If I was able to strum a few chords on the guitar, and if I was able to sing – neither of which I can do without scaring small children and animals, BTW – I would burst into song. Specifically I’d be singing ”On the road again” … that Willie Nelson classic.
We are indeed on the road again, for #RoadTripNSW2022.
This road trip started a little differently – we needed to get Percy’s lights fixed. Percy is the van. I may have called him Ernie in a previous post, but that’s because … doesn’t matter. MBW will get mad at me for airing our dirty laundry.
Here is a hint though: she thought her Grandfather’s name was Ernie, but it was actually Percy. So Percy it is now.
Where was I? Oh, Percy’s lights.
Percy had developed a really annoying habit of blowing a fuse in the car – Elsie – when Percy was attached and Elsie’s headlights were turned on. What was even more annoying was that when we got the auto-electrician to have a look, Percy and Elsie played nicely together.
Anyhow, long story short, another trip to the auto-electrician the day before we headed off and the fault was found after only 5 hours of pulling lights off and chasing wires.
The problem? A poor connection in the very last light after every other light had been tested and we were almost out of options. Yay!
The TL;DR version? Buyer beware when you buy a caravan during COVID.
Anyhow, problem solved, van packed and hooked up, and off we set from home at the very respectable time of 9.28am this morning.
This trip is south for a change. Normally we go west, but this time we have gone south. MBW is keen to see the Grand Pacific Drive. Going for drives anywhere with the van on the back is my happy place, so I was happy to just tag along.
The first thing that you notice when you head south from Wellington Point is that you are travelling on 3 or 4 lanes of highway all the way to Robina, then down to just 2 or 3 lanes in each direction.
The second thing that you notice is that you run out of Queensland pretty quickly, and you find yourself in NSW.
That’s all OK though. NSW is a lot of things: while we will agree that they cannot play football, they do have some amazing roads and we barely dropped below 110km/h for most of the day today.
That’s a theoretical 110km/h by the way … I choose to sit closer to 100km/h for various reasons, not the least of which is that 3 tonnes of Elsie and another 2.5 tonnes of Percy at 110km/h is a dangerous thing!
It really had the feel of driving on the Interstate in the USA – wide and fast roads that just go on and on.
Another thing that I will say about NSW is that they know how to build pretty bridges and tunnels. Check these out …
People in NSW are something else also. Wasteful. Very wasteful with their words.
First stop for the day was at Sleepy Hollow Rest Area, not far from Chinderah. We stopped for a coffee and noticed a sign at the park that said ”Reclaimed Effluent. Do not drink.”
Really? They could have saved themselves 10 letters. ”Reclaimed Effluent” was all I needed to know to be quite certain that I wouldn’t drink it, wash my hair in it, or make coffee with it. ”Do not drink” was a really unnecessary waste of words.
In fact I’m pretty sure that the words ”reclaimed” and ”effluent” are not designed to be used in the same sentence in ANY language.
So we had coffee, ensuring that we did not partake of any of the reclaimed effluent, and we kept heading south.
A quick stop at Yamba for a bite of lunch. I won’t say where we stopped, but I think I probably had more than my RDI of fat, salt and sugar in that one meal.
We had some pretty heavy rain for a period of time. That didn’t seem to slow anyone down at all, and the people with ”Baby On Board” stickers seemed to fly past us faster than anybody else!
We went through Coffs Harbour around 3.00pm and saw the Big Banana, but just did a drive by and took some photos.
Been there, done that, bought a T-shirt.
I undertook a little experiment as we drove through Coffs … 3.00pm is a magical time in my world, because that’s when the coffee fairy reminds me that it’s 3.00pm. Unfortunately no time to stop for coffee, so I ran a little experiment instead.
Eating Mentos as a substitute for coffee, which is in turn a substitute for sleep. That was the hypothesis. I’m sorry to say that the experiment didn’t work 🙁
Tonight’s accomodation is at the Nambucca Heads Bowls Club. $10 buys you 3 years membership and gives you permission to park your van on their old bowling green. Now I may be as dumb as a box of rocks but there is one thing that I know for sure: bowling greens are FLAT … so that made it really easy to park, get level and set up for the night.
No power and no water and you have to be 100% self-sufficient – and that includes ensuring that you have a grey water tank so you don’t drop any waste water on the ground.
We were a bit early for dinner, so we went for a walk along the river boardwalk – and a very pretty walk it was too!
Dinner at the Bowls Club tonight to support them and as appreciation for the cheap accomodation – lucky we did too, because there was only one other couple there for dinner. How our meal paid the wages of the 4 or 5 staff on for the night, I’ll never know.
So that was the day. Brisbane to Nambucca Heads – 459km south into a dark and scary place NSW.
Forecast for tomorrow is rain. And more rain. Still it could be worse – I could be at work 🙂
Ciao
#RoadTripNSW2022
Enjoy your trip. Lovely to read your blog
Yippee! The Taylor’s are on the road again…always enjoy your blog.
You certainly have a way with words! Have a great time and stay safe. I will look forward to more entertaining stories.
You could have gone for a pleasant night with the sweet sleep inducing smells of Nimbin. Their pub has great food!
Do you ever find time for work Geoff. You always seem to be on holiday. Lucky you
If I blogged about work you’d realise that I actually spend far more time at work than I’d like, and far less time on holidays than I deserve 🙂