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New South Wales - Sydney to
the Queensland border
Sydney – back somewhere familiar
Arriving in Sydney was a bit of a homecoming.
It’s the first part of our trip that is similar to the one we did ten
years ago. So arriving at Sydney airport was very familiar, and we weren’t
at all worried that we were arriving with nowhere booked to stay. Well,
actually I will admit to a mild moment of panic two days ago when somebody
misled us by saying that today was the day of the opening match of the
Rugby World Cup in Sydney, and we’d never get a room. Fortunately they
were 10 days wrong. Phew.
Anyway, we headed into Kings Cross, the same district we stayed in last
time. And we ended up in a small backpackers hostel two doors away from
the one that we stayed in last time. Its on a small side road off the
main Kings Cross strip, which is handy because Kings Cross in Sydney
is a bit of a cross between Kings Cross and Soho in London - sleazy,
neon lit ‘adult entertainment’ joints alongside nice coffee shops and
small eateries, and in the evenings quite a few women in mini skirts
hanging around the streets. It doesn’t really bother us, because evenings
are when we get the girls their dinner and to bed, so we’re not wandering
the streets. It keeps the hostel room rates low though!
 This
hostel (Sydney Central Hostel) has got a rooftop eating area, with a
few trestle tables, laundry facilities and a barbecue. And, most importantly,
a view. It was quite exciting when we arrived, coming up to the
roof and gazing out over the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge.
We’re paying $50 (Ozzie dollars) for the room, which is a 6 bed dormitory
exclusively for our use. That’s about £20. I wonder how much you’d pay
elsewhere for a view of the Opera House (I know there’s a hotel on the
harbour front where you can get a view for $550 – mind you they probably
don’t have bunk beds, a shared bathroom and a carpet that smells as
if a camel sleeps on it). But we’re here, we’re feeling at home, and
we’re putting some distance between us and our memories of American
food.
A 41 year old committing fraud
Whoa – just before you get too excited I’m NOT
41, and I’m not committing fraud. But over the last couple of days I’ve
started to wonder how people are looking at us as we travel around.
The 41 year old bit comes from a conversation one evening in Fiji, when
one of the other travellers at dinner decided I must be 41 – at least.
Now I’m not usually the vain type (I don’t think, but then again...),
but it came as a bit of shock to me. I always thought that I looked
a young 38 – for that is my real age – but obviously the past years
have been wearing on me. Or maybe it was the dim lanterns we had for
illumination. Or perhaps it was the fact that they were 40 and felt
bad about it. Yes, that must be it. I don’t really look 41, and somebody
of 40 was so jealous of me they sought to wound me in the most harmful
way... ;-)
So then, the ‘fraud’ bit. Since we arrived in Sydney, and checked into
our hostel (which is a ‘real’ backpackers hostel by any definition of
the word) I’ve noticed other backpackers looking at us in a strange
way. Almost as though they think that we don’t belong in ‘their’ world.
 Here
they are, doing their adventurous round the world travel thing, and
reaching out to new frontiers, and then this family turn up obviously
on holiday, because that’s what families do. And this family have the
cheek to stay in a proper backpackers hostel, instead of staying in
a hotel where holidaymakers are supposed to stay. You can almost see
them thinking that we don’t belong there. And yet, we’re doing the same
travelling that we did 10 years ago, staying in the same kind of places,
and having the same kind of adventures and pretty much doing the same
kind of things – and when we did that we were part of it all.  When
you get talking to other backpackers, and you get past the “You’ve flown
a long way for a two week holiday” bit, then things change, and they
open up more. But until then, I feel as if we’re treated as interlopers
– there’s all these 23/24 year old backpackers, on their first big adventure,
and then there’s somebody like their Mum and Dad, pretending to be doing
the same thing. Oh well, perhaps I’ll just have to get dreadlocks and
wear tie dye, and at least then they’d know that we’re not typical tourists
(mind you, what on earth would they think of us!). Anyway, just to give
you an idea, there’s a couple of photo’s for you – one at the airport
in Fiji (do we look just like tourists or what?) and one of the minibus
dropping us at Fiji airport. Now, we don’t look like proper backpackers,
because the minibus driver wasn’t a Kiwi, and we didn’t have a 4 foot
wooden carving hanging on our backpack – still, got time to fix that
in Oz with a didgeridoo!
