Author: Mrs A
Location: Sydney, Australia
Wednesday: We finally stepped out of Sydney International Airport into a gloomy grey spring day, drizzle in the air and a chilly southerly breeze blowing. It was around 7.30am, yet our lovely friend Jenny was there to pick us up, breathing sunshine into our morning.
Before long we were back at her apartment and the kettle was on – yes, US folk, an electric kettle. You can’t beat a nice cup of tea after 29 hours of travelling!
The drizzle progressed into torrential rain and throughout the day we did all our washing and drying with a short afternoon nap. We needed to get ourselves rebooted ready for a jovial evening.
Jenny and David had invited mutual friends, Colin and Di over for dinner. We last saw Colin and Di on our travels through Provence a couple of years ago, where we spent a fun weekend in their gorgeous French villa helping to celebrate Colin’s birthday and eating and drinking fine food (for a change, ha ha!).
It was a fun catch up with lots of laughter – keeping us awake til after midnight and staving off the jet lag…or so we hoped.
Friday: Another wet and gloomy day where jet lag provided another early awakening. During the morning a friend called to let us know our friend Eric had been taken into hospital on Tuesday for surgery to remove a tumour. It turned out the hospital is just 20 minutes drive away from where we were staying with Jenny and David. It’s funny how fate intervenes.
We jumped in the car and paid Eric a visit. It was great to see him in such good spirits despite what must have been a painful procedure, and we had a good chat and laugh with him, and are hopeful the surgeons have been successful in removing all the cancer.
We finished off our day with another meal at Jenny and David’s local family owned Italian restaurant – more delicious food concluding with a Limoncello (two each for the boys!), in that great Italian tradition. Cheers!
As much as we have loved our time with Jenny and David, we’re hopeful our house will be ready for us to move back in tomorrow. Fingers crossed!
Tea progressed into champagne, and the four of us then went out for a delicious local curry – Mark and Chris careful not to overdo the cheese and nibbles before we went!
Mark drove excellently despite the stressful conditions, and before long we were emptying the last of our freezer bits and pieces and heading to our friends’ apartment in Matraville, not far from Botany Bay for a delicious roast lamb dinner and a well deserved glass of red wine.
Monday and Tuesday were earmarked for the all essential medical check ups, with good news for Mr A’s eye pressures, less good news for my airway (but a new procedure to try in October), and some steroid injections into my foot to allow some comfortable hiking in the USA.
Mr A took the opportunity to catch up with a bunch of old work colleagues for lunch while I had a hair cut. Lovely.
We finished off our day joining Jenny and David for dinner at a local Italian restaurant. Fabulous food and company as always.
While we are away, Miss Tassie will be staying here at her luxury pad in Matraville for the next month. She’s settled in nicely, already solar mapping out the apartment. Apparently the new chairs on the balcony suit her, while she is also finding the colour scheme elsewhere works with her glossy blue coat. She’s in good hands here.
The plan is as follows; head up the east coast of NSW this week, through the rain by the sound of it, then meeting up next weekend with some fellow Zoners just north of Coffs Harbour. Then making a friend’s property in western Brisbane home for Easter, then more friends in Noosa for the following week. After that we actually haven’t decided more than “keep the ocean on our right”, we tend to only book about 3/4 weeks ahead. Most likely we will go up into the Northern Territory before heading down the centre to be back in Sydney mid September.
What else are we doing differently on this trip? Well we returned to to our pre-travel regime of fasting two days a week. Cutting out pies and snacks, and getting back to our fighting weights. It was a fasting day today, so tempting as it was being a little hungover to pile some fatty stuff in on the road, we resisited, and the first food since the wedding dinner last night is one of Catherine’s amazing veggie Pad Thais. Just delicious! It’s hard not to treat every day like a “holiday feast”, but when you’re travelling long term thats a recipe for getting over our recommended weight, as we did last year.
There was a lot of birdlife around our camp, with yellow robins, honeyeaters, fairy wrens, black cockatoos, wattle birds all flitting around. We climbed down to the beach and discovered pelicans, white bellied sea eagles and pied cormorants – a veritable sanctuary of feathered creatures.
Our stay was brief, however, and the following morning we headed back on our way.
That evening we enjoyed a delicious night out at the local Thai restaurant where other friends Alan and Jo joined us, entertaining us with stories of their goats and life on the farm.
A lovely quote caught my eye on a bench at one of the lookouts, an apt thought to end the day on:
Casting doubts aside we drew away and headed through reasonable (for Sydney) morning traffic. Tassie was a little restless (for new readers she’s our other family member – the Burmese camping cat), but some serious brushing from Mrs A sorted her out.
So here’s the plan in summary.
It is truly a beautiful coastline and we look forward to exploring some more over the coming weeks.
And so we farewelled the Cummings family and headed down the Blue Mountains to our next stop, Katoomba. We were off to visit Jennie and David, another couple of English folk happily living in Australia who had also the good fortune to purchase a Zone RV caravan – number 57. Jennie was there to wave us into the parking spot and provide us with visitor passes, and quickly ushered us into their home near the three sisters for a cup of tea and a chat.
We stopped off for a quick drink and a chat, before heading on through the narrow car lined streets to Curl Curl. We have to say that the streets of Forestville were the most challenging roads we had driven on in the whole of Australia – a combination of cars on both sides of the street, narrow roads, hills and bends!
We calculated our total mileage for this trip – 22,478km – that’s about 14,000 miles for you counting in old money. Fantastic. We’re pretty chuffed with all we have learned along the way and what an incredible adventure we have had. So far. After tonight we head back into our house for about 7 weeks, and then the cat will be away again to explore more of this beautiful country…we hope you will join us too!
