20th Feb:

CAMPERVAN TIME! :D or should I say Neil time. Got a taxi from the hostel to the pick up place where we had to do a few formalities, once the business was done the van was ours, Yiipppeeee!It is bright orange and white and has Spaceships in big letters down the side so I don't think we'll easily lose it in a car park any time soon. It is an automatic however… I was the first to drive and we headed to the Blue Mountain range just outside of Sydney which meant driving through the city, eek! But we did it, Meg navigating and me driving, I managed to get out the city with only 2 beeps and going through 1 red light, easy. Automatics are dead easy to drive, just you keep reaching for the gear stick and clutch and find an empty space.

Anyways after much deliberation of which way to go we arrived at Katoomba in the Blue Mountains safe and sound! First stop was a big grocery one at Aldi and then it was Meg's turn to drive…ah. We went to Wentworth Falls, Meg's home from home, and took a very long, accidental walk. The scenery was breathtaking, miles and miles and miles of orange stone mountains covered in think layer of Eucalyptus trees. Did you know they are called the Blue Mountains because of the oily blue substance that the eucalyptus trees give off into the atmosphere and create a bluey haze over the land? Well you do now. We walked down to the waterfall and I went for a paddle, and we just carried on walking, not having a clue where we were going just walking and taking random paths here and there enjoying the views. It was such a good day for it aswell, not a cloud in the skies. We eventually made it back to the car after 3 hours and treated ourselves to an ice cold coke whilst we were literally dripping in sweat!

By this time it was time to look for a campsite for the evening. We filled up our water bottles and found a place to stay in Megalong Valley near Blackheath which was right in the heart of the Blue Mountains. We put the bubble up on the van (the bubble is the van with the boot open and extension to the bed and covered with material, hence the bubble) with a little help from a lovely old English couple, made use of the dvd player and fell asleep J

21st Feb:

We survived the first night in the van, despite being a bit scared in the middle of a forest in a isolated valley…yikes.Itwas a little bit chilly but pretty comfy and more than enough room for the both of us. Meg isn't too keen on the hole in the ground toilets mind, haha "you can see other peoples poo!"

Today we went to see the famous 3 sisters! It's basically three rocks in a row next to a bigger mountain, it is a sacred Aborigine rock formation. The views again were spectacular! And I think we have been very lucky with the weather too. We drove onto Katoomba Falls, put our walking shoes on and started walking. Although we had a slight issue and didn't really know where we going, so seeing as there were walks that's lasted up to 4 days in that area after an hour we decided to head back. Down and the up hundreds of steps…aahh it was nearly worse than the devils staircase NZ. There were a number of waterfalls enroute aswell as some fantastic views of the 3 sisters. By the time we reached Neil we were feeling pretty lazy and began to drive back to the campsite we stayed at the night before, however along the way we spied a luscious outdoor pool and we couldn't resist, plus we really wanted a shower so we relaxed by there for the rest of the afternoon. When we were relaxed sufficiently we went back to Megalong and made a delicious spag bol for dinner, it was a bit of a mission on the gas stoves but we managed it. As soon it we finished dinner it began to chuck it down and rained allllll night long.

22nd Feb:

Woke up after a not-so-good nights sleep, with all of the rain but thankfully the clouds had got it out of their systems and it had stopped. We went to Jenolan Caves today, the drive there was adventurous to say the least. Very , windy, narrow roads on the cliff edge in Neil…yikes! Was good fun though :D The caves were also good. We did a guided of the Chifley cave which was only 1 out of the 350 caves they have there. They are thought to be the oldest caves in the world,400,000,000 years old! Crikey that's old. The Chifley cave was huge in itself with lots of different caverns inside. Tell you what I wouldn't want to be the first man to explore them caves, very very dark and scary. Lots and lots ofstalamites and stalatites quite a few columns too aka the mightytighty- check me and my lingo. Afterwards we did our own self tour a cave which was pretty much the same, more rocks. We had to follow our footsteps back and go on the windy,tiny road again all the way to Lithgow and then beyond a very, cute little campsite by the river called Flat Rock at Rainville Creek. We made ourselves a yummy little stir fly with a twist and fell asleep under the stars, looking at them through the sunroof, there were millions and millions and millions! By the way Meg is now a snake murderer, the first wildlife we see and she runs over it on the road, ish some people. RIP Squished Snakey.

