Our Australia trip

With only 250km of bitumen between us and Sydney, we decide that this was our last stop before we go and help Niki and Nic.

We say goodbye to the wildlife.

And drive off in the mist.

Suddenly we realise that we have had all states but ACT, so we decide to correct that error.

And 5 minutes later we are back in NSW.

For those who missed that, a couple of kilometers later, we do it again.

The road here clearly weaves in and out the two states.

Nossi is mesmerised by it all.

We stop for lunch somewhere near Goulburn (which is not a very attractive city, which we knew before from the 6 am stop for McDonalds on the way to the snow). This time we make our lunch ourselves and take some pictures at a junkyard next to where we parked.

Then we come to Sydney and back into the hustle and bustle of a big city and say goodbye to the scenic nature we enjoyed on this trip of a lifetime.

Then it’s working at Niki’s to prepare for the move and the new place where we mend mowers, pack and unpack, and build fences with Nic.

In the morning we wake to a smoke filled yard, clearly the bush fire season isn’t over as yet. It’s nice though to see the sun rise through the hazy trees.

A fabulous trip.

Posted from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

From here onwards we have seen the coast of NSW already a couple of times before from when we were living in Sydney. We used to go camping with the Mulders and friends, stayed at Jervis bay a couple of times and also with Nicolet and family we have stayed on this coast.

So instead we decide to go inland. Just before the turn off we stop at Mogo. Initially to buy fresh organic eggs but then come to the Original Gold Rush Colony.

They are dog friendly and we decide to take the tour. It’s fun and interesting.

First we see a steam powered rock crusher which noise scared us all, Nossi the most. They take the crush dust and heat it up with mercury and cyanide and in the end have only gold left.

Then we look at a makeshift gold mine.

Later they made very small mines (more like a hole straight down, the size of a person) to look for gold. There are thousands of these holes, similar to the one we saw at Slaty Creek where a dog fell in.

Accommodation wasn’t much in those days and even our small bus seems like a castle now.

People were multi skilled and had simple diaries.

Gold was also a big attraction for some Chinese.

We also visited the pub and the the blacksmith.

After all this we finally came to the good part…panning for gold!

We find a while pot with gold, pity that the camera failed us.

Upon our departure two peacocks see us out.

Then it’s up the hills onto the great dividing range that runs along the east coast of Australia. There are more clouds and the temperature drops from 30 to 25 degrees.

And then we come to a reserve along the King Highway on the river. It’s nice but a bit noisy with day and night traffic.

a beautiful day.

Posted from Larbert, New South Wales, Australia.

From Genoa we are driving further north along the coast. We have spoken to Niki and Nic and they will be moving house during Easter weekend. Afraid that they are underestimating the amount of work involved in packing and moving after you’ve lived in a place for a couple of years, we decide to do the parently thing and head back to Sydney. It’s only 600 km or so from where we are now.

So we get on the road reasonably early. On the road we are quiet and our thoughts are still with Dotti and the scenery supports that mood.

We pass fields of purple flowers.

And stop to see if they are the same prickly ones we’ve seen before.

But these are different.
While we look, we see there are other wild flowers we have not seen before.

Then at around 10 am we reach the Victoria – New South Wales border.

The road takes us through milk country with cheesy names like Bega and Tilba.

And we decide to visit the historic town of Tilba. Nossi comes with us so we can go all three. Marjo enjoys looking around at leisure and Nossi and I are content to take in the touristy scenery around us.

Then Nossi and I decide to take a walk to the lookout in town, next to the town water tank.

When leaving town we’re glad that he people with multi coloured feet have gone otherwise it could have gotten messy.

Not far from Tilba we reach Mystery bay. The bay itself is the location where the abandoned wreck of a small boat was discovered in mysterious circumstances in 1880. The boat had carried Lamont Young, a government geologist inspecting new goldfields on behalf the New South Wales Mines Department together with his assistant Max Schneider, and boat owner Thomas Towers and two others, from nearby Bermagui. None of the five men were ever seen again, and Mystery Bay was named after their unexplained disappearance. They probably found gold and were never heard of again.
The beach is nice to swim in, not so much for kiting (if there would have been any wind).

