Drive-about

April 29, 2010




We have spent the last 2 days driving from Sydney to a town called Orange till where we are now, Lightning ridge. The drive through the Blue mountains was slow. There were town after town which slowed traffic down to a crawl and in between towns there was road work and steep curvy roads. This lasted for 3 hours or so till the towns stared to thin out and the traffic too. Our camper van is a bit of a gutless beast up and down the hills. It seemed as though we would finally get to speed limit and then there would be another steep hill and we would slow right down again. Along the way we took a bit of a detour that Kevin and Lynne (CS hosts) told us about. They have been to an area that they garanteed that we would see some wild kangaroos. They were right. We drove a bout 45 minutes off the main highway to a small cabin location and there in the field were at least 10 kangaroos lazing in the sun. We slowly approached them to see if they would run and they didn’t. They didn’t seem to mind us slowly creeping closer and closer taking pictures as we moved ever closer. We hung out with them and decided to have a bit of lunch while we watched them hoping around. It was very cool to see our fist real wildlife.



After lunch we resumed our journey west. Once again we slowly climbed up only to have to slow down while we headed down because of the sleep sharp curves. At 5 o’clock we decided to call it quits for the night and see how our campervan would set up and we would actually all fit in. The camper that we rented is actually a mini van with a plastic room carrier on top that pops up to form a hard top tent. That’s where Colton and Miranda sleep. We made some tacos for supper popped in a movie on the van’s dvd player and we all cuddled up in the van to watch a movie before bed. It was really chilly at night. It went down to about 7 degrees or so. Quite nippy for a tent. In the morning we put our bed back into seats and ate our cereal in the van on the little table that pops up between the back seat and a seat that faces backwards behind the driver.



By 9 am we started the next leg of the trip which was much nicer as the roads were not so hilly ,curvy and steep. Along the way we got to see more wildlife. There in the field were a group of emu. We of coarse had to stop and take some pictures of them.. They were a bit skiddish so I couldn’t get to close. We drove till noon, stopped at a bakery for some fresh bread and had sandwiches in a park along the way. We played catch and ran around and drove till 4:30 till we reached Lightning ridge and our destination. This evening we drove over to the local artesian bore baths to have a swim in the natural hot water. Very nice end to a day of driving.



Tomorrow we will head out to try our luck at finding some great opals.

May 1, 2010

We are headed back to the coast from our walk drive-about in the outback. We did a couple of days of opal mining at a place where people come out with $10,000 opal. We didn't. But Miranda did find one the guy said she could sell for 10 icecreams and Colton found a big one we will get estimated some time. We had lots of fun and are ready to see if we can find the Koalas that  we have heard about near here. It will take us about 2 days to drive back to the coast where we will spend near Coffs Harbour.

We also just was a big red kangaroo happong along the field!!