The Journey Part One

The Blue Beast in Kangaroo Valley

So I thought it was about time to fill in the gap between Sydney and Adelaide.

Let's start at the beginning...

We decided we needed to buy a car and take a long road trip, all along the coast(s), to Adelaide. We had planned on taking advantage of some backpackers by swooping in at the last minute and offering a super low price for their car that they MUST sell because they are leaving the country tomorrow... but that didn't happen. Long story short we ended up with an electric blue 1996 Ford Taurus. Automatic, unfortunately, and a real bitch on fuel in the city but freaking amazing on the highway (a full tank (60L) got us over 700km... didn't hurt that the road was flat and straight between Melbourne and Adelaide, haha).

Andy on the Sea Cliff Bridge between Sydney and Wollongong.


First night in our tent at Windang.

So we set off from Sydney on a Tuesday with our car and all our new camping stuff and headed south down the coast of New South Wales on the Grand Pacific Drive. We first stopped in Wollongong (about 85km from Sydney) for some sight seeing and information on Free Camping places... yeah, well there aren't many of those around anymore we quickly learned. The first night we stayed in Windang at a caravan park for $38! That was an unpowered site. Most places were all booked up since it was still school holidays for the kiddies and thats when we began to think that maybe this road trip wasn't the best idea just cuz the timing was bad really... we were counting down the days til Australia Day (Jan 26th) was over and places wouldn't be so busy and expensive. But in the meantime we found a free campsite via the internet and stayed there for two nights. It was in Kangaroo Valley, or near Kangaroo Valley, and the camp site was along a little river. A lot of people had set up camp there... even a few caravans with the works going on, like generators, tvs, everything (You could tell some people had been staying there quite a while).

The Bridge in Kangaroo Valley

Our first night there we were pleasantly surprised to discover the camp ground was a haven for wombats! There were well over a dozen just grazing at dusk. It was really cool! haha One was really close to our site and we of course conducted a full photoshoot with it. It just sat there and ate the whole time like it was totally used to the human attention. They were so cute. Since there wasn't any nearby lights or civilization really this was the night when we started going to bed shortly after it got dark (at like 9:30) and subsequently getting up around 8am...

WOMBAT!

The next morning was when our lovely car decided to be difficult. It wouldn't start.

To Be Continued...!