Day 9 – Australia Road Trip
I was up early – 5am to get some work done. I completed a conference call, emails down in the business center to avoid waking the girls. Always feel I am up against a deadline when using a time based internet connection. Got almost everything done before time ran out – hopefully I can finish the rest tonight or tomorrow AM.
We packed up – ate some bubbles – a quick stop at the gift shop – loaded in the taxi and off to pick up the rental car. I thought Pam had contacted the agency to validate our reservation but she just got the address. We were supposed to pick up the car at the airport – a 45 minute cab ride away. Fortunately they were able to find a car at the current location – a very nice car – Subaru Imprezza – our luggage fit very well and we were off. A lesson learned here – we really should have had more detail regarding this car reservation – contact numbers location etc. Why it would be reserved out of the airport is a mystery to me.
Anyway – we were able to get on HWY 1 fairly easily and off on our road trip. We drove for a couple hours and stopped for lunch in Newcastle. We ate at Scratchleys a great restaurant – quite busy – looked like a lot of business celebrations. An exquisite meal, a great local beer Blue Tongue Lager, as usual the meal was pricey, but good service – I can't get over not tipping! The waitress asked if we had heard about the beaching of a large ship on their branch due to storms this last winter – funny how people's perspective is isolated to their own part of the world – until today I had not even heard of the town we were in. The town felt like a port town with a mature industrial district. The restaurant was a very "green" restaurant. On the way out of town a brief stop at the local beach in -Nobby's Beach.
Pam drove for a while in the afternoon and I was able to do some work on the road. She was very very nervous and swerved a lot – I felt queasy.
We did make a side trek and had to retrace about 20km's looking for a toilet for Aria – I decided to get petrol and some soda's when we turned around.
We kept driving and driving and driving and .. you get the picture – cool signs on the side of the road- Koala crossings, Kangaroo crossings and a bunch of speed cameras! I wonder if they catch people since there are signs posted before you come across the camera. I expected the drive to be on the coast but it turns out except for a couple places we never really saw the ocean – another disappointment I wish our travel agent had had some information. I considered driving all the way too Brisbane so we would have a couple days there but there does not seem to be surfing there – nor in Cairns so if we are going to surf it better be tomorrow.
Some interesting things – tunnels made out of nets stretching across the highway to allow animals to cross -I am sure they were for Koala's. Also, greater than 50% of the cars were equipped with snorkels -this is probably a good indicator of the back country roads- even on the highway we saw flood signs that showed the depth of up to 2 meters to help cars decide if they were going to cross.
We drove through Port Macquerie – I was tired and driving n towns was difficult – I raised the ire of at least one local who yelled at me as he passed – I do not like wandering around a town by car without a specific destination – I much prefer parking and walking by foot – I think Pam was looking for a place to stay or eat but we found nothing and I headed out of town.
We stopped in Coffs Harbour (still a good 400kms from Brisbane) , ate a great meal at The Crying Tiger - drove around for a while and found a great little motel with free internet. I was exhausted but Aria wanted on to get online – I set up the machine, put the leftovers in the fridge (actually the first leftovers we have had) and fell asleep quickly.
The girls did very well – only a couple backseat arguments – Pam told them to "Shut Up" – that's pretty strong for her – I had to intercede a few times.
Overall I drove over 650kms in one day. Very tiring!
