One Year to Give: Zig-zagging from coast, inland and back again

We "vegged" in Batemen's Bay for a few days, partly because the park was great just to 'stay put', with plenty for the kids to do, we needed to catch up on some school work and for a few days the weather was lousy - not cold but rainy.
Quite new facilities in this C Park - with a great camp kitchen area, with a 'conference' style TV room where we based ourselves a couple of mornings for "school". Made a change to the van.

The whole coast in this area seemed to be one built up area after another and the "tourist drive" from Moruya to Batemen's Bay was adjacent to the coast but you couldn't see it for the trees! And every now and then there would be a road into 'sleepy', little coastal town (of a few thousand people!!). I guess, once upon a time, they were lovely little out-of-the-way fishing villages, on exquisite coastline, where people escaped from the hustle and bustle of Sydney!

FREE Mini Golf at C Park!!

Inevitably, fun, turns into a competition!

From here, we went north along the coast for a bit, as far as Nowra. Along the way we went through Ulladulla, which was interesting to see. When I went to school at Keith, I boarded for a couple of years with Judith & Kelvin Johnson, Neil Johnno's Mum & Dad. Jude used to talk fondly about her time spent growing up in Ulladulla. It's probably a bit bigger now, as there is development happening everywhere along the NSW south coast. Anyway, it was nice to think fondly of the Johnson's as we drove through.

Princes Highway through central Ulladulla

From Nowra, we headed inland, up a steep and winding road through some picturesque scenery and down the other side to Kangaroo Valley. This was one of the prettiest drives we had been on ( and we have seen some great stuff!)! and the town of Kangaroo Valley itself was very 'quaint' - I would have like to have stopped and had a 'dawdle', but unfortunately I wasn't the driver!! Reminded me a little of Hahndorf. We camped the night in a beautiful valley - which would have been even more beautiful had it not had loaded, low clouds, that decided to let go.

(Camera was misbehaving - hence, the 'fuzz') As evening
approached a wombat came out to play! A bit 'scruffy'
looking - not the manicuredkind you see in wildlife parks.

We were so excited to see a wombat in the wild... then when we DROVE, to the toilet for the pre - sleep visit, (well...it WAS raining!!), we saw at least a dozen wombats just out and about grazing on the grass.

They obviously weren't too worried about getting up 'close and personal' because we discovered wombat 'poo' in the bottom of the wind up metal stabiliser, of the van! I think it's there still! Souvenir??

We packed up in the rain and headed up the mountains again towards Mossvale and Bowral. This would enable us to get on the Hume Highway and head into the South West of Sydney, where my niece Kristy and her partner Josh lived.

We'd love to passby this way again one day as the scenery along the way was fantastic, and we couldn't see all of it for fog. It was English-style, well -established farming land, of the aristocracy along rolling hillsides. Huge gateways, imposing houses, manicured gardens, white picket fences, tree lines of English trees, wineries interspersed with cattle and horse studs. (All of it probably owned by Sydney week-end hobby-farmers, as I don't think the acreages were huge!)

The other amazing sight we missed out on was the Fitzroy Falls. We visited the amazing visitor's centre and cafe and walked out to the viewing platform, but the whole area was shrouded in thick fog. Disappointing, as it is obviously a valued sight. We took photos anyway!

Our view from the Fitzroy Falls Lookout
- rumour has it that is a beautiful
view of the valley, way down below.

OUR view of the falls!

The Fitzroy Falls, I think, have a drop of about 83 metres. Needless to say we couldn't see the bottom through the fog!

Our view up a steep, windy acccent towards the falls.

Not long after this photo was taken, Jon saw in his rear-vision mirror, and the rest of us heard, a car brake, skid, slide and side-swipe the concrete barrier around the corner! Nasty! We didn't stop as there was nowhere to pull off, at all and we didn't want to cause the next 'pile-up'. But we did make sure a couple of other cars had stopped to assist before going too far.