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After finally getting the camper started and leaving Melbourne we took 2 days to get back up to Sydney in preparation to pick up Scotty. We spent one night in a free campsite by a river and the next in a paid campsite at an old showground in a place called Berry. We went to see Lakes Entrance which was very pretty and Gem had a paddle in the sea. Gem also saw her first rockpool but decided not to have a swim as there was a storm coming according to the lifeguards who were warning the surfers!
Sydney airport has a free 15 minute pick up area so we waited at a McDonalds around the corner and drove to the pickup point when we got a message from Scotty. Mike had lent us his Aussie hat with the proviso that Scott must wear it when he arrives so you´ll see this in our photos! Matt and Scott were like 2 excited school boys so Gem drove the 90km to a place called Richmond where we paid to stay and the boys started on the beers before we´d got out of the airport complex!
Matt had devised a plan for how we should spend the 3 and a half weeks with Scott (and had got Gem drunk the night before to get her to agree) and he spent a good half hour explaining his plan for what he was now calling the "Road Trip of All Road Trips" to Scott. Scott was as excited as Matt by the plan so it was agreed, we would drive to Ayres Rock, up to Cairns and then back down to Brisbane by the 30th November when Scott flys to meet Mike in Sydney.
The following morning Scott was introduced to what we have now dubbed "fly rage". We have been to many places where there are lots of flies and they want to annoy you by sitting on your legs and buzzing around. Our only way of dealing with this annoyance is to shout FLY RAGE and it seems to help. By the end of breakfast Scott was doing just this, and the joke hat that Mike had sent actually started to have a very real purpose. It seems Australian flies like to fly in your face and ears - must be why they designed their hats like that in the first place!
After breakfast we drove up through the Blue Mountains with fantastic views of forests and the railway track below. We stopped in a place called Bathurst for lunch and accidentally went onto the race track on Mount Panorama, it circles a mountain and although Matt tried his best it is quite possible that we did the slowest lap ever!
We made it to a free campsite just outside Orange and Scotty and Matt opened the vodka that Mike had so kindly given us "for Christmas"! Gem cooked an evening meal and we were treated to a gorgeous sunset across the river and through the trees. The people at the campsite were as usual very chatty with us, interested in where we had been and where we were going. There was an Aussie couple who invited the 3 of us into their caravan and gave us maps for Ayres Rock! In the morning Scott spotted his first kangaroo on the river bank. It must be said that he was more excited when a small bird landed on his camp chair to say good morning!
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