Homeward bound

Saturday 3 May 2008 - Nana Glen
We arrived at Dads place yesterday and are camped by the creek on his property at Nana Glen (25km NW of Coffs Harbour and made famous by Russell Crowe...). It is a lovely spot and last night we enjoyed a campfire by the creek with Joke and Cheryl (two Woodford friends) and Dad and Ben. We are gearing up for the Hawthorn vs Collingwood match this afternoon as my Dad and brothers are Collingwood supporters and of course Hutchy is Hawthorn. Nanny Carly (my Mum) and Roger are looking after Jess this afternoon and a sleepover. The first night he has spent away from us - mixed feelings on that score but it will be nice to spend a bit of time getting things organised and watching a WHOLE football game in the afternoon, maybe a nice dinner......

The past few days have been quite adventurous.

Thursday 1st May 2008 - Coopernook State Forest

We made it to Taree today, we could have probably pushed to get to Coffs but it would have made for a long day and we just wanted to get somewhere, set up early and have a relaxing afternoon. We camped at Coopernook State Forest, a free camp 4km in off the highway just north of Taree. A nice little camp ground and my Dad and his friend Joke (pron. yolk) joined us as the had been doing a bit of touring around ACT and Sydney as well. We used the camp oven for the first time, cooked a lovely butter chicken and settled down for a nice chat around the campfire. At about 9:30 our peaceful campsite was quite rudely interrupted by some joy riders who drove at high speed through the middle of the camping ground, narrowly missing the caravan where Jesse was sleeping and I was in making a cup of tea, they swung around, then facing the caravan took off again and swerved back on to the road, I really didn't know what to do, there were other campers whose cars were only missed by 5-6 metres as well, they took off down the road in the other direction, we had just settled down and 10 minutes later they came roaring past again, this time not into the campsite but close enough to freak us all out again, thankfully they didn't come back a third time and the rest of the night was fine, we were quite stunned in the morning however, when three or four cows came wandering through the campsite eating their breakfast.

Wednesday 30 April 2008 - Moonee Moonee - Hawkesbury River

We decided to leave the van in the free camping area while we visited the Jenolan Caves, as we have a special hitch on the van, you can't tow it with a normal towbar so we thought it would be safe, the road going in was quite narrow and steep so I was happy we didn't take it. Jenolan Caves is just spectacular and out of all the places I have ever been I would like to go back there and spend more time exploring. The colour of the water coming out of the limestone underwater springs is amazing, and the entrance to the villiage is just incredible. We didn't do any tours as they were quite expensive and didn't know how Jess would go for the hour or so it takes, also there was a car rally going through on the road and it was closed to outgoing traffic from 11.45am to 1.45pm, we didn't want to get stuck in there and leave our caravan/home by itself for that long!

We had planned to go to Katoomba after the caves and have a look at the three sisters and go on the scenic railway, but then we met a lady who told us about the Zig-Zag Railway, just out of Lithgow which operates a steam train on Wednesday's. This is an incredible piece of engineering really, to get down the steep mountain the track forms a 'Z' and the train actually stops at the junctions and the engine shunts from the front of the train to the back, and then goes down the next bit of track, and does the same again, have a look at the website http://www.zigzagrailway.com.au/

From here, we had planned to go to Rylstone (near Mudgee) for the night, but as it was so cold the night before, we decided to head back into the coast, it would be less kms to get to Coffs and much warmer...

We camped at the Moonee Moonee rest area which is just north of the Hawkesbury River bridge, Highway 1 from Sydney to Newcastle, it is actually only a day rest area but there are not many free camps around that area so we didn't have much choice. The Hawkesbury River is stunning, however, the six lanes of semi-trailers coming over the bridge all night was a bit noisy, but the 132,000 volt power line that we camped underneath meant that we didn't have to use batteries for anything all night, the water rats going through the rubbish bins didn't really make me feel all that comfortable either.

Tuesday 29 April 2008 - Jenolan Caves

We left Kiama early on Tuesday morning, having showered and laundered and recharged and decided to head up into the Blue Mountains (and we thought Kiama was cold!!!). We went over the Macquarie Pass which is a winding narrow road, I don't recall ever seeing 15km speed limit sign for a hairpin bend and I have definately never seen a sign that indicates semi-trailers have to reverse back to get around the corners. Luckily we did not pass any semi-trailers on the corners.

We stopped at Moss Vale to do some shopping and then on to Mittagong. We had decided to go past the Wombeyan Caves on the way to Jenolan, in the map books it showed about 30kms of unsealed road but that other option was to backtrack to Goulburn (about 60kms longer trip) up to Oberon and miss out on the Wombeyan Caves, we didn't buy an offroad camper for nothing so decided to bite the bullet. We stopped to get directions at a servo and the girl there told me it was a pretty rough track, lots of potholes and with recent rain would be ordinary, but we decided to forge ahead, until we got to the turn off to the road and we were faced with a rather large sign 'No Caravans, Trucks or Buses'. Back to Goulburn.

We went through Taralaga, and faced another 'No Caravans' sign, this time we knew it was about 20kms of unsealed road with steep climbs, and we decided to keep going, the road ended up being sealed even though all of our map books indicated unsealed road, so that was a bonus and made it much easier going. We stopped for lunch at Abercrombie River which is at the edge of Abercrombie and Blue Mountains National Parks. After lunch we headed for Oberon and the Jenolan Caves. We were quite surprised to see SNOW on the side of the road as we went through Porters Retreat and Back Springs, as we hadn't heard any news for a few days we didn't know about the massive cold front hanging around mid-NSW. We got to a free camp spot about 15kms out of Jenolan Caves, another 'No Caravans' sign..... So parked for the night in a lovely spot with lots of nice big pine trees, lit our first campfire since Easter and settled in for the night, by the time the sun went down it was around 5 degrees outside (and not much warmer in our van).... Hutchy took a photo of the temperature guage at 7.00am when we got out of bed the next morning and it was -1 inside the van.