The beach also has little artworks from nature.

We decide to stay for the night.

A nice day, and we wished we could have shared it with Dotti.

Posted from Larbert, New South Wales, Australia.

Marjo likes variation and she deserves it. Now before you get any thoughts, we are still on the subject of food here. If you’re planning to meet us somewhere and want to surprise her with breakfast you need to know the following. In the morning with breakfast she has generally two decent sized sandwiches. No toast (unless you leave it out in the sun too long). Each sandwich gets halved which makes four half sandwiches. And each gets it own topping and then cut in four bite size quarters. Choices are ham, salami, peanut butter with honey, peanut butter with a slice of banana, cheese with a smudge of Vegemite, pâté with a slice of cucumber, jam. You could be brave and invent your own topping combination. And three times a week a boiled egg. And black coffee.
Of course you could also treat her on bacon and eggs, hashbrowns and baked beans.
That followed by a cigarette ensures a great start of a perfect day.
Axel is a lit less adventurous. I’m sure Marjo will let you know.

This night was a typical sick dependent night. Marjo went out twice with a sick Dotti and I did once and took them at 7 am for another walk. Dotti was content with a walk around the camping ground and refused any further ventures. She plainly sat down as if to say: “this is as far as I go”. After returning her to the bus, Nossi and I went for the beach. Across the road and a little path we came to the perfect beach. As far as the eye can see (yes, I know, I need glasses) and wide enough with easy waves. Where in Crescent head the water was pinky size cold, here it is mellow warm. Perfect!
And finally the quarter falls. I have been all night pondering why the bathrooms are called “mangoes” and “no mangoes”. I was thinking, perhaps men are supposed to be brave and bravery is measured by their parts that women don’t possess. But of the size of this big fruit? Well perhaps the men are very brave in northern NSW. Now I understand! The water doesn’t ever get very cold, even in winter, so no reason for northern NSW men’s bravery tools to shrivel up and hence the size of mangoes.
Then again, you can also use Marjo’s explanation of “Man Goes” and “No Man Goes”. But that’s just logic and would require the use of left brain cells……
I admit, having a lot of time does that to you, over analyzing stuff.

Hitting the sand Nossi went nuts and did his zoomies as Niki calls them, running at full speed circles, looking crazy eyed and enjoying himself immensely.

I’m now having my less adventurous breakfast sitting outside in the sun, bird screams around me (in Australia birds don’t twitter or play nice tunes, they scream or laugh at you) and Dotti on the ground trying to stay awake but every time I can see from the corner of my eye her head drop bit by bit until the next noise her head jerks back up. The same you see in airplanes with fellow passengers. Finally she doses off.

Around us people are starting to wake up. Pay their visit to where mangoes or no mangoes or driving off to some destination.

Marjo finished her breakfast and is coming outside to have a smoke and finish her coffee. Enough writing for the morning; beach here we come!

We decided to make a little adjustment for the day. Dotti is more serious sick than we thought. She hasn’t moved all day apart from hiding under the bus and taking on a little water. We therefore moved the bus to the less structured part of the camping (nojuice…..hmmm, doesn’t sound the least as creative as no mangoes) for those not needing external power and have better view, less people and car movement and a better view.
This also to do a little bus mechanical work. The mirror on the passenger side is under sized and in no way I can see the curb on that side with parking, which leads to comical situations of moving 10 cms, stopping the bus, handbrake, get out, walk around, observe, judge, estimate, back behind the wheel, go again 10 cms, etc. etc. That’s how you end up with the bus perfectly parked, level and so, but accidentally with the door opening facing a tree (Uralla continued). So a new mirror mounted and a special shaped curb view mirror. Took me more than an hour to puzzle with bits and pull out all the stops on our trailer, the shed-on-wheels.

