Road Trip - Brisbane to Sydney
Sunday, January 27, 2008Well, I was relatively worried about the trip to Australia as we have recently driven along the coast up North and to be honest it wasn’t that great. But down in NSW it is absolutely beautiful, with swimmable golden beaches, nice lighthouses and the motor way is a breeze to drive! Our chariot is a Toyota Camry (and as a side note it is a really poorly designed car) but it did get us from A to B in a respectable fashion – although I feel sorry for the groomers, all that sand! We started out from Broadbeach heading down the coast stopping at Byron Bay for a swim and a bit to eat before heading up the hill to the lighthouse – what a view! And as is happens it’s the most Eastern point of the Australian Mainland. Leaving the beach behind us we then drove South, finding a bed in a little town called Grafton. Up bright and early we continued down the coast to Coffs Harbour – a small fishing town famous for its bananas would you believe!? Anyway they have a nice harbour with an island that Mutton birds breed on, that you can walk along the crest giving you wonderful panoramic views along the beautiful coast. We had been to the visitors centre earlier and had decided to head inland for a bit having Lunch at Bellingen and continuing to Dorrigo, where there was meant to be a good ‘tree top’ walkway, but turned out to be a very short sort of ‘jetty’ style walkway, but had an amazing view. Continuing down the coast, we rested for the night in a medium sized town called Port Macquarie. We followed the coast rather than getting back onto state one straight away checking out the beached that Port Macquarie had to offer and I am very thankful we did! We found the most beautiful beach that I have ever seen in my life – for future reference it’s called Flynns Beach. It had everything! There was grass to sit on if you wanted, perfect white sand, crystal clear waters and nice rolling surf, rather than the harsh dumping surf of up North. Not really in any rush to move on we stayed for a fair while, moving on in search of food a couple of hours later. Still continuing with the tourist route rather than State One, we tracked down the coast with a brief stop at Tacking Point Lighthouse and stumbling across a boat owners Dream of a town called Forster, where we swam and jumped of the jetty into really warm waters. With the day drawing to an end we packed it in jumping on state one to Newcastle for the night. Today was pretty much the last day of the road trip, Newcastle is only 150 Kms from Sydney so we drove a little bit North to Port Stevens but unfortunately we had been spoiled with beautiful beaches yesterday and didn’t have the weather so it felt a bit like it was a wasted journey opting to jump straight back onto state one for Sydney. That’s about it really, the road trip was over so after a harrowing adventure of getting the car through the CBD in peek hour traffic with no map we went to the Oprah Bar for a well deserved beer or six! We had expected that we would stay in Manley but Andrew had got an offer of accommodation with a friend so we got a hotel in the city and I’m sure glad that we did as it happened to be Australia day. The whole of the Rocks area was closed off with live music, markets and the waterfront the awesome - boats everywhere. It really wasn’t hard to fill the day in even squeezing an hour shopping in getting back to the hotel a little after 10pm ready for the last sleep before heading home.
Labels: Australia
posted by Maarty @ 12:28 pm,
