had fortunately improved. Walked through Hyde Park (not the London one ) to the Australian Museum where we wanted to see the Wildlife photographer of the Year exhibition. Some of the most stunning photographs on display. A highlight of the day. Linda returned to campsite early as she still felt rough. I followed shortly after picking up confirmation of our van booking on way through Chatswood. Spent evening packing up car ready for an early start the next day.

Tuesday 17th Feb.
This morning we had to be quite organised: we decided to drop off all our possessions at the campervan place, where Linda would sort out the booking and pack up the van, whilst I drove through Sydney to drop off the car and then return by public transport to meet up with Linda again. Through forward thinking and a little luck it all went very smoothly. We left with our van at about 10.30am on our way to Melbourne. We drove out of Sydney via the Royal National Park taking in some fantastic views of the Grand Pacific Highway and the Seacliff Bridge. We found our first campsite at Shell Harbour near Kiama. Was tucked away in the suburbs and seemed to have an age discrimination policy – we just sneaked into the youngest on site. Was very quiet though and we enjoyed a dry and pleasant night in the van – what a relief.

Wednesday 18th Feb
Drove down the coast taking in the fantastic seven mile beach. Self explanatory. Another one of the beaches with Pacific rollers braking along its length. Stopped for the evening at a small campsite just outside Huskisson. Beautiful situation on a saltwater lagoon with a little jetty looking out over the water. Linda feeling a lot better now.

Thursday 19th Feb
Lin here...finally feeling more like myself...I was beginning to wonder there. Anyway today we left the site and drove down towards Bateman's Bay. We found a Big 4 campsite, as recommended by Janine at Ulladulla, on Burril Lake and decided to spend 2 nights there. We were able to connect to the internet and used Skype to contact my cousins and ring family in England. Great!

Friday 20th Feb
A lazy day.... much needed. We hung out at the site until late afternoon, enjoying the serenity and making those calls. Late afternoon we walked down to the local park and as we gazed down at the river estuary spotted an octopus! I was feeling even better today and risked having some wine... probably a mistake, but it was nice all the same!

Saturday 21st Feb
I woke up feeling a bit icky again and have pledged ( again ) to give up the booze. Still we headed off and enjoyed exploring more of this beautiful coast. We started at Depot Beach, where we'd seen pictures of kangaroos. We can't believe we've been here almost 2 weeks and not seen one. We found a short walk through rainforest, which we enjoyed. Birds of all sorts were plentiful and we briefly caught the rear end of what we believe was a bush wallaby... but no kangaroos. The white sand beach here was lovely. When we returned to the car park we noticed another Apollo van.. in fact it was the 2 berth van that we'd have preferred to rent, but which wasn't available ( ours is a 3 berth). We were just having a nose when the German couple renting it appeared, so we had quite a long chat with them. They'd done our trip in reverse and were able to recommend some places to stop and we recommended Lane Cove to them. I mentioned that we had yet to see our first kangaroo and they looked somewhat puzzled... look over there they said... and lo and behold just across the road in between some cabins was a group of joeys just lying about!!! Did we feel like a couple of wallies or what! Still we finally saw and stroked our first kangaroos! Brilliant! We move on to Bateman's Bay and stopped at the headland on Guerrilla Bay and did part of a beautiful coastal walk.. spotting loads of rainbow parakeets and a host of other birds, as well as a large lizard... David Attenborough eat your heart out. Finally arrived at our destination, Narooma, and set up camp. Noticed a folk festival advertised for this weekend and decided to go tomorrow.. we've really been missing live music!

Sunday 22nd Feb
Got up quite early and set off towards the folk festival. Stopped for coffee in historic villages of Tilba... very pretty and arrived around 11 at the showground. There were about 6 tents offering different gigs. Our first 2 made us wonder if we'd wasted money... in the “voices” tent a choral group of women who were very nervous and definitely amateur. It was painful to listen to at times and our next tent proved little better!! However once we headed to the main stage things got better and we heard a lot of really good music. We really enjoyed the Fagan family in the voices tent: they got everyone singing a round as well as performing great harmonies. The last band was called the Beez and they came from germany and were very funny – they took words from one song and put them to music from another...you had to be there! 2 English musicians were playing and were very entertaining. They were part of a political set and one of them – Graham ?(Todd?) was very anti monarchy.. we loved him! We also enjoyed the comedians set, which made us realise what a global world we live in – all the same issues were made fun of. We particularly liked Damien Neil and Damon Davis, who's harmonies were really incredible. By the end of the afternoon we felt that we'd really chilled and made up for all that lost music time. Headed to Mirumbull