Also fixed the toilet. Now before I co any further, those with weak stomachs and just about to have dinner, lunch or breakfast skip the italic part: The toilet works with a cassette that holds everything yuck. Quite neatly the cassette can be removed from the bus on the outside through a little hatch. Removing the cassette closes a slide that seals the opening to the entry where everything yuck enters. Also there’s a turning knob that slides a round disc against a seal from inside the cassette to close off the cassette from the inside, so the when the cassette sits in the bus the cassette is still closed and only opens when you want to flush. The turning knob slides neatly in a handle on the toilet cover so as user of the toilet you never see or touch the cassette. After this somewhat long intro I’ll explain the problem: after years of use the disc mechanism got somewhat stiff and didn’t close fully and requires more purposeful closing of the handle. By the way, there’s still a chance to skip over the not so nice part…. So when driving with the disc not fully sealing the yuck probably splashed between the disc and the seal and covered the floor of the bathroom. The first few times we only had water in the cassette (after emptying and cleaning we leave a bit of water and throw in some nappisan (for non Australians: that is strong but environmentally friendly washing powder). So we mistakenly took the water on the bathroom floor for leaking flush water. After moving the bus from juice to nojuice it was clear that this had nothing to do with flush water. Yuck. Hopefully it is fixed now.
While I had the job of fixing the cassette Marjo offered to clean the yuck from the bathroom floor.
Marjo went with Nossi to the beach and took some nice pictures.

Great plans are only that….. The day started with Dotti not well. In the middle of the night she needed to get out, as most men I have a sixth sense that makes me deaf and blind at nights when children or pets demand help from adults. So Marjo took charge and helped the poor dog outside. Nossi analysed the situation and felt that there needed to be balance so to penalize me she quickly jumped on the bed and under the doona, of course on my half……

In the morning Dotti was sick again, this time it was only 7 am, outside of the active hours of my sixth sense, so I got up and took both dogs for a walk. It was still cold and foggy, close to the river near Jackadgery, which made for some nice pictures.

I fed the dogs; Dotti wasn’t hungry and Marjo had meanwhile arranged breakfast. Great teamwork.

We sat down near the river and looked for our next stop. We decided that the Rummery camping ground a nice bush camping in Whian Whian State Forest would be our next stop. We checked to make sure it was no National Park, rang the accompanied information line, checked online and all seemed ok. As fail safe we even looked at the nearby Camp Old Cottage park.

We left early to have plenty of time and arrive once at daylight and took the winding road to Grafton and from there via the Pacific Highway up the coast. The navigator helped us find the most obscure little dirt roads and several times we are convinced that it leads us down the most pittoresque (and winding, hilly and bumpy) dirt roads. It was a very nice trip though, through the rolling hinterlands of Byron, Bangalow and other hippy towns. We stopped on the way to get a new bigger mirror, for coffee and teacake (with apple, yummy) and also for a Dotti stop under Macademia trees. Of course we couldn’t stop ourself cleaning up a little and ended up with half a kilo of Macademia nuts.

Everywhere along the road people are offering produce, all very healthy, macro biotic, vegan, organic and more. Prices are in line with these special features and we felt a bit guilty when we saw a sign for 100 grams of Macademia nuts for $7. Ah well.

The roads got narrower and narrower, with many 25kph turns, bridges and through vine covered tree archways. Very nice and leading up to a beautiful setting for Rummery. Finally we reached the turn to the camping and we were not disappointed. Or? we tried hard to ignore the sign “NO DOGS” and almost convinced ourselves and other camping users that it was only for the north side of the camping. Then we found the camping information board with a large section about domestic pets not allowed.
Finally we decided to go for the backup plan: Camp Old Cottage park only 3 km up the road. After more dirt road with potholes and curves we arrived at three big stumps next to the road preventing vehicle access. I walked up the path behind the stumps and walked into some youth camp with 20 or more 17y old girls and as many tents and cooking pots. Finally we had phone reception and contacted Whian Whian State Forest management. This time someone answered and told us that because Whian Whian is a State Forest Conservation Area no pets are allowed and there was no camping near by.
So much for careful planning.

