Southwest Rocks and Yamba – 29 March to 3 April 2012

We have been travelling North quite rapidly.

We had an overnight stop at Southwest Rocks. We like Geppys Restaurant here.

Then on to Yamba, one of our preferred camping sites, where we have a lovely site on the Clarence River.

There are nice Restaurants here also and this makes it a good place to clean the caravan as we can empty out our food storage.  It also has good hot water.

We started cleaning the caravan for our return to the US.  This was very sad as we will be leaving it in store for a long time

Hawks Nest – 25 to 29 March 2012

We by passed Sydney and Newcastle and drove to Hawks Nest.

Hawks Nest has two beaches, an ocean beach and a bay beach both within easy walking distance.

The caravan Park is set behind the Ocean Beach and we had a great site. It is the kind of holiday place you dream of. 

We visited family here and had a great time.

Moss Vale – 24 to 25 March 2012

We visited a friend at his magnificent historic property in Moss Vale. This is a very beautiful area in the Southern Highlands south of Sydney.  It was settled  in the 1820's and is still a popular tourist destination.

Jindabyne via the Alpine Way–18 to 21 March 2012

We drove the Murray Valley Highway to Upper Towong and Corryong. 

The heavy rains had closed the highway beyond so we took the Alpine Way to Thredbo and Jindabyne.

This was a challenging drive.  The sign at Dead Horse Gap at the Jindabyne end of the road proclaimed, “Alpine Way Unsuitable for Trucks, Buses and Caravans”  Perhaps we missed the sign at the Corryong end of the road?!!

The Alpine way was built to service the Snowy Mountain Hydro Electric Scheme and the Murray 1 Power Station is an impressive example of the scheme’s engineering.

 

 

We camped at Jindabyne. The Dam was the highest that had been seen in living memory so we had a waterfront site, the rest of the sites were underwater. The water was not going to rise higher as it was over the spillway.

This was very pleasant and Tricia spent a happy afternoon wading and swimming around the caravan park.

While we were at Jindabyne we walked to Mt. Kosciuszko, the highest point in Australia.

We drove to Thredbo, took the chairlift to the plateau, walked in on the metal mesh pathway and had a picnic lunch at the peak.

 

 

The mesh pathway is known as Australia's longest lightening conductor but it does conserve the fragile Alpine Vegetation. The scars from previous paths can still be seen. It is also very easy to walk on.

Rawsons Pass just before the last rise to the peak has Australia's highest toilet. This is an attractive very ecologically sound design nestled into the surrounding countryside.

We were too late for the chairlift back and walked down the face of the plateau to Thredbo on Merrit's Nature Trail.  This is well sign posted. 

It comprises stairs set in the side of the face and the risers are rather high. This exercised some little used muscles and we were tired when we got to the bottom. 

We actually slid down the last bit of ski run and had a nice dinner at one of the pubs. We really enjoyed being up on the peak of Kosciuszko when no one else was there but Tricia thinks if she were to do it again, and wanted to stay late, she would walk in from Charlotte Pass.  This is longer but less steep at the end.

[Eden] & Mallacoota–18 to 20 February 2012

We drove from Pambula via Eden to Mallacoota.

Eden is an old whaling town on Twofold Bay, one of the deepest harbours in the world.  It is now a good place to go to whale spotting and still has a local fishing fleet.

It is caravan friendly having large amounts of caravan parking available behind Main Street. We we enjoyed a pleasant walk down to the Harbour past a number of historic buildings and had a good coffee in a cafe on the wharf.  We liked the sign in the local shop reading “God put me on Earth to accomplish a certain number of things .. right now I am so far behind I will never die….”

Mallacoota a little further South and off the main highway is a magnificent fishing village and holiday spot on the Mallacoota Estuary called by  the locals “Victoria’s best kept secret”.  It is very caravan friendly. The caravan Park runs along the foreshore for a long way and everyone can have a great site with a view of the water.  The local council runs the park and offers hefty discounts to people staying a full month, so all 200 powered sites were taken.  This is a great idea for the town as it keeps the locals employed and the shops busy.  Because we are self sufficient with power and water we had the pick of 400 unpowered sites, and got a great location with a perfect water view.

One can walk on the sand islands which are great bird habitats, and which protect the birds against predators. There are thousands of Hermit Crabs in the deep pools. There are a lot of water birds including pelicans and sea eagles fishing in the lakes.

John did a boat trip on the Loch Ard around the Estuary.

The place to eat is Lucy's Home Made Rice Noodles. It is a real demographic change as the once ubiquitous Fish and Chip shop is replaced with Rice Noodles with Abalone and Sea Urchin. There are also less challenging sauces. Lucy's sells great coffee and as one leaves all the caravans are lined up for that final cup of coffee to go.

