NSW - Touring around New South Wales - A Story from Adele McCormack, Merrijig, Victoria.
From "Adele McCormack"

My name is Adele McCormack of Merrijig, in North East Victoria. My husband and I manage to take a holiday about every 3 years and it takes a lot of organising because we have a mail contract and a farm to run.

We planned to be away a little over 2 weeks leaving at 10am on March 23rd 2000. We arrived home two weeks to the day later on Thursday April 6, as we were all wet and damp from a constant night of rain on our canvas caravan. The canvas doesn't leak but we had to pack up in the rain. We thought about staying another night but the weather forecast said it would be raining on and off until the weekend, so we packed up as planned. Then it rained more and more heavily until we decided to head for Holbrook where we have a friend living and she put us up for the night. Incidentally the rain stopped almost as soon as we had made these arrangements. So it was an easy drive home from there where we took the opportunity to check out alternatives to camper trailer caravanning.

We had some trouble before we left home after the wheel fell off the camper on the way into Mansfield (our nearest main town). Even though everything was checked and bearings greased the week before we headed off.

Where Cyril, my husband, pulled off the road the jack wouldn't lift the camper high enough to manipulate the wheel back onto its studs. We were lucky enough to be jacked up by a friend with a road grader who happened to see us and turned around to come and help. Then we put the wheel put back on again with 2 "iffy" wheelnuts on very "iffy" wheel studs.

She was so wobbly just opposite RACV , we called them out to help. After a few phonecalls, and a trip by us to Bonnie Doon where we could buy replacement wheels and wheel nuts, while the mechanic re fitted some new studs. We arrive back in Mansfield to find the wheel bearings were stuffed now and it wouldn't be ready till 4pm.

So we set off 6 hours later than we planned to and stayed the night at Gundagai instead of Goulburn.

I had been sent an e-mail about the angels and "nothing is as it seems" only a few days before we left. It referred to things that appear to be going wrong covering up for something which may be worse. It kept coming back to me that something was stopping us getting away when we wanted to, and we had planned our timing and day for leaving ages ago. Perhaps we were being prevented from being somewhere where it would be disadvantageous for us to be had we been travelling when we were going to be. The rest of the 3000 km we travelled was hassle free and we have a flat tyre on the camper now in our back yard, and luck was with us again, as the spare tyre on inspection was found to be flat.

Our holiday co incided with a clan gathering family reunion which was held on the weekend of March 25-26, at Penrith in NSW, so we began our holiday catching up with old friends and relatives. Amongst the activities organised, we saw the Homebush stadium where the opening and closing ceremonies as well as the athletics will be held, and we sat in seats which will sell at $1000 each for the opening and closing. We also went on the lovely cruise on the Nepean river through seemingly untouched gorges rising dramatically to the height of a 30 story building on either side, knowing full well that houses were quite near by but out of sight.

Following the weekend we went to the Blue Mountains and stayed with friends in Yellow Rock from where we toured around on a self drive as the place was teaming with tourists mostly Japanese. We recommend the self drive tour as it takes in some great sights without the million tourists in busses. We found it listed in a booklet, available from information centres.

There was a group of aboriginal performers at the site of the three sisters, looking like the original inhabitants, sitting playing a gnarled didgeridoo and collecting donations from Yen notes to $2 coins to have a photo taken with a tourist. We sat and watched for a while and one performer who was playing the sticks left his position to go and answer a mobile phone. It looked really strange, a original looking native Australian complete with loin cloth and body paint talking into a mobile phone. Any way when they took a break we congratulated them on their performance and appearance. It seems the main character who introduces himself as Grunyugh {sp} (or something similar) had been doing this for 7 years. I asked about the legend of the three sisters for which I had read two conflicting stories. Grunyugh said he didn't know as they were from up north, and the younger fellow ( the one with the mobile phone) said he believed it was a story made up by a tour bus driver. He hadn't heard any real legends about the three sisters.

After we left the Blue Mountains we went to a little beach place called Huskisson which was very nice, it has an interesting ship wreck history and in season there are sitings of whales. Dolphins are a familiar site. Unfortunately the park we chose was not the best, so we moved on to a place Cyril read about in an NRMA book friends gave us when we stayed with them at Yellow Rock. It is just the best place, called Tuross Heads. We had the Pacific ocean in front of us and a tidal river either side which fed two lakes where they grew oysters, which were delicious.

We had two feeds of Prawns and one of oysters and two of fresh fish, "Pacific Perch". The best was the fish Cyril cooked on the BBQ at the park as the shop at Huskisson dried out the fish so it tastes like hot dried salty fish.

Crossing the mountains on the way home was very nice too, and it was worth stopping at a lovely little restored town called Tilba Central. every shop and house was carefully restored to look like it would have in 1895 when most of them were build. It also has the best fresh made fudge.

We also stopped at the Bega Cheese factory, very interesting and worthwhile. We both learned something we were amazed we hadn't known before, that bullocks in bullock teams were shod with metal shoes. There were photos showing how this task was undertaken, imagine lifting a hefty bullock off his feet and applying metal plates to each side of his cloven hoof. There were extracts from a diary of the farmer who began the dairying in the area. The Bega cheese factory is owned by the dairy farmers in the area, and therefore is totally Australian.

A slight drawback to this route was that there were very long distances between towns. The terrain was very interesting though and reminded us of some country we have travelled over to get to the beautiful hidden Wonnangatta valley in our part of the mountains.

We have decided instead of travelling overseas which was our retirement plan, to travel around Australia, as several friends have told us of wonderful places to see. We figure we can travel much further and more often seeing all there is to see in Australia than for the same money spent just getting to Britain and Europe. So as we realise we are getting older, we will buy ourselves a solid caravan without any canvas to get wet and give the old camper to our grownup kids, so they can have as much pleasure exploring Australia as inexpensively and comfortably as possible.

Thanks for the opportunity to share our holiday with others this is a great WEB site.

Adele McCormack

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