Maps open, camping books reviewed, internet on…..so we found Wooyung Camping near Pottsville. On the coast. Pet friendly. We wanted to make sure and called them only to find out that the camping management has their day off on Wednesday….today.
The pittoresque and winding roads, rolling hills and pretty sights lost a lot of their charm on the 65 km between Rummery and Wooyung. Certainly now it got later and darker and we were happy to reach the Wooyung caravan park.

Now, with a belly full of nice dinner (compliments to Marjo), a Gin and Tonic, a warm fire and the sound of rolling waves, everything seems like a past dream. I’m sure we will wake up with the sun and have a ball on the beach tomorrow with the dogs.

Sleep tight 🙂

Waking up I was nice and warm (smart girl with extra shawl under my blanky) Axel still feeling the remnants of his water escapade, was not warm at all, and tried to warm his hands on me!
Well, I got breakfast in bed out of it.
The morning sun was lovely, it was warming our faces, but not the washing, ah well put it in a bag for the next opportunity to dry.

We set of with loads of firewood and a few specks of gold, on the way to a bush camping near a large dam near Inverell.

This must be fox country, we saw about five dead foxes along the road but no kangaroos whatsoever.
Corrugated dirt road here and there, but all in all not to bad, and the navigator was better at predicting driving time than Axels thumb was lol!
At the entrance of the gate of the camping area there was a sign saying” no dogs allowed” what the..? We found it in a book “bush camping with dogs”!
We rang the owner, no problem, just keep the dog with you so it does not roam around the camping. Phew!
We found out the reason why there are no dogs allowed. We also know now where all the kangaroos of mid north west NSW have gone. Near a kangaroo sanctuary close to Copeton dam! The dam, by the way, is said to be three times the size of Sydney Harbour.

We found a perfect spot, with lake view, fireplace, fish smoking area (as if) and a short walk to hot showers!
AND a washing machine, very ancient, but hey, it worked.
Dotti did an Axel and went involuntary for a swim, Nos spotted a kangaroo and was gone with the wind, luckily he came back when I put my stern “I am the boss” voice on to call him back (he was very timid the rest of the evening).

Axel went for a mountain bike ride, and came back with the washing on his back.

I made dinner while Axel played guitar next to a small fire..yes small..he had his heart set on the heater in the bus, because we, for the first time, have a powered site this night.

Even the washing is standing in the bus near the heater, and the bed is cosy to crawl in to, unlike the night before.
See what the morning will bring.

The next morning the sun was out, the temperature soon rose and the place looked much different. No rain. No screaming. No cold. We canvassed and found a nice spot to park the bus, not too far and close to the river. After several attempts I got the bus perfect only to realize that the side door opened straight into a tree. I had parked the bus facing the wrong way. With Marjo’s help we tried a second attempt and got a perfect setting.

The sun made it really nice and we went out to look at digging our retirement fortune of gold. I guess naivity can be a blessing. When we arrived at the sand riverbank we were greeted by a 1:100 ratio of gold to sand grains. The sand was literally glittering with gold. Unfortunately the gold was so small and flaky that trying to collect it only meant that the flinter thin gold ended up smearing over your hand. A gold speckled hand is nice but not useful other than that we now understand the meaning of a golden handshake.

We managed to find some of the thicker pieces of gold but still only about half a millimeter thick and 2×3 millimeter in size. You would need thousands of those to make any noticeable weight, let alone making a fortune. I guess at some areas there could be larger nuggets but we lost interest.

The area is stunning though, large boulders everywhere and the water cold and in places streaming fast. The temperature of the water I experienced up close. Marjo ventured further with Nossi and returned after half an hour, I meanwhile tried ways to collect the gold slivers quicker and was professionally washing sand, sitting on my hunches, failing miserably. When Marjo returned I got up and apparently my veins decided to supply my legs with fresh blood after having been constricted for some time. With insufficient oversupply of blood my brain cells got starved even more than what is normally the case and I blacked out for a few seconds. I mumbled something and Marjo thought nothing special of that. The hill of sand on which I stood guided me back so that in two stumbling steps I fell backwards in the freezing water and got saturated. If something wakes you up better than freezing water then I don’t want to know about it. I was up in no time and got back to the bus, realizing that I had no keys. Luckily I only found the waterproof camera in my pockets. Marjo followed soon with keys and I changed clothes, hanging the soaked ones to dry in the sun.

