Escaping Sydney
End December, we buy a Land Rover Discovery from our friends Erica and Mark, feel free as birds and escape the "Moloch" Sydney. We enjoyed each and every of the previous months (see Monthly Reports 2002). However, we are now eager to use the flexibility offered by a car to quickly drive to a beach in the evening, to do big grocery shopping tours (our backs thank us...), to escape into one of the adjacent National Parks for a week-end, and to set up our tent at one of the beaches. Since we were missing this luxury for such a long time and since Erica and Mark give us the car before the official purchase date even for the first and third week-ends in December, the December 2002 is our travel-month. It follows a small picture gallery of advent week-ends in New South Wales.
1.12.2002: The journey takes us to the north through the Ku-ring-Gai National Park, Wisemans Ferry, over dirt roads to Colo Heights and with a detour to the Blue Mountains back home.
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Land Rover
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Former fuel pump
14./15.12.2002: This week-end we drive south through the Royal National Park (see our bushwalk in September), with a detour to Garie Beach, then via Kiama to Seven Miles Beach National Park where we set up our tent. On Sunday, we hike through the Minnamurra Rain Forest in the Budderoo National Park and have a look at the Carrington Water Fall.
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Typical (?) Aussie Christmas market
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Mirrors at the Christmas market
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Garie Beach in the Royal National Park
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Claudia searching the sand
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Seven Miles Beach National Park
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Seven Miles Beach NP at sunset
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Palmtrees in the Minnamurra rainforest
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Claudia and Peter on Budderoo lookout
21.-24.12.2002: Yet again we start towards the Blue Mountains. Two years ago, on a combined business trip/holiday tour, we had spent Christmas day with a daylong bushwalk into the Grose Valley. This year, we think of a revival of the tradition. The valleys, however, are still closed due to fire danger, thus we stay on the high plateau. Later, our trip takes ud to Orange in the "Central West" behind the mountains. On a campground in Lithgow, we are the only campers apart from a family (grandparents with 9 children and their children: ca. 40 people) who meet every two years for a Christmas camping and put up a decorated tree between their tents. For the BBQ dinner, we are literally "absorbed" into the group ;-) On the way back we take a slow pace and detour to just about every lookout along our road.
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Hassans lookout (?)
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New green branches three weeks after the bush fires
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At Hassans Walls
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Entrance to a funnel web burrow
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Far far away at Blackfellows hands rock
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A street on Mount Canobolas
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Christmas day 2002 in the bush
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Thunderstorm seen from the top of Mount Canobolas