Nelson Bay, Port Stephens

Pretty as a picture.
Got through the traffic out of Sydney in the morning and had fun keeping the van on the road due to the wind funnel effect of the F3 highway to Newcastle which runs through a series of cuttings and gorges in the area of the Hawkesbury River. What a pretty area the Hawkesbury is and we must come back another time with our bigger boat. From there it was just a warm drive through Newcastle to Port Stephens. Tried several caravan parks in Nelson Bay but none had vacancies, peak season of course. Luckily we backtracked and got a site in a lovely Family Parks caravan park at Anna Bay 10 mins drive from the Nelson Bay foreshore. After setting up the van we drove into Nelson Bay and had lovely fish & chips down on the beach in the cool evening.
Today we tiki toured to Soldiers Point, Nelson Bay marina, Taylors beach and the lovely Anna Bay, Boat harbour. At the Soldiers Point Tourist park, right on the beach, we collected brochures etc for a future visit. Overall Port Stephens is a huge waterway and brilliant boating venue. We will have to come back. Anna Bay was a bit of a surprise, rugged rocky coastline with a lovely crescent shaped beach at Boat Harbour where lots of swimmers were enjoying the water. Anna Bay (original name Hannah Bay) marks the northern end of the largest moving sandhill in the Southern Hemisphere, Stockton Beach.
Tonight after pizza we went for a walk down the back of the caravan park along the edge of the bush to look for Koalas, but the mozzies chased us away.
Port Stephens/Nelson Bay is a lovely spot, especially if you like seafood, and it's a shame we have to head back north tomorrow, destination Port Macquarie.
Top photo: Chris & Anne John in Sydney

Lost in TransLARAtion

Lara as you have probably deduced, is our new Garmin Nuvi GPS. She got her nickname from the Aussie female voice giving out the directions. "ATTENTION HUMANS ... THIS VOICE CANNOT BE CHANGED OR ALTERED IN ANY WAY".
It was good move to upgrade from our old Navman, as Lara has got us through some tricky navigational problems, and got us into a few as well. One of the latter happened in the countryside where I took a different course and forgot to disable Lara first. "In 250 metres select 4WD and turn left onto a goat track". As she desperately tried to get us back on course. I ignored that, and the next instruction was "In 400 metres turn left into a muddy firebreak and follow trees for 4.9 kilometres ...recalculating, recalculating, drive to nearest road, any damn road, recalculating, lost satellite reception, are you lost too?". It is especially funny on a major highway where upgrades have taken the road away from the original map fix, then Lara really loses the plot, parks the car's avatar on the side of the road and sulks until the mapping starts to match up with her internal memory.
Where she does shine though is in a big city like Sydney, where being certified insane is an advantage on the roads here. She weaves us around and through areas that we have never heard of let alone visited, but still gets us to the destination. Sydney airport is a notorious destination for the uninitiated, and Lara took me right to the Arrivals pickup point. I drove on past to access the public carpark and Lara responded "Arrived at destination on left. Why are we leaving destination on left. WHERE ARE YOU GOING BUDDY?. Recalculating, switching off to preserve battery life and sanity".
There is no doubt we would have been in dire straits without her guidance, especially on the approach from Ballarat to the Western Gate bridge in Melbourne. I took a wrong veer and ended up in an industrial estate but Lara faithfully guided us back onto the approach motorway through factory carparks etc. She didn't mention anything about experiencing gridlock, 4 lanes wide, before during and after the bridge though. If she has one teensy weensy failing, it would be sometimes (just sometimes Lara) not giving us enough advance warning ahead of a direction change, for example, telling us to turn right when we are halfway across the intersection can be a bit tricky. Overall though we are very happy with our Garmin, it is easy to operate and pretty damn reliable and accurate. Thank you Lara
Next week "For Whom the Etag Beeps"

Pizza Italiano

When in Rome ...... or Bass Hill Sydney which has an ethnic and cultural mix of population. So why not have homemade pizza for a change - we have a portable oven with a curved back and a pizza plate..... Così lascili cominciano !