After this adventure we lit a fire, found more wood and made a nice big fire to warm me and dry the clothes. Both worked so so, I stayed cold all night, also because with a clear night the temperature dropped to 2 Celcius and also the clothes smelled nice of smoke and were still quite wet on the clothes line.

NOW Axel..I honestly thought you were joking, when you mumbled something and started stumbling toward the waters edge! Sorry!
And yes the river area is stunning,I love the boulders in the water, creating little waterfalls.
On my walk with Nossi, he did a perfect impression of a kangaroo while spotting one across the water.
And a bit later he spotted an echidna,which in turn tried to hide under a rock.
Lucky only it’s bum stuck out,(Nossi was sniffing it) and not it’s face, I think Nossi would have gotten acupuncture otherwise.

Axel also collected firewood to put in the trailer for future campfires. At the last camping a guy commented you should jump on fire wood if you see any!

We both decided that we had seen the mid north NSW coast too many times and not the hinterland. So we decided instead of following the Pacific Highway that it would be good to go and check out Armidale.

In the Camping-with-dogs guide there was a nice camping presented near Uralla, with gold and gemstone fossicking. Rule of thumb measurements (my thumb worked well) made it a three hour trip.
The road was nice, past Bellingen, Ebor and other picturesque places and nice rolling hills. Six hours and 1,000 meter elevation later we arrived at dark near the Uralla Fossicking Area.

It was very dark with the only light coming from cars close to what we assumed was the water with screaming voices from drunk or otherwise excited teenagers. We could only find a small curve from the parking area as stop place and parked the bus, set up and tried to find wood in the now starting rain. This was going to develop quickly to be our most favourite spot. Not.

The fire was struggling, the voices were getting louder and cars kept coming and going. The rain was intermittent and when it became steady, the rain gave in and so did the teenagers. The temperature dropped meanwhile to somewhere around 7 degrees which is cold when you sit outside.

The highlight of the day was that I got lucky that night 🙂

Waking up to….well nothing really. Because we felt like it. The dogs slept like roses, Nossi in front of the passenger seat, where he also travels and Dotti between the seats. Marjo and I on the king size bed in the back. In the background the noise of the highway….or….no….the ocean of course.
I get up to make breakfast, Marjo coffee and sandwiches with cheese, pâté and jam and for me peppermint tea and muesli. We share half an apple. Then back in bed to consume this while reading a book on the iPad, the dogs still slumbering. Marjo gets up, feeds the dogs and walks to the beach. Nossi goes nuts when he sees the sand and runs laps, he seems to have this running laps association with grass and sand. What goes on in a dogs mind will always remain a mystery although I’m sure most of it won’t be rocket science.

Meanwhile I have shaved and cleaned up, collected some firewood, my only planning for the day and made coffee. In the already warm sun we sit and watch and drink coffee. I said before, this could grow on me.

Then we do a repeat and walk with both dogs to the beach, a 1 minute walk. There we kick off our thongs (or toe slippers for non Australians) and walk barefoot on the still wet sand. The dogs run after the tennis ball and each other and run towards the sea until the oncoming water chases them back. We walk around the corner over the rocky breaker and see that it’s low tide. That creates little ponds with warmish water. In one Marjo gets a scare from a large fish (brand unknown) that was more scared from her delicate foot and trashes around to try and hide in the small pond. Nossi is intrigued and investigates. The fish gets even more scared and trashes himself out of the water onto the beach. Now Nos is triumphant and as he does pokes his nose into the fish. Being a softy I can’t let my dog kill a fish and help the poor little fella back into his pond where he clings to the rockwell in the hope that Nossi loses interest. He does when we walk on to give Dotti water therapy. This to activate his back leg since she’s been three legged for the last 2 months or so, avoiding to walk on her arthritis plagues back leg. This therapy consists of slow walking so that she uses the leg and also water movement so she can move it without having to put pressure on it. The idea was to do this in a shallower part of where the sea circles the rocky area. Well that worked only as long as not a big wave decided to come around and swoop Dotti with her. I could barely prevent her from becoming a seal.