23rd Feb:

Had a lovely brekky sitting on a rock in the middle of the river with the sun shining J Meg shaved her legs in the river! Haha I love that. That what camping does to us, at least we're both going to be smelly and hairy together. We drove a lot today, all the way from Lithgow to Singleton, 5 hours in total. It was a lovely drive mind through Wollemi National Park but it did take all day. We arrived at McNamara park near Broke about 4pm and played Uno and made dinner and watched a scary film. Not a good idea whilst staying in an isolated campsite in the woods that isn't busy, I couldn't sleep all night long!

24th Feb

Lots of driving again today but we are now back on the coast! Drove from Singleton all the way to Myall Lakes today. We stopped off in Singleton to get the ciggerate charger working for our cameras and phones but apparently it doesn't work so to charge any electricals we need to open the bonnet and connect the red lead to the red bit and the black lead to the black bit and tape something to something and wiggle about and then we are done, what a palava! We were driving through wineries all the way, through Hunters Valley which is famous for Shiraz (take note mam and dad) eventually arriving at Nelsons Bay. A quaint little town at the end of a peninsula, more like a retired old peoples sea side resort. We looked around for a campsite but they were $30 or more so we drove some more onto Myall Lakes which wasn't too far away. There was a free campsite on the map so we went towards there and it took us down a scary dirt trackslap bang in the middle of the forest. It feltlike the sceneof a horror movie so we decided against staying there and drove to a different camp nearby called Little Lake at Seal Rocks where you're meant to get charged but for some reason we got away with it for free :D plus it was gorgeous, right by a lake with clean toilets.We saw our first wild kangaroo that wasn't squished on the side of the road as well! :D it must have bee only 2 or 3 years old and it even posed for a photo for us.

25th Feb

This morning I went to the hole in the ground loo and came back to find one huge lizard in my path! Oh my jesus we are definitely in Australia. It must have been at least 1.5 metres long with an even longer tail, just dawdling along. Had breakfastwith another stunning view and made friends with a ranger who recommended light housebeac h just down the road. So we spent the day at a gorgeous beach, only 4 people on it plus us all day, miles long, blue ocean, clear skies, glorious sun…aaah bisto gravy. After relaxing we went back to Little Lake and really needed some form of shower,the onlyoption was the lake. I know it's naughty but we had no chose but to wash our hair in the lake! Yes we washed our hair in the lake, going 4 days without a shower was more than enough. We chilled some more and a yummy chicken stir fry for dinner.

26th Feb - Daddy's Birthday!

Woke up and left straight away, no hanging about for us today. We're trying to get to Ash's for the weekend so we left Seal Rocks and drove the scenic route to Taree, detoured to Wingham where we stopped by a river to have lunch and did a boardwalk walk, wasn't too exciting but we did see a brush turkey, ha! It was absolutely boiling hot, at least 33 degrees or more, us English couldn't take it and we had to stop off at a beach and cool down in the ocean. It worked. We stayed there for a good 3 hours, waves were huge and really strong, we had to be careful we didn't get swept away. Went for a walk along the beach a bit and even better we had our 1st real shower in 6 days! YAY! It was cold mind but still it was heaven.

We stayed the night inland from Port Macquarie down a little valley called Ellenborough. The campsite was very busy and right next a river too. We made pasta andchicken for dinner and watched cool runnings - I love that film!! :D

27th Feb

Woke up super early today, only in order to find signal to ring my Daddy on is birthday which we did a couple of miles down the road, that made me much happier. We drove into Port Macquarie and had breakfast at the harbour, t'was lovely,hardly anyone was about and it was so peaceful. We debated what to do for a while and then settled on going to the Billabong Koala Park. We saw dingoes and parrots that said "hello" & "whats the time?" and monkeys and snakes and super cool pelicans. We even fed kangaroos!!! That was exciting, they are so cute. It was just like feeding goats at Wimpole but kangaroos instead. Just feeding them out of our hands, we each had these 2 baby kangaroo attatched to our food, I named the girl one Beatrice, the boy one I didn't like so much as he drank the girls wee! And then we patted the cutest most adorable animal on earth….koalas! They're fur unexpectedly feels like felt, it's not soft at all. They are just the cutest creature ever.

It was roasting hot again today, so we went back to same campsite and swam in the river there. Was luxury! Kids were cliff jumping off and it was like a proper alpine setting. We did some clothe washing and made our home comfort dinner of bangers and mash.