SYDNEY TO BYRON BAY

Hope everyone out there is good!?

Its been a hectic week which has seen as pick up our campervan and drive from Sydney to Noosa. Selected highlights as follows:

We picked up our van on Monday 16th, she is a real beauty based on a VW LT35 van - she has air con, a toilet and a shower, time will tell if we love or loath the campervan lifestyle! After provisioning in the local supermarket, we headed out of Sydney - we drove over the harbour bridge - how cool is that!!

Our first stop was the Hunter Valley - wine country (ummm). Found a really good campsite at a place called Cessnock. Managed to suss out the van really quickly, hooking up to the electrics etc. Got chatting to some people on the campsite who were from Padstow - small world. After a sound nights sleep, we had to be up early, we had booked a tour of the smaller vineyards which would last pretty much all of the following day.

We were picked up at the campsite at 930 by the "wine rover", a rotund Aussie called Brian who was extremely knowledgeable about the area, history, wine and the vineyards. In all, we visited 5 vineyards, tasted 53 different ones and amazingly remained fairly sober!!

It felt very strange to be drinking wine at 10am in the morning but we managed! On our budget, we couldn't afford to buy any of the wine although we were very tempted. Think we both learned a little bit more about wine appreciation - berry overtones and all that stuff. There was also cheese and chocolate - heaven!

Due to the alcohol intake, we stayed a further night in Cessnock but set off the following day heading for a brief overnight stay at Port Macquerie. This was more to break up the drive than anything else. We have started to get very good at cooking on the barbeque - each campsite has a camp kitchen which included several barbeques (and Fahitas!!). Pretty much all waking hours are spent outside the van. Still very hot here and the initial sunburn is fading.

We then drove to Darlington Beach, decided to stay here on the recommendation of the folks we met from Padstow. Campsite was again a stone's throw from the beach. Again, a great campsite, each pitch was very roomy and lots of palm trees. Lots of wildlife around, had a close encouter with a kangaroo - was coming out of the toilet block late at night and there was a Roo just sitting there - very surreal! Went back to the van and said to Em, and so we both tip toed out and watched two kangeroos, one with a joey for about fifteen minutes which was very cool. A friendly possum also paid a visit~!

We then travelled on up the coast to Byron Bay, on the way we stopped at a small place called Angourie,

which had a massive breakwall, so we walked along and watched the surf for a while. Arriving in Byron Bay, we managed to get a campsite not too far away from the beach with a pool, which was a bonus.

The beach was beautiful and not very busy so spent quite a bit of time lazing around. We only intended to stay 2 nights, but extended to 3 as we were pretty relaxed and did not want to move!! We also went to Nimbin for the day, which was very very strange, almost a bit X files! Lots of tye dyed hippy types, with a cool museum which to be honest - did not really make much sense, but was interesting in its own special way!

SYDNEY TO BYRON BAY

Byron Bay, Australia