Broken Hill to home

It seems amazing already that it was only yesterday we were at Coogee Beach, in far-away Sydney. An early start today, with a cuppa and a muffin before an hour or so in Broken Hill. Unfortunately we missed out on the whistle-stop tour; however, we did find an open coffee shop. Some lovely old architecture here.

Pit heads can be seen over slag heaps, all near the railway.

On the way again. Over proper breakfast we play a game of spot the kangaroo, emu and camel. We didn't find any camels, but plenty of roos and a couple of groups of emus (one with chicks). The landscape is wide open here.

The sky and clouds and colours are ever-changing.

A little further along, the green is more consistent.

Karen in the lounge car, waiting for lunch.

Passing the Ghan. It waited for us.

Well, this is a familiar sight; while I've never been around the loop in a train, I've travelled those tracks a few times.

Garey, the Duty manager from our train, kindly posing for us.

The car got a well deserved wash on the way home. It looks spic and span now; it even got a vacuum, and they found the pen and entertainement book that each have been missing for a couple of years,

Coogee to Orange

Well things are really winding up now. We stuffed ourselves for breakfast, then re-packed our bags so we had only what we needed for on the train.

Eventually found the motorail checkin, and dropped off the car, then went for a bit of a walk down George St. Ate more pastries as it was lunch time, from a very nice boulangerie.

Wandered around the QVB for a half an hour, looking at all the stuff we can't afford. Karen splashed out on some perfume - well, splashed it.

This is looking up into the dome of the QVB.

Some of the stained glass windows in the QVB.

Caught a train from Town Hall back to Central. Figured we wouldn't get good coffee on the train, so grabbed another one from the station cafe, where there was this charming artwork. This is just one of several panels showing the hostory of the area, era by era.

Here's a picture of our train! Bet it's not what you were expecting.

We then tried to find our carriage. It (and 9 others) had been taken away to be attached at the front of the back half of the train since it does not all fit on the platform at once. It's 25 carriages, plus 2 engines, is over 711m long and in total weighs about 1500 tonnes

Found a door onto the train and wove our way to our carriage, and then to our cabin. Very comfy spot. The crew all dropped by and individually introduced themselves.We left Sydney bang on time. It's almost impossible to take good photos from the train, so we just sat back and enjoyed to trip throug the blue mountains.

After a couple of hours we made our way to the club car where Garey the service manager led us through what will happen over the next day.

This was followed with a delicious dinner in the Queen Adelaide Restaurant car; Karen had kangaroo, I had pork.

We sat in the club car for a little while, and we had a cappachino which was better than expected.

We've retired to our cabin now, and found it all set up for sleeping.

We are looking forward to being rocked to sleep.

The Entrance to Coogee Beach via Castlecrag and the Harbour Bridge

It blew up quite a gale last night, so it was a little noisier than it could have been. Otherwise, not a bad night. A reasonably early start saw us in The Entrance township ready for coffee long before most of the shops had opened. We walked up then down the main street in the hope that La Tartlette would be open soon. We were the shop's first customers, and I don't think she was particularly wrapped to see us;  however, the coffee was good and the cake was delicious. We should have taken a photo of that; it was 3 custard filled profiteroles, some fresh cream and some toffee shards. Mmmmm-mmmm.


We travelled via Gosford, and arrived at our first "official" waypoint. Castlecrag, on the Sydeny north shore has been on the list of places to visit for some years. It is a developmental village designed by Walter Burley Griffin, of Canberra fame. It contains a variety of contemporary residential styles. Many of the houses back onto small, semi-private reserves (typically with little fencing separating the gardens from the reserve).

This Kookaburra was seen near the marina.

Any idea what these are?

A few of the original residences remain, being typically of this sandstone construction. Next week there's a formal guided walk around the area; sadly we won't be here. Instead then, we drove around several of the streets, then parked at the Quadrangle Shopping Centre, had lunch then did our own random walk around the streets and reserves.

This of course was followed by a coffee at the shopping centre before getting back on the road and heading for Coogee.

A relatively uneventful journey (except for a last-second lane change when heading for the Harbour Bridge) brought us to the Crowne Plaza Coogee Beach.

We checked in  and inspected the facilites. They seem mostly up to scratch, although Karen would have expected a shower screen rather than a curtain.

We took a short stroll from the hotel to the point, where it was blowing hard, and quite cool.

This was followed by an inspection of the eateries in the local area; however we decided to utilise the restaurant in the hotel. Dinner was very nice.

It seems that they have changed the flight plan for arrivals into Sydney. This afternoon they were approacing miles to the west; now they are at about 1,000 ft and flying divectly over the hotel.

The above is a 6s exposure over the pool at the approacing aircraft.

Another 6s exposure; held still against the balcony handrail.

Karen asked me if they have a curfew at Mascot; I don't know, but I sure hope so. It's surprising how many flights must be arriving.

Wingham to The Entrance via Forster & Newcastle

After a reasonable night at the 4-star motel at the golf club (the trains woke me, but not Karen), we had a look around. This is the pond where the frogs could be heard.

