Today was going to be our big day of driving so we were up and at it early. We budgeted for about six hours of driving (which always seems to turn into 7-8) and wanted to get to Sydney before six to return the car. Eager not to have a repeat of yesterday's backseat excitement, I created a sort of booster seat for Alex so that he could see out the windows. We also banned any reading or game playing while the car was in motion. Surprisingly, Alex was okay with this. It seemed he also did not want to go down that particular road again.
Once away, we quickly climbed up out of the coastal area and over a ridge of mountains into more of the beautiful rolling hills and lush green valleys. The lady at the motel had assured us the road would not be as windy today and this proved to be somewhat true - as a lack of trees also gave us a much better view of the places and pictures we were speeding by. We drove through Bega a capital for commercial cheese production and then detoured toward a tiny hamlet called Central Tilba which was advertised as a national historic preserve - where all of the buildings had been transplanted or preserved as century homes. Unfortunately, we missed it by one hamlet stopping in Tilba Tilba and not Central Tilba. Oh, well. We picked up a coffee and a cookie for our troubles at the Love at First Bite Cafe, Linton bought a used Dan Brown novel for her trashy reading pleasure and we were away again just as the smell of fresh manure on the fields and the infuriating flies began to get the better of us.
Ulludula would be our lunch time stop and thankfully all of our de-nauseating devices had offered Alex a much smoother and enjoyable ride. We were now starting to see signs that listed Sydney's distance and so we were encouraged to know that we had completed about half of the day's driving. We stopped in a nice park/picnic area with swings and climbers and we had a fun nature moment with a beautiful white heron, bread crumbs and some "flying" minnows. Once again, the public washrooms should have been condemned.
Throughout our travels Linton always has three maps, fourteen brochures and a couple of tourist books open and ready for consultation and planning. The process was to call and confirm hotel rooms, read about tourist attractions, navigate our best route, and provide me primarily with a play-by-play of the areas we were travelling through. On this day she spotted a place called Kiama which boasted of a blow hole that sounded cool and kid-friendly. Our afternoon route as set.
A blow hole is a place where the sea has eroded the rock underneath a cliff and then worked it's way to the surface. As the waves roll in they run under the cliff face and force air and ocean up through the eroded hole exploding in an impressive display of spray that at times was 20-30 metres high. We parked on a beautiful point with a lovely white lighthouse and walked down to the blow hole. The kids loved it and we were all enthralled with the show, watching and waiting for the inevitable payoff like tourists might watch Ol' faithful. This was a great stop and a beautiful town and as we pulled out we noticed some guest cabins that woould have been perfect for us to have broken up this six hour day. Oh well, next time we said.
We were now only 2 hours from Sydney and we raced down four lane highways trying to beat rush hour and get to our hotel by six. Australia is interesting in that it's major highways often turn directly into interior roads within a few kms of each other. You can be speeding down the highway doing 110kms one moment and the next thing you know there are traffic lights, McDonalds and car dealerships. This was the case as we drove into Sydney, by Botany Bay, under the airport and then almost through a toll gate that I momentarily thought I might simply ignore!
Once we finally popped out into downtown Sydney it was full blown rush hour and we were totally discombobulated. A couple of phone conversations with our concierge at the hotel didn't really help matters as I thought north was south and south was north! With the clock ticking and all of us feeling a little punchy we drove on down a street I think was called Macquarie that I claimed I didn't like because "It was taking us toward the bridge". No sooner had I uttered these words than we emerged into a tiny cul de sac and low and behold at the foot of the Sydney opera house, no less than 200 metres away! We laughed! Now we had our landmark and after pinpointing it on the map the trip back downtown was easy.
We were all drained after the day's long haul so instead of venturing back into the city to find a gas station we made the executive decision to pay the extra fee to have the rental company top up the tank. That was an expense I was very glad to make! But the day wasn't over quite yet. After a bit of a rest we cabbed our way down to Darling Harbour, only 5 minutes away, and walked over to Cafe Nico for a very yummy Italian dinner - Linton's scallops were the highlight.
It had been a big day with about 470 kms of driving but we were finally in Sydney, Australia! It was a place I thought we might have been before now but after the past three days, I also felt we had earned the right to visit. We went to bed excited to see all of what Sydney had to offer.
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