Hi everyone and Happy Thanksgiving to you all. We finally have a decent internet connection so we can make some semblance of a blog entry. Photos are taking forever to download though so you might have to wait for that part.
We are presently on the central coast of NSW in the area where Cathlyn lived. We have settled in at a caravan park in Kiama for a few days (we are leaving today to head further south). This place is Doug's favorite so far (there have been lots of favorites). This caravan park sits out on a point and is surrounded by ocean on 3 sides. The views are spectacular and the weather has been perfect-----lower 80's with a nice breeze. It's been pretty nostalgic for Cathlyn to come back to her old stomping grounds. Brings back lots of memories. The area has changed enormously but the beach communities in this area still have that laid back feeling. We were able to find the block of flats where C lived and it has been well maintained. There are huge trees in the back yard now where there was only dirt and cement in the 70's.
We had a wonderful time in the Newcastle/Lake Macquarie area where we stopped off to spend time with Steve and Carolyn Meadows again on our way back down. They took us on tour to the Hunter Valley wine country where we visited several wineries. The specialty of the Hunter is Shiraz and Semillon. Steve made a huge sacrifice by volunteering to be the designated driver so he missed out on the tasting. We also visited the botanical gardens there which is patterned after Butchart Gardens in Victoria, B.C. but on a much smaller scale. We spent the night at Hotel Meadows and we were treated like royalty.
On our way down from Byron Bay we stopped off to visit Kent and Deb Brummitt one more time. We had a wonderful visit with them and even got to see Donovan----Debbie's son who was on break from uni.
When we left there we headed up into Bellingen and Dorrigo-----in the rain forest along Waterfall Way just west of Coffs Harbour. The rain forest lived up to it's name-----we had rain the whole time and we were often in the clouds at around 4300 ft. above sea level. Unfortunately the rain put a damper on any desire to do much hiking in the area. It's truly beautiful country though and the waterfalls were amazing.
We spent one night in the town of Tamworth------the country music capital of Oz but it was pretty dead the night we were there.
When we left Tamworth we learned a valuable lesson----"don't rely completely on your GPS". What we've found out is that the GPS doesn't always take you the most practical or efficient route. It is often very scenic though. Looking at the map the best and most direct route to Newcastle would have been hwy 15 which is mostly freeway. We kept thinking our GPS was taking us to hwy 15-----but no, instead it took us over hill and dale and eventually along Thunderbolts Way and over the Great Dividing Range. By the time we realized what was going on we were commited and it was too late to turn back. With less than a quarter of a tank of fuel we had to get to the closest petrol station which turned out to be in the tiny little community of Nowendoc----which again is above 4000 ft. in elevation. Fortunately we made it and we were very happy to pay the very high price of $1.46/ liter (we've been paying between $1.18 and $1.23).
From Nowendoc Thunderbolts Way took us into a charming little ranch town called Gloucester
Where we had a wonderful very reasonably priced lunch at one of the several little cafes.
We finally made it back down to Lake Macquarie and the Newcastle area.
And, now to get back to where I started this entry----Kiama is about 40 or 50 miles south of Sydney. We are thinking of going down to Bateman's Bay today which is only about 2 hrs. from here. We have scaled back our plans somewhat and we may not make it to Tasmania this trip. It seems like a big undertaking at this moment and we have been moving pretty fast up until a few days ago.
Much love to you all,
Cathlyn and Douglas