Small (or large) Bazaar gourmet pizza base
Shredded Mozzarella cheese
Finely sliced Prosciutto
Leggo's spicy pizza sauce with Garlic Onions and Herbs
Bunch of small peeled and cooked prawns

Spread the sauce over the base, cover with Mozzarella, cut the Prosciutto into small strips and lay on top, sprinkle over lots of prawns, followed by a little bit more Mozzarella. Preheat oven to 220 and cook (grill) for 12 mins.

The sauce adds spice, the prawns are sweet and juicy, the Prosciutto is salty and smoky and the Mozzarella is soft and stringy as it should be.

that's it folks - quick and simple - sorry, I ate the lot. Ciao

HELLO ANNE AND RICHARD @ GREENACRE, SEE YOU SOON

Happy New Year from Goulburn

Goulburn is approx half way to Sydney from Canberra. It is a very pretty town, far more attractive than Queanbeyan which I left earlier than planned. The road noise and other factors at the caravan park there made up my mind about going somewhere else. Police cars started arriving on a regular basis at the moron village at the end of the park, and it even made the local radio news as a likely new years eve disorder hotspot! charming. Anyway I packed up and drove the 2 hours to a large, quiet and decent caravan park on the south side of Goulburn. Not many people here so there's plenty of space between vans. Owners are laid back and helpful and it's just so different from Queanbeyan. The streets are wide and there are a lot of tree-lined avenues, lots of lovely old buildings and it's a place that needs a few days to have a good look at. We're getting some showers today but it is still warm.
Listening to ABC radio this afternoon and there was a flash flooding warning out for Bombala, Cooma and Lake Jindabyne area of the southern tablelands.
Saw a different Cockatoo today feeding at the bird feed station here in the camp, it was a "Little Corella" although little is just a title and not the actual size which is quite large as you can see in the photo. They are very vocal. Sulphur crested Cockatoos are here also, along with the ever present Galahs. Another new one is the red-rumped grass parrot which I was lucky enough to photo in the park here.
(Male & female in the top two photos)

New Years day 2010
Very uneventful night, stayed up and watched the marvelous fireworks display in Sydney harbour. This morning I drove out to the WW1 war memorial on a hill overlooking the Goulburn valley. Got some good photos. Up there are two German WW1 field guns which were captured by Australian forces, adds a bit more interest.
Goulburn is home to the NSW Police College, and also home to Australia's worst serial killer Ivan Milat, who is in Goulburn Prison and will never be released.
Shame a monster like him is in a lovely town like this.
Cleaning and packing today, ready for transfer to Sydney tomorrow. Should be an easy trip being the weekend.

Merry Christmas from Canberra

Well Queanbeyan NSW actually. We crossed the border into ACT this morning, then crossed back out into NSW!. We have to cross again into ACT to get to Canberra 10kms away - this is border madness. Anyway, we are set up in the caravan park with our fairy lights and Christmas tree with prezzies underneath ( I suspect most of them are for me ). This morning when we left Lake Jindabyne it was blowing a gale, and it was a slow and delicate trip up north. Tomorrow we will take it easy, and have a proper nosh in the evening.

Merry Christmas to all our family and friends.

Grandad Small died in Christchurch on Tuesday 22 Dec and Chris is flying from Sydney on Sunday for Grandad's funeral - very sad. I will stay here for a week and then move the van down to Sydney where Chris will rejoin the expedition.

25th Dec.
Started raining overnight which drove the permanent resident noisy drunks inside at
3am. Rained all day so we stayed inside the van most of the day and tidied up etc. Had a nice Christmas dinner in the evening; ham, smoked chicken, spuds with our own mint, peas, washed down with a nice cold bottle of Crouchen Reisling, and followed by plum pudding and fresh cream. The rain kept the morons inside their dirty unkempt vans which was a bonus.

