SomewhereSouth.net

Shitney!

Fin, because Nicky is busy turning on poor little bastards at TMF-Chat I do my duty and update SWS once again. Tough job... Anyway, we indeed decided to stay another day and after a day of useless shopping around and seeing surfers at the beach we decided to meet up with Brady again as he must've been approaching Byron at that time. Indeed he was, just arrived in town and while we where still watching surfers at the beach he'd come to us with a new girlfriend. (Well, AFAWK not his girlfriend-girlfriend but just a girl griend, but who knows...) We had a quick "hey, how are you"-chat and after a while they'd go for coffee and a place to sleep. To bad our campsite (and our plan to have a bite at HogsBreath) didn't seem to appealing to HER so they decided to go for a ho(s)tel and unfortunately it ended up with having no big beer-booz at the campsite or anything anywhere near having to do something with alcohol. As we where quite tired and didn't hear from them before 8:30pm (while we were already asleep, as the sun goes up at 6:30am and down at 5:30pm you really adopt to this strange biorithm) we'd split as we didn't want to spend yet another day at that way too expensive caravan park. Next morning we picked up our photo's at the photoshop and went to the lookout. As everything in Byron that was also a payd location. Bastards. But hey, they're not too bad, instead of parking our car there for 10 minutes (which would've set us back another $6,-) we decided to take a U-turn at the top which was luckily for free. View was kinda ok, and down we went, along the coast, via MacLean (a Schottish village with all telegraph poles in Scottish kilts) to Coffs Harbour. The original plan was to go to Hoggs Breath, the movies and then asleep but I was kinda tired, Kingdom Of Heaven seemed a bit too long (2:25h) and too heavy (lots of hack 'n slash) for the evening so it ended up at Hoggsbreath only after we found a nice campspot along the river. Hoggsbreath was great, the first time we tried together (in Cairns) ended up in misery as I was nauseous like hell and couldn't eat more than a single bite. Shame because Hoggsbreath is really what "De Beren" is in Holland and "TGI Fridays" in de USA. Awesome food, lovely and honest waiters and waitresses and a really fair price in a very groovy environment with all elvis and other stuff around you. After enriching them with a couple of bucks on a T-shirt, 2 fridge magnets and a lighter (I officially don't smoke anymore but occasionally I do and an Australian Hoggsbreath lighter is definetely a cool thing to give a sweet looking girl if the asks for a light, not?) we went "home".

Next day we'd go to Holland Downunder. We'd expect something like Madurodam but than a lot smaller and less professional. It turned out a LOT smaller and erhm, amateuristic. Really just a backyard with a couple of self-created Dutch buildings. But nevertheless the idea was cute (only the trains should be DUTCH trains, not just standard ancient cokes locomotives) and they had a clog (klomp) making at the end. As we travelled the furthest to get there we got the clog. So we're now the proud owners of a real clog, made in Australia. What will customs in Hollands think about that!?

Next to the Clog Barn (as it was also called) was a dutch restaurant where you could get all dutchie stuff like croquettes and licorice. DROP! We where craving for it after 4 months without so we bought a couple of bags and are still enjoying the taste of home. (Later in Sydney we discovered just a simple shop who had Venco for a fair price so while typing this I'm eating Venco Mintnopjes...) After still missing the cinema we went to a comic gallery. Bit small but it was really fun to see. Definetely a must-do if you ever find yourself in Coffs Harbour.

And after all that stuff? We finally picked up the car to go to some family of Nicky living in Sawtell. (Hi Pat and Guy!) Had a very nice night there with a lot of chatting (luckily Annelies printed all our stories and sent them to them by mail as they don't have internet), some picture viewing of their trip to Tassie and New-Zealand, a really good glass of single malt whisky (18yo, I only forgot the name but it was great, thanx Guy) and a lovely comfy bed and shower. I was impresses by the fact that Pat AND had read THHGTTG AND had the original tapes of the radio-version. Not only that, she had the LP of "The War Of The Worlds" and could tell me that there was a book about it as well, which off course she had read... Impressive.

Next day our movie started at 1:00pm in Coffs so we departed a little before that. In Coffs we enjoyed "Kingdom of Heaven" which is a MUST SEE, 2,5 hour historic epos, from the makers of Gladiator. Not too fast, not too slow and with enough hack 'n slash to keep the fans of that happy as well. But mind you, it's a historic movie. The only thing which really lacked IMO is that the soundtrack was SHIT! (Unlike Gladiator.)