The Campervan
We have been confidently telling everybody that
we’re going to buy a campervan in Oz – it’s the cheapest way for four
of us to get around and it will provide an exciting part of the whole
adventure for the girls. We’d even decided what colours we were going
to paint it if it needed a touch up (white with coloured dots – just
like a Boden catalogue!). We’d worked out whether we’d name it after
the Mystery Machine from Scooby Doo, or something else. And Charlotte
had been sketching out interior designs so that everybody could sleep
without putting their foot into somebody’s ear.
Arriving in Sydney, one of our first ports of call was Kings Cross Car
Market – 5 floors down in the underground car park lurk backpackers
selling their cars and campervans. There were about 15 vans there, but
it served to highlight that we’re not a normal backpacking couple. There
were none that would accommodate 4 people easily (although one enterprising
backpacker piled 3 of his mates in to demonstrate how four people could
sleep in the double bed!). The choice was everything from 20 year old
VW Combivans to 10 year old Toyota vans. The Combivans were definitely
the most attractive to look at, but they really wouldn’t fit us all
in without nerves being badly frayed by the end of week one. The vans
were all priced between $3,500 to $6,000 (£1,400 to £2,400) – the closer
the sellers come to their departure date, the bigger the price cuts.
But as there wasn’t anything we went along the road to talk to the dealers
on Williams Street – these are professionals, that make a living selling
campervans to travellers. Sadly, they had cars that mostly looked as
if they’d fall apart next week, except for one exceptional one, ideal
for a family of four, costing $20,000 (£8,000 ish). The problem with
that one is the resale value – typically in 4 months time when we come
to sell we could lose $6-8,000 on it – and there would be a danger of
losing more if we couldn’t find a buyer (and as there’s not many families
travelling like us, we’d be in a fix). So we were a bit stumped. Then
we wandered along to Kings X Campervans, which rents vans out, and spent
the afternoon looking, negotiating, thinking, negotiating, hesitating
and then finally closing a deal to rent a van.
We decided to hire for 2 months, until December, which will cost us
$4,500 (at $69 a day). Then in December we’ll need a car that seats
6, when Gloria and Michael (Sarah’s parents) join us. We can’t get a
campervan with 6 seats, so we’re going to have to hire a different vehicle
anyway – and if we bought our own campervan we’d be stuck with 2 vehicles
to move around. So all in all, we’ve got a good arrangement – we’ll
end up paying less in campervan rental than we’d lose by buying and
selling (with no risk!), and we’ll end up hiring a car in December for
the extended family travelling. And then in January we’ll take a look
at what we’re doing, and then decide what we need for the last month
in Oz.
So all the planning we did – about painting etc - was wasted, as we
won’t be allowed to paint somebody else’s van!
We felt good at the end of the day, because we’d made another step forward
on our travels, and we have a positive move forward to leave Sydney
on Saturday morning. We'll also have somewhere to 'settle down' for
a couple of months (even though it'll be moving, the inside will seem
like a static home)
Sydney - well, might as well be in London
No, this isn't as bad as it sounds, but the miserable
weather (maximum today of 17 degrees, and on-and-off rain) mean that
we're not doing a lot of sightseeing in Sydney. As we've been here before,
we've seen the big sights, so we've decided to take the girls to them
when we're back in Sydney (beginning of Dec and of Jan), rather than
force them to stare at the rain running off the roof of the Opera House.