Bawley Point, Batemans Bay & Pambula–15 to 18 February 2012

Having travelled with what felt like our own personal rain cloud since leaving Mooloolaba, Racecourse Beach at Bawley Point was beautiful and sunny.

It is very quiet at this time of year, there was only us and one other caravan.  A walk over the headlands takes you through an Aboriginal heritage area and one of the largest midden sites in Australia.

There is only dam and bore water to drink, we used our tanks. Showers cost 20 cents for three minutes.

From Bawley Point we drove to Pambula via Batemans Bay.

Batemans Bay is very caravan friendly. It has specific caravan parking near the McDonald's which encouraged us to do our shopping then relax and enjoy the town.

We had a lovely walk along the river front, including the day’s drama of a sunken yacht which had brought out the Hazard Recovery Team to contain any diesel from the engine.  They made it clear they were not going to refloat the yacht.  We followed this with a relaxing lunch on the River Clyde with Fresh Oysters straight out of the Clyde river Estuary.

Our next stop was Pambula which has a campsite right on a wonderful swimming beach with resident Kangaroos who are exceptionally trusting.  Tricia even saw kangaroos going under vans to shelter from the sun.

Kiama [Berry & Kangaroo Valley] – 12 to 15 February 2012

We drove to Easts Beach Camping Park in Kiama. Tricia had a sore back and was glad to find a very good masseur as part of the spa complex at the caravan park.  The beach at the caravan park is lovely and very safe.

We took the coastal walk North from the campsite to the little Blowhole and South from the campsite along the headlands.  We also visited The Blowhole which is right by the town of Kiama.

We drove to Berry an historic town which has a lovely deli Cafe with great coffee. From there we drove up to Kangaroo Valley, a very popular, scenic holiday destination.

We both got leeches on our feet walking through the rainforest to see an old cemetery.

Alongside the road on the verge there are masses of lilies in flower. They seem to grow the whole length of the Princes Highway in New South Wales.
We visited the Cambewarra Mountain Lookout with a magnificent vista of the coast towards the Shoalhaven River.

Sydney [Narrabeen] – 1 to 12 February 2012

From Anna Bay we drove to Sydney for meetings and to visit friends.  Our campsite was at Narrabeen. This council camping park was an unexpected delight on the mouth of the Narrabeen lagoon in Sydney's Northern Beaches.

Our first trip into Sydney was by car, but it is a challenge to find parking for our 4WD.  With the spare tyres on its roof it exceeded most of the height restrictions in city  parking lots. Thereafter our trips to Sydney were by bus and Manly Ferry, a much more relaxing trip of about an hour and a half.  The view from the ferry is an added bonus.

In between times we walked around the locality which is beautiful and swam in the ocean pool built on the rock ledge at the edge of the surf.

We have two favorite Restaurants, the Ocean Bay Café and Restaurant, which was opposite the campsite, and the Narrow Bean in Narrabeen itself. We both enjoyed rejoining café society.

Yamba, South West Rocks & Anna Bay – 29 to 31 January 2012

With all the rain we started south, deciding to drive as far as we could. As it was a wet Sunday with no one on the road it was a good driving day. The road was cut at Grafton so when we got to Yamba, a previous favourite, [see our post of 20 to 24 March 2011] we stopped at the Blue Dolphin Caravan Park and enjoyed the  lovely view over the Estuary of the River Clarence.

The next day the River having subsided temporarily, we were allowed a shortcut around Grafton and drove to South West Rocks a town on Trial Bay named after the brig Trial which was wrecked nearby in 1817. 

The many wrecks in the area and the recognition of Trial Bay as a safe refuge for shipping against strong southerly gales led to the decision to construct a breakwater to provide a safe harbor.

Trial Bay Gaol was constructed to house prisoners who would then build the breakwater. This was intended as an experiment in a humane way of rehabilitating prisoners. The job was much harder and thus slower than expected as the granite was extremely hard and only 300m of breakwater was actually constructed before more powerful ships avoided the need for a coastal refuge between Newcastle and Brisbane. The Goal was used to house German internees during WW1, and became a thriving place for sport and culture with its own Restaurant. Trial Bay Gaol closed in 1918 and as it had no foreseeable future it was allowed to become the [now preserved] ruin seen today.

We also visited Smoky Cape Lighthouse, its stunning views and lighthouse keeper’s house made more dramatic by a scudding rain storm which kept us huddled in the old barn housing exhibits of the lighthouse until the storm passed.

From South West Rocks we drove to Anna Bay near Port Stephens. On the way we stopped at the Akubra factory at Kempsey.  John found a new hat in the colour he wanted and we were offered a tour of the factory.

Anna Bay is a lovely Beachfront location sheltered behind dunes. We had some lovely walks.