Sydney and surroundings

Saturday 27^th of April.

I’m sitting in the middle of the back seat of the car so I can watch the Garmin Lady if she sends us in the right direction. She took over my job you know. With my bible on my lap I hope she makes a mistake so I can rescue us and get my job back. “ Unfortunately” she did a terrific job so I have to surrender (but I will keep an eye on her). 

Saying good bye to Sydney we are heading towards Cessnock in the Hunter Valley.

We are all good humoured and excited what this day will bring us. The Sydney-Newcastle Freeway is very busy as the Autumn holidays has ended in NSW and everyone is going home.

But before I’m going further with today and coming days I first want to show you our Sydney and surrounding experience.

Everyone knows the icons of Sydney which are the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge, also known as Coat Hanger. Because our son (Danny) is with us, we are now acting as real tourists. Watch and enjoy the photo’s of Sydney;

 

The Opera House

The Coat Hanger

The Rocks

a few little back streets

A drink now and then......

Darling Harbour

The Icons together

We also did a beautiful walk along the coast from Coogee, past Waverly cemetery , Bronte, Tamarama to Bondi…..

At that day I said this was one of the most beautiful walks we did lately but OMG wait till you see our walk in the Blue Mountains.

Still, watch these pictures and enjoy. I really can recommend this walk if you ever come to Sydney and have the time to do it, it's a 6 km easy walk......

Waverly cemetery

the lonely fisherman

brave Danny

a drink stop.....

Bondi beach, the end. Of course you can walk further but this is where we stop.....

The famous surf beach of Bondi

On Thursday I already told you the boys have been to Anzac Day to the Parade and after that they went to the Maritime Museum. Sorry I don't have pictures of that but for who is interested in Anzac Day;

here is the link;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anzac_Day

Because this is already a nice long story, I’ll keep you curious about our Blue Mountain walk and so; that will be my next blog.   Be patient.

Today is Queens/Kingsday in The Netherlands and this is a special celebration because the Queen is giving the throne to her son so "we" are getting a King.

We say to whole Holland;   CHEERS! Have Fun!!

Historic

G’day Mates!

Did I tell you about my Bible?? Well this is it,

it's on my lap during travels with the car and it includes good maps, cheap caravan parks but also cheap and free spots. I told you in my first story that my hubby (Fred) had prepared the caravan so we can spend nights on such cheap and free spots because most of the time there is no electricity. So we can’t travel without my Bible.

All the brown triangles are cheap (just a fee for a National Parks f.i.or a Showground) or free spots....

 At the triangles there are numbers given, if you look up the number, you can see at the symbols what facilities the spots have....

I also show you what we have travelled already then I can go on with my new story;

When we left Beechworth I wanted to visit Bonegilla which sits on the border of Victoria and NSW and which is a Camp where migrants were sent to in the old days when they arrived in Australia with the boat. From there they had to try to find jobs and a place to live.  

Although I have never been there (I wasn't born yet) and neighter my parents (they came later to Australia and then everything was settled already), but further the whole family; Grandpa and Grandma, (who we call Opa and Oma in Dutch) and three of there sons, ..... in one way or the other I felt very sad during that visit because of all the stories of these migrants.  Like us; they are all torn between two Countries.......

For that same reason I didn't feel like taking pictures so this is all I've got.

If you want to know more, here is the website;

http://www.bonegilla.org.au/

From Bonegilla we travelled as far as Wagga Wagga and there was our first experience on a free camp-spot;

Here are the lamps on 12 volt and you can see we don't lose any cosiness

The only thing was that it was freezing cold so we couldn’t put our electric blanket on haha! Ah well, we survived (again)!

And we weren't there allone, it was pretty busy!

Our next stop was Bathurst, that’s a lovely place too! We stayed on the showground and that one was € 25,- which actually is too much for a showground but with only one caravan park in the city (€ 38,-) they can ask what they want!

I must admit that the buildings on that showground were very nice, and SORRY, I forgot to make some pictures of them so, just because of that, I send you here a site with some pictures;

http://www.caravanparkphotos.com.au/bathurst_showgrounds/

I told you in my last blog that our son was coming and yes, he did arrive last Monday and we had everything ready;

Unfortunately we were stuck in the traffic so we could only hug him when he already was outside on the pick-up spot. No one there to greet him when he came trough the doors……..