Thredbo, fishing, and Wombats

Not necessary in that order. Visited the Thredbo river around the Lake and fished there for a morning. The flies were shocking. The fish weren't much better, although there were plenty of them but nothing big. Hooked 3 on floating beetle patterns - in the end the flies chased us out. Came across several Wombat holes, inhabited ones by the look of the fresh scratchings and Wombat poos. Wouldn't like to tangle with Mr Grumpy, they have a defensive mechanism which entails jamming their large tough bottoms in the front of the hole to protect themselves against predators like wild dogs which inhabit the area. The soft sand along the banks of the Thredbo river is ideally suited to their requirements. There are Emus here as well but we didn't see any. One evening down at the river I saw a Grey Kangaroo and a dark pretty-face Wallaby in the bush.
Today we drove into Kosciuszko National Park to the alpine village of Thredbo (toll is $16 per car). The scars from the disasterous mudslide that wiped out two chalets and most of their occupants some years ago, are still visible - the ground has never been rebuilt on.
The village caters more for residents in the many hotel/motel/chalet accommodations than the public due to the lack of parking space, even in off season, can't imagine the chaos in the winter. Using our senior's discount, we rode up the quad chairlift to the Eagles Nest restaurant perched on the edge of a cliff above Thredbo at a height of 1930m. Had a very nice cup of coffee there before we tackled the 4km round trip boardwalk up to a Mt Kosciuszko (alt 2228m) lookout platform. Because Australia is an old country geologically, the mountain has been eroded and worn down, smoothed out and now looks like a round hill you could play golf on. It doesn't stick out, but is still the highest point in Australia and we were not that far short of the summit. I was completely and utterly knackered at the top with a headache, nausea, and legs like jelly. Going down was almost a pleasure. Unbelievable but the flies even up there were all over us like a cheap suit, and I was the only one with a fly net because my dear wife lent me hers because I left mine behind in the wagon. This afternoon, I napped while CJ went for a walk around Jindabyne village.

Ballarat to Lakes Entrance and Jindabyne

It was damp when we left Ballarat and ran into a bit of rain south on the highway to Melbourne. Made a wrong turn heading towards the Western Gate bridge but the GPS guided us back on the right track, albeit through an industrial area. 4kms short of the bridge and we were 4 lanes gridlocked. Crawled over the bridge and along the edge of the CBD. Hadn't been through the tunnel under Melbourne before and that was an experience! imagine towing a caravan in a tunnel 4 lanes wide at 80kmph surrounded by large trucks with absolutely no margin for error, and this was off peak time. However we survived that and got onto the Monaro highway then the Princes highway as we headed northeast into East Gippsland passing through Sale and Bairnsdale. Arrived Lakes Entrance quite late in the day for us and booked in to a central caravan park. Got the awning up just in time for heavy rain and gusting winds which lasted well into the next morning. Couldn't be bothered cooking so we went down the road to Maca's instead. It was strange to smell the salt air again from this east coast estuary/harbour. Lots of fishing boats tied up at the jetties. Next morning the weather had cleared and was fine and sunny, so got away early as the countryside changed from rural paddocks to thick bush on the way to Cann River, where we turned off onto the Monaro highway north towards ACT and Jindabyne. Stopped at Cann River for a cuppa and we could smell the smoke from a large out of control bush fire southwest towards the coast and fortunately well away from us. Refueled here and slowly climbed up the winding Cann valley to the top of the Great Divide at 1120 metres above sea level. Going up the valley it was similar to the Lewis Pass in Canterbury (NZ), at the top, it changed to tussock and open plains just like the Lindis Pass (Otago), and from the Cooma juction where we turned off to Jindabyne, very much like the boulder hills of Central Otago. Our first glimpse of Lake Jindabyne was one of a lovely lake with islands, set amongst a valley of tussock and small trees. This is an alpine village during winter, close to Thredbo and Perisher Blue, the main two skifields of Kosciuszko National Park. During the summer like now, a playground for water sports. The village itself is quite large, a lot larger than Hanmer Springs. Pubs, a movie theatre, Woolies, lots of restaurants and coffee shops, souvenir and ski clothing shops etc, a Thai food cafe which we will visit tonight, banks, It is a well catered for area. The caravan park is excellent. Very large with good facilities. We are right down on the bank overlooking the lake with an unobstructed view. Next door is another pop top with folk from Sydney who come up here (alt 800m) every year at this time, so they are a wealth of local information. The movie theatre is currently showing "Avatar" so as a sci-fi fan I will be attending with my seniors discount card. In the next few days we will go up to Thredbo for the day, and perhaps some flyfishing in the Thredbo river not far from here. Will launch the boat also at some time. It is only a short hop from here to Queanbeyan in ACT where we will be for Christmas and New Year.