So the last couple of days have been 'domestics' - catching up with
emails, replacing flip-flops and swimming costumes (for the girls) and
other such non-stuff. I feel sorry for the tourists that will only be
in Sydney for a couple of days - they have no choice but to do the tourist
sightseeing in the rain, whereas we can just wake up, see the weather,
and turn over in bed (actually that's not really true when you've got
two small children in the room with you - but we can dawdle over breakfast-making
in the communal kitchen!). We spent most
of today indoors. After a long breakfast, we then caught up with laundry
and emails. Its really nice getting emails from home, and replying to
people – days like today are great for doing that, because sitting down
for a few hours composing emails isn’t frustrating – it’s different
when the weather is sunny outside, and the last thing you want to do
is sit inside. After lunch, we took the Metro into town to look for
new bikinis for the girls – with success – and then had tea before hitting
bed early. A boring, uninspiring day – but then not every travelling
day is about excitement and the wow! factor.
Camper Day!
 This
is the day that the girls have been looking forward to for the last
3 months - the day we collect our camper van. After packing everything
up into our rucksacks, for the last time in 2 months, we carried them
the ½ mile to the van rental place. After 45 minutes of paying, instruction,
and the most detailed pre-rental inspection I’ve ever seen, we were
off. We drove though the centre of Sydney, and then across the Sydney
Harbour Bridge, on Highway 1, the Pacific Highway. This road will take
us all the way up to Cairns, 1,500 miles away, and back. Our plan is
to drive up fairly quickly, and then dawdle back – we’ve got 2 months
to do the full 3,000 miles (plus, I bet, an extra thousand in side trips
and diversions). This schedule is also partly influenced by the weather
– as its so cold and wet here, getting 1,500 miles closer to the equator
will help to warm it up (that’s the distance between England and Greece).
On our first day, we decided to head just north of Newcastle (120 miles
north of Sydney), and then sort out everything – a big grocery shop
in Woolworth (“The home of fresh”!), unpack all of our luggage and get
it put away, and work out how everything in the campervan works (mmm,
looking forward to working out the awning fitting). We stayed at a big
campsite on the coast, at Nelson Bay, which was not the kind
of place we want to be staying at in the future. It had good facilities,
like a barbeque and eating area, good toilets and showers, and easy
access to the beach. But it was like a housing estate – all of the vans
parked close to each other in lines, all standing on concrete blocks,
and with no shrubs or anything else to hide them. So in future we’ll
look for much smaller sites, with less facilities but more open space.
Those of you who know us well will wonder how Sarah ever agreed to this
– 2 months in what is unarguably a caravan .
The Pacific Highway.
Aah, “the Pacific Highway”. What kind of image
does that name evoke? I could see it in my mind – a delightfully quiet
road, with the sides lined by swaying coconut palms and little shacks
beside the road serving ice cold cokes in a bottle. Of course,
its nothing like that – but then we already knew that, having travelled
it before in a McCaffreys bus. But last time we travelled most of it
overnight, so it was just a series of black stretches punctuated by
small towns or service stations (I remember well “The Big Prawn” roadside
restaurant, distinguished by the big prawn stuck on the roof). So what
is the Pacific Highway really like? Well, from Sydney for the first
150 miles it’s a motorway, and just like motorways at home - its boring
and repetitive. But then the motorway kind of runs out, and it turns
into a normal road, occasionally swapping into a dual carriageway. Because
it’s a holiday weekend here (Monday 6th is Labour Day, our second Labour
Day of the year), the roads are devoid of lorries, and are busy with
cars and utes (an Ozzie invention, a Ute, or Utility Vehicle, is a two
part car – the front half is a saloon, and then the back half just isn’t
there at all, and instead it has a platform, sometimes with sides like
a pickup). Amazingly, since last time we visited Oz, they’ve invented
the ‘posh ute’, by making the bodies really sporty, but the back half
still looks like a dumper truck. Anyway...
 Today,
with the miserable weather, the Pacific Highway looked really
special, with occasional bursts of driving rain. Just so that you too
can feel in the Oz-mood, we took a photo (how sad is that?). The other
feature on the photo, apart from the rain running down the windscreen,
is the grill at the bottom of the windscreen. We don’t think they’re
Roo Bars, because they’re not made of steel the size of scaffolding
poles, which is what all the 4x4’s have on the front. So we think these
are to stop stones hitting the windscreen, in which case they don’t
appear to work because there are 4 huge chips already on it. Whatever
they are, it means I’m going to be staring through bars for the next
two months (quite right, some would say!), and Sarah’s got an excuse
to leave the driving to me - she says she can’t see over them from her
seat!
But it isn’t all rain and roads. For lunch we stopped beside Boomerang
Beach, when the sun shone brilliantly and we felt warm and happy.
 We
drove a further 200 miles north today, passing into ‘Lake Country’ –
on the right we kept seeing the sea, and on the left we saw a series
of big and small lakes. This was another area we’d missed last time,
because it was night, so it was good to drive. All the time we spotted
wildlife for the first time, like kookaburras, parrots and pelicans.
Bonny Hills
Last night we arrived at Bonny Hills, a small
village south of Port Macquarie. We’d turned off the Pacific Highway
to take a smaller coastal route, and the Lonely Planet had told us that
the campsite at Bonny Hills had the ‘best views on the east coast’.
This was more our kind of place – lots of grass, not too many people,
and an astonishing view along a 15 mile white sand beach. As we woke
up this morning at 7am, the surfers were out on the waves, making the
most of the last day of their holiday weekend. The weather isn’t any
better, overcast and frequent showers, but we’ve decided to stay here
for 2 nights, and then head further north. It gives us all a chance
to relax, get used to life in a campervan and catch up on our reading!
 The
girls set out to find everything hidden in the van. Greg, the chap from
the campervan hire office, had told us that he’d “put a few extras in
the for the girls”, and it was with huge delight that they found child-size
snorkels, badminton racquets, fishing lines, a Frisbee and a pink lilo
in the storage lockers. The girls enjoyed trying them all out, including
snorkelling across the grass to check out the barbecue area! It was
a hidden bonus for them, as they didn’t bring many toys with them, and
definitely not things that take up space, so Greg has won himself a
few brownie points from them!
Late in the day, after a couple of rainstorms, we saw dolphins playing
in the bay, and then we wandered down to watch the surfers from the
beach. The beaches here are amazing, and just being on one lifted us
all.
Moving up the coast
We left Bonny Hill this morning to continue our
drive northwards, towards the sun and some warmth (Bonny Hill, 18 degrees
and rain; Cairns 30 degrees and sunny). During the night we were woken
by two terrific thunderstorms, which managed to find ways to penetrate
the campervan and drip onto ‘my’ side of the duvet. So in many ways
living in a campervan is like camping.
We called into the Koala Hospital at Port Macquirie, which Sarah and
the girls looked around for an hour while I went to update the website
and check email (so that answers a question some have asked – it takes
about half an hour every 3 or 4 days to update it, plus a little bit
of time every other evening to write it and select the photo’s). Back
at the Koala Hospital, the girls saw Koalas rescued from forest fires
and road accidents, and also, because its Koala mating season, some
wild Koalas in the forest that were drawn to the sanctuary by the presence
of females (a bit like young students were drawn to Nottingham University
in the 80’s by the 3 girls to 1 boy ratio). Together we also looked
round Roto House, a rebuilt Australian house from the days of Yore.
The girls were bored by it, apart from the bedpan under the main bed,
which took some explaining. Charlotte decided we should have one in
the campervan, rather than having to walk to the toilet in the night!
