Day 26, July 22 - Sydney To Emerald Beach

Emerald Beach - Kangaroo with baby joey in its pouch
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We all woke up at 8:00am and an hour later we were piling into a taxi for the ride to the Britz depot to pickup what will be our “home on wheels” the next 3 ½ weeks. We spent the next hour or so finalizing the formalities for our campervan and drove off the lot at around 10:30am for a few stressful hours of driving through Sydney. After about 15 minutes of trying to find the correct street we needed to head north out of town (many of the streets in Sydney don’t have street names labeled so it gets confusing), we finally found our bearings. Taking a few hours to get across the city, we took the eastern distributor toll tunnel (that actually goes under the Sydney harbour) where we then caught the Pacific Highway heading north. We continued north on the freeway for about 75km and stopped in the town of Gosford at around 1:00pm. We reloaded on groceries and supplies and then had lunch in the campervan. We were so busy all morning trying to escape the city that we didn’t really take the time to have breakfast, so by this point we were all very hungry. We hit the expressway again at around 2:30pm and continued driving for the next 5 ½ hours straight, with the exception of a few pee breaks and refueling. The drive from Gosford to Emerald Beach (near Coffs Harbour) was only 475 km, but there was a lot of construction along the way which slowed us down quite a bit. We also drove much of the day in the rain and the last half of the drive in the dark. It gets dark early in this part of the country at around 5:00pm. We arrived at our campground, the Big4 Emerald Beach Holiday Park, at around 8:00pm and quickly had supper. Since the kids were stuck sitting in the campervan all day, so Renee took them to the playground for about an hour to have them stretch a little and burn off some energy. Despite the long drive, they were very good the whole way, entertaining themselves by watching movies, playing their Nintendos, listening to their MP3 players and drawing pictures. They always manage to find something to pass the time and fortunately today it wasn’t by arguing and fighting with each other. Everyone hit the hay at around 11:00pm. As we were getting ready for bed, we saw three kangaroos right outside of our campervan, one of which had a tiny joey in her pouch. Very cute!

Emerald Beach - Kangaroo with baby joey in its pouch
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A few side notes…

- There is an intense focus on speed limits and speeding in the state of New South Wales. There are signs every couple of kilometers along the highways telling drivers to watch their speed and warning about speed cameras and hefty fines. In some areas there are signs that actually warn you there will be a speed camera by the road and sure enough there is one. The crack down on speeders here is huge. Frank wouldn’t survive in this country.

- Another big thing on the roadways here are roundabouts. There seems to be a roundabout at every major intersection.