April 8th, 2025
We crossed the state line into New South Wales today and our first stop was the tourist town of Byron Bay. It actually is very touristy but not as big as we had expected. There is NO free parking so we found a lot near the beach that had spaces and it’s $5 an hour! We took a stroll to check out the beach which is quite lovely:
Doug’s high school buddy, Byron, had asked us to pick him up a t-shirt so we took a stroll around town looking at souvenir shops and finally found one that fit the bill and then went to grab some lunch before our two hour parking time expired. There was nowhere on the beach except a fish place that was not serving food for another hour so we went across the road to a cafe and found “The Hum”. It was pretty good but the service was rather slow and we returned to Matilda
In order to sell Matilda in this state, we need to get it a “blue slip”. This is a roadworthy certificate. But in order to do that we felt had to get the clearance lights working on the top front of the camper. We have no idea when they stopped working as we don’t drive at night often and Doug has tried to figure it out checking fuses and connections with no luck. We began calling around for auto electricians (“sparkies” as they say here Down Under) down the road on our path and after about a half dozen calls (so many are booked up for weeks!) we found one in Coffs Harbour that could take us tomorrow afternoon and he told us of a place nearby to get the inspection done so we’ve booked that appointment for later the same day. You have 14 days to fix anything that might not pass and you have to do the re-inspection at the same place. The Blue Slip is valid for 42 days so that gives us plenty of time to sell it.
We decided we wanted another night at a beach side campground so Fran looked around Byron Bay but the prices are around $100 a night. About 20 km / 13mi further south at Lennox Head she found one for $61 so headed there.
This place was by no means full and it’s across the road from a beautiful beach and on the north side there’s a freshwater lake. That was surprising.
Reflections had all the usual amenities except a pool (they seem to be less frequent now that we are further south and in areas where there are no crocs or stingers). We got set up, went to check out both the lake and the sea and opted to change, grab our stuff and enjoy the beach.
We set up our umbrella, went in the water for a while and then tried to read while enjoying the view and after about 1.5 hours the wind picked up too much.
We returned to Matilda and had a popcorn night watching a movie. Just after sunset (or what there was of it):
it began to rain on and off with dark clouds rushing in. By 8pm it was raining hard and rained on an off all night – guess we’re not out of it yet!
Today we passed through one tunnel.
Wednesday, we didn’t have to rush away as our appointment with the sparky is not until one so we had a leisurely morning. It was still raining this morning but after got about 50 km / 30 mi away, it cleared up, although not completely and we stayed dry the rest of the day. It is definitely cooler now – mid 20’s C / low 70’s F, with less humidity and it cools off at night. We didn’t even use the AC last night so when possible we will free camp going forward unless there’s a heat wave.
Note: We read today that this has been the wettest April in the southern Queensland (around Townsville) area ever with the flooded area in the state being larger than the state of Texas! This has been the 6th wet year in the country in a row. Water rushed well inland into places that have been dry for years!
We arrived in Coffs Harbour and went directly to the sparky in case he could see us early – it was only 11 but he was available. Unfortunately could not see where the problem was. He told us to go for the inspection with his buddy, Dylan, at Proven Performance and see what happens. If they do need to be repaired/working, it would be a big job and he’d have to have us come back another day.
Our appointment for Proven Performance was for 4 and we went directly over in the hopes we’d be taken early like at Morton’s but after some confusion regarding the appointment, he said come back at 4. So in the meantime, we called a local sports club that allows RV’s to overnight there and left a voice mail saying we were looking for a spot for the night. We drove over anyway, got parked and then the maintenance man came over and we’ll see him tonight to pay. This place is a small grass/gravel lot behind a clubhouse that charges $25/30 (depending if you want power – we didn’t) a night with access to a toilet and shower – no other services.
We left the park and went over to our inspection appointment. