Road Trip Part 2 - New South Wales

Three weeks to get from Sydney to Brisbane sounds like a long time, and even by Australian standards this should be plenty as it’s only about 900kms directly from A to B, but we still wanted to make the most of the days. Scanning the weather reports in Canberra it was as we feared – NSW was going to be cold and wet :-( We had decided anyway that we probably wouldn’t spend too much time at the coast as we are trying to shed the ‘english-person-with-gritted-teeth-on-the-beach-in-all-weathers’ image, plus we were quite intrigued by tales of a large gold coloured guitar on the inland track…

So we headed north towards a place called Dubbo, which was about 4 hours drive away. We stopped at the Wellington Caves about 30kms before Dubbo as it seemed a good winter activity. It was pretty stunning with the massive Cathedral Cave (concert venue) and very interesting (well I thought so, but maybe I was the only one) with lots of little fossilised shells and critters and a near perfect example of rock folding – oh and of course the usual stalagmites, tites etc etc. Cave diving also goes on here in the subterranean waters, but thankfully our man hasn’t done that scary spec yet.

Wellington Caves:

In Dubbo itself we found a cabin at last – the usual ‘Dubbo’s a big place, there’ll be plenty of places to stay’, only to be confronted with a whole street of ‘No Vacancy’ signs as you arrive in the dark! We have found in most places there’s a critical ‘fill-up’ time around 4pm – you need to be in a room by then! So with a roof over our heads I did a quick pasta run to the shops and we settled in. Reading through the masses of tourist info (we had forgotten how much Australia still relies on leaflets and info-zines to advertise until we got here again) we decided to go to Jedda Boomerang where you can design your own bendy stick, so the girls got busy practising with the finger-damaging glowing red elements and scorched all sorts of dolphins, suns and swirls into a blank.

Caution – Sadie at work:

They also gave us a demo of how to throw them but it was too windy for any of us to try and risk serious injury from a small piece of wood. It’s just a small place but they were really helpful and great with the kids. Dubbo’s most visited attraction is the Western Plains Zoo – with the accent on African animals - but as we live down the from Longleat Safari Park we decided to give it a miss, although we wondered if that was so wise when everyone we met in town looked wonderingly when we said we weren’t going! Instead as the first spits of rain fell we headed to an indoor play area which had a great coffee machine and predictably few children there 2pm, so that finished off our day!

Yeeeehah - next day we headed to Tamworth, home of country music and the aforementioned Golden Guitar!
The Big Golden Guitar:

The guitar is pretty cool, but the wax museum of country music stars looked a bit cheesy (plus we only knew who Keith Urban was – did he change his name especially to sing country??) so we moved on…Having learned from our mistake we had booked ahead this time and had a great unit with a separate bedroom for the girls which meant we all got some space and a good nights’ sleep.

From Tamworth we headed out east along the Waterfall Way. This road runs close to no fewer than 5 national parks and the water levels can change from a trickle to a torrent and although we had managed to stay pretty much dry by travelling inland, there had been a lot of rain nearer the coast and the waterfalls were full to bursting! We were amazed by the scenery as we wound through the hills, so lush and green, a complete contrast to the flat red of WA, the bare layered rock gorges of Karijini and the parched brown farmlands around Canberra. Northern New South Wales is temperate, the mountains catch the rainfall and its far north enough to escape frosts in winter.

Ebor Falls:

On the other side of the hills we drove up to Ballina on the coast for a few days beach time and the weather obliged! Compared to the hinterland the temperature change was amazing – back to high 20’s in the days and dropping only to 14 degrees or so at night, so lovely. We found a ‘holiday park’ and a cabin with a separate ‘cupboard’ with bunks in for the girls, a heated pool with water park bit and a kids playground with a huge jumping pillow thing, so for the first day we didn’t leave the site! We headed off to local Shelley’s Beach for a bit of rock-pooling and also headed up to Byron Bay for a picnic and a poke around the funky shops up there and the main beach was very sheltered which made it great for digging but awful for surfing! Chris and I stayed in Byron Bay 10 years ago and now it’s all trendy café’s. Must remember the mantra ‘never go back, never go back’.

Byron Bay main beach:

After a great few days relaxing we realised we had to fly in a week – ONWARDS!!
See ya