In the he afternoon I picked up my guitar again, Marjo had a nap, we planned our next stop and I took my practice kite to the beach. It feels nice to let it soar through the air by moving the handle bar. Soon I have to do the real kite boarding!

Our first day on the road. This could grow on me 🙂
The morning was still busy with emptying the last few things from our house, locking up, feeding the chickens one last time and ‘hey surprise! An egg’ as parting gift from the chickens. While saying goodbye to neighbours we found how many people like to potter around in their pyama’s while unsuspecting visitors.
The neighbourhood will have to endure a week of the roadside throw away stuff to be collected by council but many promised to increase the pile by unwanted gifts, something everyone seems to do and I must admit that I’m guilty of this practice too.

The first time we hooked up the trailer behind the bus everything seems to work. A little puzzle was to try and unlock the perfect fitting padlocks on the 20 litre drums for diesel and water. They fit so well that it is hard to find the keyhole. Ah well, a quest for when we really need them.

Leaving Sydney seemed emotionally difficult so we took the longest possible detour via Coles for some last shopping and a circling visit to the Shell. On the highway in Wahroonga the petrol station is on the other side of the road and only accessible by circling the block twice; once to get access to the petrol station and once more to leave it in the direction we wanted to go.
The bus odometer is set on: 294,350

By then the clouds had parted and we could join the F3 motorway heading north. This road is well known, we regularly take it going to La Manda, our rental vacation home in Smiths Lake (link: La Manda). The road starts with a big hill that normally we drive with 110kph like everyone else. Now we find there’s another category of road users that struggle to go any faster than 40kph and we joined this stream of trucks. The rest of the road also showed that from not being concerned about hills and bends we now feel ourselves part of the trucking community that cares about down shifting up and breaking down hill. We event went sofar that we signaled extended semi-trailers when it was safe to return to the left lane after passing us, one kph faster than we were going and we got rewarded by the blinking left and right indicators.

With two stops in Heatherbrea (we had the McDonalds Sydney Stack for lunch, verdict: not recommended) and a roadside stop we arrived at Kempsey and turned off to Crescent Head. Luckily this is one of Marjo’s regular stops on her annual pilgrimage with Els the air hostess so via a winding road, roadside watching roo’s and the worst corrugated and potholed 5 km road (ok, I admit I’m not used to much) we tried to find the camping in the dark. Arriving at some turnoff I decided not to turn in head first but park our rig (sounds impressive) on the round and walk to see in the pitch dark whether we would not drive straight into the local swamp. Luckily a local stopped and gave instructions after which we arrived at the campsite, parked on the first reasonably looking spot and got out. In no time we had seats out, dog beds, awning and while Marjo looked at food options, I got friendly with a neighbouring camper (a young couple doing the same as us but with a brand new ute converted with sleep-on-fold-out) and begged for his wood. With everything still wet from the weeks of rain dry wood is hard to come by but with his dry wood and some other found woodcuts we managed a small fire that the dogs approved of too.

Not much later, after dinner (yummy beanstew with chicken mince), coffee (with oat and raisin cookies) and beer/wine we hit our beds. Marjo expertly made everything work. Evening wash, all the things you might ever need to go to sleep and wake up and for the dogs a perfect cosy nest in the front of the bus.

All in all a perfect day (a well, we won’t tell that I forgot to lock the trailer and that I left the keys all night in the door of the gas bottle with the door wide open).

Odometer: 294,769

Posted from Crescent Head, New South Wales, Australia.