Not so Blue Mountains

The overnight stay in Singleton was a noisy one, parked in a rest area just off the main highway, we were up and gone before 630am. Todays journey took us through two state parks, Wollemi and Yengo a 200km drive to which we would eventually make the infamous Blue Mountains. Donkey had taken a serious disliking to uphill travel, which was a bit unfortunate considering the mountainous route we had chosen. As long as he didn't stop we would be okay, well according to the road signs anyhow... "FALLING ROCKS, DO NOT STOP!" we eventually emerged at the other side of the park a few hours later. Petrol prices have been gradually rising throughout our travel in NSW, they had hit a record 142 cents a litre today, 20 cents dearer than the Sunshine Coast.

Camping

Our research into the Blue Mountains was poor, in fact to be honest we hadn't even heard of them until Steves mum and dad had reeled off their Australia Itinerary. We headed towards Kindaroom* the central town of the Blue Mountains National Park. The place was immersed with tourists buses which had made the short trip from Sydney. At the south end of town was the main look out point which towered above the forest below. It was hard to see what was Blue about the mountains, in actual fact they were more red than anything else. The guidebook expressed that it was the ecalyptuse that gave off the bluey mist effect, guess it wasn't that hazy when we visited. None the less the mountains themselves were quite spectacular.

More Blue Mountains

We decided to move onwards that afternoon, our journey would now take us west towards Victoria. Having packed in the Strawberries 1 month too early, we are still required to do another 4 weeks harvesting to obtain our 2nd year visa. We travelled another 200km to Carcoar Dam, just past Blayney where we found a delightful, and peaceful camp area inclusive of power and electric bbqs.

We awoke at what we thought was 5am out at the dam. It was in actual fact midnight, and the noise of both screeching tyres and unrecognisable shouting gave us the urge to move on with immediate effect. Unsure as to whether we had experienced our first 'Abo' encounter or just more drunken ozzies we moved on as soon as possible and kept on driving another 200km west just to make sure. We ended up in the sparsley populated town of Timora smack bang in the middle of nowhere. It was now around 4:30am!

The Three Sisters