 Then
it was back in the van for some more driving – this time we managed
a two hour stretch while the girls slept in the back, before we turned
off the road to picnic at Emerald Bay, chosen at random by the waking
time of the girls. It was twenty minutes beyond Coffs Harbour, an ugly
town of motels and fast-food joints, plus ‘The Big Banana’, a banana
shop beside the road (Guess what giant fruit it had on the roof?). We
parked with the play park on one side (treat number one for the girls)
and the beach on the other (treat number 2), and made our picnic in
the van. This is a tricky situation to explain – every time I’ve seen
German tourists making their sandwiches in the campervans in a car park
of a tourist attraction in England, I’ve thought “Why don’t they go
and sit on the beach/grass/etc?”. But now we’re repeating the same behaviour
– except that we at least ate our butties on the beach.
In the States and Canada, the girls got used to sitting in the car while
we drove long distances, so they’re chuffed to find that in the campervan
they can site at the table with their seatbelts on, and draw, colour
and read. And then when they get tired they can lie down and sleep,
without having to be in that twisted position that children seem to
sleep in despite the massive discomfort it causes adults to even watch!
And as long as we always stop for lunch by a beach or a play park, and
they get to run around and hunt for crabs, or dodge the waves, then
they are very happy.
  I
thought I’d share these two lunchtime photo’s with you, because I remember
people telling us that “the girls won’t enjoy so much travel” and “they’ll
be miserable all of the time”, as though somehow we were going to do
what we wanted whether or not the girls wanted to. We took these two
photo’s at lunchtime today, while the girls were playing around the
van. Although they don’t smile all day, every day, there’s certainly
much more smiling than anything else!
During the last drive of the day, beyond Grafton, it was getting late,
and the light was starting to fade a little. At 5 o’clock we started
to see kangaroos in the fields alongside the road, and so we knew that
it was time to find a campsite and settle down for the evening. We finished
the day just before sunset, at Yamba, in a campsite sitting between
an estuary and the beach, and bought some fresh giant prawns from the
riverside for dinner, as a reward for 4½ hours in the van. Gosh, life’s
tough some days!
Yamba to Byron Bay
Just one night in Yamba, waking up to the sound
of the sea crashing onto the breakwater. There's something magical about
sleeping near the sea - the sound of the waves all night long, and the
fresh air blowing over the campsite (mind you, a bit too fresh
last night!
 We
took a slow drive up to Byron Bay, passing The Big Prawn service
stop on the way. The driving is pretty relaxing - just follow the car
in front - and because of the campervan we're higher up than in a car,
which allows us to see more. Yet again, the girls had a short sleep
in the back while we made our way the 100km to Byron.
Byron Bay
We've now continued up, to the town of Byron
Bay. There's a couple of beautiful beaches, and a lighthouse on Cape
Byron, the most easterly point of Australia. On our trip 10 years ago,
this was the first stop we made on our trip north on the bus, after
an overnight trip from Sydney. Then it was a surfers hippy hangout,
with a bit of a backpacker scene. Now, its the same but on steroids
- you can't move down the street for the surfing dudes and hippies wandering
around, and the backpackers tossing a few tinnies down their necks.
So it's not really what we remembered, nor a great family oriented place
- we've found a campsite about 5km south of town, on a long, white sand
beach, and we'll stay there to avoid the crowds in town!
Camper Days by the sea
 Today
was an official ‘beach day’ in the Fleming family. The campsite at Suffolk
Park is right alongside the beach, with a short path leading across
the dunes. All morning, the girls ran around the beach, and jumped waves,
until they were well and truly exhausted. Then we dragged them reluctantly
back to the camper, to have lunch and for Charlotte to have her maths
lesson, before we went back down the beach at 4pm, by which time the
tide had turned back and the girls were jumping big waves. They both
loved it, and Charlotte didn’t want to go back in before sunset, despite
her shivering and blue lips!
When it came to bed time, they both crashed out at 8 o’clock, and we
followed them pretty quickly. So it wasn’t a day of great cultural or
learning experiences, but we all had a lot of fun!
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