Hello, my darlings!
Greetings from the sub-tropical Bundaberg in Queensland! But before I talk about here, I would like to tell of the events of the past week:
On Friday morning I woke up early in the hostel and went with all my stuff to the station to catch the train to Mascot. Our Sydney office is in the vicinity of the airport (we are in Melbourne 40 km away). At 9:45 I arrived with plenty of baggage (large and small bag plus a laptop), the Branch and fortunately it was opening a little earlier. The office space I liked very well and everything is much larger than in our cute branch in Melbourne. I was welcomed by Sam, a very nice New Zealander with a cheerful Kiwi accent. Oh, what have I missed this accent!
This time I had decided to go for a small Toyota HiTop as a vehicle. I first met Stephanie, a German woman who works there. We chatted for a while and then I loaded all my luggage in the brand new Toyota (only 1000 miles on the odometer) und10 minutes later I was then again “on the road ” and fought my way through the Sydney Friday traffic.
After half an hour I was on the way to my first day’s destination: the Blue Mountains. They are about 100 km west of Sydney. And after another hour I would stand in front of the Wentworth Falls, which somehow had not really looked after the waterfall, no wonder, even in New South Wales, it never rained almost the whole winter. As the weather was very nice, I decided to make the “Undercliff top” Walk, who was just over 6 kms long and had an infinite number of steps and uphill, downhill lead. As you can imagine, I was already back on the cursing. And I still had sore muscles the day before from my beachwalk. After exhausting 2 hours I was back at the van and totally exhausted.
But I had big plans. The next stop should be in Katoomba, this place is right on a 150 to 200m deep abyss and the scenery there was breathtaking. Since I haven´t bought any groceries yet, I decided to give my camera a break and went shopping. Man, I shopped too much for 5 days, but no worries….
When I left the supermarket, I noticed that the weather had changed, it was stormy and dark clouds covered the sky. Actually, I still wanted to walk the “Three Sisters to Walk”, but I decided against it as it slowly began to drizzle. So only a brief photo stop at the three famous pinnacles. I decided to try it the next day again, finally, was reported bomb weather for the weekend. Meanwhile it started to rain and was cold and so I checked myself to the campsite in Katoomba, cooked, put the heater on and listened to the rain.
On the way to the North (August 22)
I woke up cause from the strong rain and the whipping wind and I thought that I could forget the walk today. By the time I finished breakfast at least the rain stopped, but the cold wind was still there. Because of this, and that I still had muscle soreness in the calves, I decided to break up already heading north.
Then I drove the way back, the Sydney traffic jungle took about 2 hours. Then I was finally on the FREEWAY/AUTOBAHN towards Newcastle. Yes, you heard right, I’m using the word AUTOBAHN, because it was literally one: 6 lanes with hard shoulder, exits, service areas. The only catch was that I was allowed to drive only 110 km h /, but otherwise well-highway worthy. I decided as many miles as I could, I wanted to be in the evening in Port Macquarie, about 400 km north. I didn´t want to drive all the time the Pacific Highway, I took a few detours worth seeing to look at the Myall Lakes and Booti Booti National Park. Relatively late at 6 pm I reached the campsite at Port Macquarie. With free internet and pool! And the weather: from Sydney to Port Macquarie I had only sunshine 
!