We made our way back to The Scrub, and did the walk around the flying fox nusrery. There were loads of them!

Occasionally one would take flight. Besides the screeching and squabbling, their flapping was quite loud too.

Instead of taking the Pacific Highway all the way, we diverted to the coast road that goes between the coast and the lakes. We stopped for lunch in Forster, a very pretty town. The long bridge goes over the estuary. The waters were an amazing azure.

The coastal route was reasonably quiet and very picturesque, and it also went up and down into the rainforest in areas. This was at one of the stops near a boat ramp allowing access onto the lake.

The remainder of the trip to The Entrance was unremakable, except to the idiot in the 4WD on the way into Newcastle. This completely put us off stopping at this too-large, too busy, too smelly, too expensive, generally unattractive city. Sorry to to the Newcastrians, that's how I see it.

Instead, we pressed on  a bit further, looking at Swansea, but the affordable accomodation was full.

We ended up in The Entrance, a town that appears to be very geared for the summer crowds. Fortunately, that's not 'now', and the place is quite nice. We had dinner in the hotel "entrance" (that's its name, not the foyer) which was probably one of the cheapest meals we've had for a while, but was still very good. A quick wander around town followed dinner (find somewhere for breakfast!)

We're staying at a motel in North Entrance, just on the other side of the bridge to the main town. It's not flash, but is seems quite adequate.

So all in all, a nice day with some lovely scenery and a pretty drive, and the benefit of being quite a bit closer to Sydney than originally planned for tomorrow's drive. Now we need to find some accomodation there that we can afford.

Coffs Harbour to Wingham via Port Macquarie and Taree

Breakfast was had somewhat earlier than yesterday, so that we could be on the road reasonably early. On the way down we were greeted by the "guard lizard". I'm led to beleive this is actually a water dragon.

We dropped into a pewter jewellery manufacturer just out of Coffs Harbour. On the way back to the highway we passed a number of banana plantations. Some of them must be ashamed of thir bananas as they had put bags over them. The owners of these were proud enough to display them























One of the road-works we had to stop at was in this quite splendid forest area. The photo was taken from the car.























We stopped in Port Maquarie for lunch. This seems like a nice town, with good shops, lots of coffee shops and restaurants and everything else you might need. Just out of the CBD is the Sea Acres National Park, where there is a 1.5km boardwalk through a spectacular bit of remnant rainforest. We saw a koala, kookaburra and another large lizardy thing, and several bush turkeys. The parks staff were surprised to hear that there was a koala there as they typically have ony a few sightings a year.

About 20 minutes further on, via Lauriton, is the Kattang Nature Reserve. This has a series of walks around a bluff. This has a lot of flowers and a few birds.























It was necessary to double back through Lauriton to get back onto the highway, since Kattang is on the wrong side of the estuary. These pelicans were catching a bit of late afternoon sun.

We passed miles and miles of roadworks where the Pacific Highway is being revised. It looks like it will be dual carriageway (4 lanes total) all the way to Port Maquarie, and probably much further eventually.

Our destination for today was to be Wingham. We needed to be there before nightfall, as we wanted to see the enormous flying fox colony. We made it just in time; the sun had set, but the sky was made dark by the thousands of bats heading out from their roost in the Wingham Scrub, to forage for fruit and insects. Apparently they might travel as much as 40km. This image shows the bats, but being essentially black against a dark sky, you can't see them very well.


















You'll just have to beleive me that they are there.

We had dinner at the golf club restaurant, associated with the motel we are staying at. It was very nice, almost "home-style" cooking. Ate too much again though.

After tea we went to investigate where all the noise was coming from. There is a large pond / lake, which is full of incredibly noisy frogs. I'm very glad we didn't have one of the posh, expensive rooms, as the frog noises near them are deafening. Our room is much quieter, since it doesn't look out onto the pond. There are still frogs here though.

This was taken with my phone. Don't bother trying to enlarge it; this is as good as it gets.

Around Coffs Harbour

Funny old town is Coffs. We had a late breakfast since we slept in, then by 12 we were in the town centre and while we were expecting just to get a coffee, we ended up having lunch. We still haven't found what one might call the restaurant strip that most places - especially one the size of Coffs Harbour - normally have.

We headed to the Butterfly House just south of Coffs, where we spent quite a bit of time. I'm going to drop in a bunch of photos, but I don't think I need to explain them.

We went to Sawtell, which is sort of on the way back to Coffs Harbour from the butterflies, which seems like a really nice "normal" country town - that is, it has a street of shops that includes a newsagent, coffee shop, bakery etc. There are several lookouts here, this image shows the view looking back inland. As you can see, it's gone pretty hazy. It's been a lovely warm day (especially in the butterfly house), but the wind has picked up considerably.

One of the obligatory tasks when in Coffs is to have your photo taken in front of the Big Banana. So here it is.

Dinner was at the Bowls Club which conveniently is just across the road from the motel. The very helpful young lady from the information centre works here too, on the reception! Ate too much again. We must get going early tomorrow as we need to continue south, and Karen's marked quite a few things in the book that we should see on the way.