 

At the moment we are still in Sydney and we are having a great time and today; Anzac Day, I have sent the boys off to the City to look at the parade so I would have some time to work on my Weblog.

See you soon; In Sydney!!

Cheers!

A terrific time

G’day Mates!

Sorry it took so long, unexpectecly we didn't had reception for a few days, yeh, such can happen, you'll get used to it. But because it's the first time I'll make it up to you, enjoy this extra long edition;

I could hardly resist to crawl into the computer Friday (12th) evening to make a new story. We had such a marvellous day and I wanted to share that with you right away but I managed to wait a little while (pff, it was a bit longer though) otherwise it would be too soon.

Well here it is;

From Eagle point to Paynesville is a lovely bike path so, we as dutchies addicted to bike riding, took our bike’s and went off. In Paynesville we took the ferry to Raymond Island which would be famous for Koala’s and they weren’t kidding!!

On the ferry

By the way, the Ferry was Free for bikers

Look if you can see the difference later with the real koala's haha!

Crikey, I have never seen so many fluffy balls hanging, sitting, and lying in the most awkward positions before.

Just look how amazing;

This one must have been a model for he showbiz because he/she (you can’t see) was nearly the only one awake and showed us how they climb and eat, he/she even posed in a way that the sun shone perfect for the picture.  Did you know Koala’s sleep about 18 hrs a day??



he turned his back on me, pfff, such an attitude



We paddled a little more over the Island .......

........and ran into this gorgeous spot for a lunch and so we did.  We had some stilton cheese left from Easter, that together with a zip of Port and this view…….!!

With wobbly knee’s (kidding! We are used to a bit alcohol) we biked back on the same beautiful path, through the wetlands.

13-4.

Today we’re driving from Paynesville, over the Great Alpine Road, through the Victorian Alps with Mount Hotham, a famous ski area, to Bright. From my uncle we had heard that the Great Alpine road was closed at a certain stage due to landslides so I asked the friendly lady from the caravan park in Paynesville if she new something about it but she didn’t so she called Vicroads for me and learned that the road was open on the weekends. So no worries mate!

Winding and climbing very slow through the mountains we saw Scotland, Bavaria, The Ardennes from Belgium and Austria in one day.  And what we also saw is something we haven’t seen in any country before, not even Australia so it must be unique; Dinner Plain;

This is a very odd, but somehow also beautiful, stylish Alpine resort;

After Dinner Plain we came over Mount Hotham;

Yesterday, the 19th of April, we saw on the news that it was snowing.
We've been so lucky!

And after this we knew the part would come soon which was half closed so we were excited to find out what we would be confronted with.

I honestly have to tell you that I was very pleased to see the open half of the road, was the mountain side otherwise I might have closed my eyes (maybe peek a little with half an eye just to see if Fred didn’t closed them too).

It is beautifull though

Actually the whole road was a bit scary, fortunately we drove most of the time on the mountain side but also a little on the steep side and I wasn’t too happy. I also thought a few time of my Sister and Sister in Law, haha they know why!

The whole area has burned last summer, so the colour of the leaves are not from Autumn.

BUT we survived!!

Finally we arrived in Bright and we found a lovely easygoing Caravan park just 6 k’s outside Bright.  

The next day we of course took the bikes and biked over the Rail Trail** to Bright which was lovely. Bright is famous for the, yes this time its correct; Autumn colours.

**Rail trail is a project of the Australian Government to make bike paths of all old train rails, most of the time they are nice flat

We stayed for two days and then drove further to Beechworth, that was only a few k’s away but we’ve heard that must be a nice place too and it was.

Typical Australia

We have been a bit naughty. We thought of going to have a nice trip thru the bush and so we did, but unfortunately we had a terrible experience. We followed a road which on the map looked ok, but after bouncing thru big potholes and going down very steep, we realised we couldn’t go back and we were heading toward a creek!!  When we finally reached the bottom and the creek it appeared to be ok, there was only about 5 cm water in it so we could go on.

Pfff, that was a good lesson, we will think twice next time!

I hope you enjoyed this story and I'll try to get back to you sooner.

We just had a text-message from our son that he's checked in at Schiphol; Amsterdam Airport so we can hug and kiss him on Monday very early in the morning!!

We are looking forward to it!

Cheers!