Next stop Nambucca with a wall of gravity in the sea. If we had our own spraycan we could spray our own piece there. Too bad we didn't have that. Not that it would've been really usefull, the rain was pouring down at us and it was getting dark already so Nicky hopped out of the car, took some pics and hopped in while I wisely decided to stay in the car... The idea was to stop that night at a rest-area somewhat an hour driving from Nambucca but for some odd reason our car thought completely different about that. Quite soon after Nambucca we suddenly heard some awfull noise coming from the engine with a sudden loss of around 50% of the power. Pushing the pedal to the flood did basically nothing and even flicking it to 3rd gear, hit it and flick it back to 4 didn't do what it normally did, restoring our power and letting the engine run properly again. So we decided not to trust it and as it was cold, dark and we where tired we dumped the car on the first available campsite or rest-area. It turned out to be a campsite, Nicky running out of the car to get the official stuff done as soon as possible while I kept the car running, afraid that after shutting it off it wouldn't start anymore.

We had a bit of a strange night, worried with what happened to our car and if she finally gave up just a couple of hundred Km's away from our final destination. But luckily our regular morning checks (oil and water) revealed the problem, simply one of the spark-leads had come off the distributor and so let the poor engine run on 3 instead of 4 cylinders. That explains. After reattaching the cable (and filling her with some extra oil) we started the car as if nothing happened. PHEW!

We continued our way to Newcastle via a lot of tourist drives and stopped at a convict-build goal. We where lucky, the rain stopped for half an hour so we had the chance to see the goal in it's full glory (and lock ourselves up for a minute in one of the cells). Had a nice chat with the lady who yelled something about lights which reminded me of the fact that I left my headlights on... Luckily that didn't drain the battery so after visiting the goal we could continue without trouble. As it was getting late (already, it really goes fast if your day only has 11 hours of daylight and you don't leave before 10:30) we decided to start looking for a rest-area. Before we reached that I realized that we'd meet our 20.000Km mark within an hour and went to a bottle shop to get some booz to celebrate it. At the 20.000Km mark I swooshed the car aside on an exit lane, getting some nice hornsounds from a car who wasn't too pleased with me standing there taking a picture of our odometer and went on. I celebrated our mark at a rest area with a whopping one whole beer... (But it was Toohey's so it was kinda allright.)

Next stop: Newcastle. One of the bigger towns along the eastcoast. Not really a cool town, even the Lonely warns for car-theft there (where did we hear that before?) and it's a bit grey-ish but the cathedral is impressive (impressive by it's size, not really beautifull and with big parts of 1998 it's a fairly new church) and the art-gallery, I would say something nice but no, it was kinda boring though some of the contemporary art was kinda ok. It was just way too small and not really interesting pieces. Totally unlike the one in Brisbane which was really stunning.

As we suddenly realized it was our really last day on the road we didn't travel straight down to Sydney but decided to find a nice campsite a litte south of the town. And we did. Getting there was a bit of a hassle, I wanted to turn right, seeing too late that that was completely impossible and having a nice honking concert from my fellow roadizens (you know when you're getting close to a big city, they become more and more unforgiving for human error) and a pissed off Murf we finally found our place. Next to a big lake, surrounded by water, on top of a hill and one of the cleanest amenities we've ever seen it 'd set us back a whopping $17,- Not bad. And we DID celebrate our last night there. With a little bit of beer. (And a little bit of some really nasty pain suddenly coming up under my lungs, which luckily dissapeared after 10 minutes of rest.)

And next day in the afternoon we DID arrive back in Sydney after driving more than 20.000Km. That was yesterday. Anita was not at home but we had the keys and could get in easily. Installed ourselves nicely on Anita's chairs and watched tv (StarWars II was on!) all night. (After first putting our laundry in the machine, really neccecairy as you can not get every stain out of it by hand.)

Today we went to Maroubra, the Indonesian Embassy to finally fix our visas. Too bad the dude was not in untill thursday but the guy helping us DID admit that it was their fault and that they'd fix the problem as soon as possible. So we'll come back thursday or friday and see if they can fix it up before we leave to Bali next week. We also went to Flight Center to recheck my flights (and all MY flightnumbers are now publishes one article below, Nicky has the same to Bali only after Bali she goes home and I go to New Zealand) and ended up in this internet cafe.

A bit strange to be back "home" after travelling half the continent, bit strange to have tv and light at night, really strange that our road trip is now really over. But hey, a new adventure awaits...

Murf | 16 May 2005 (Mon), 08:03 @ story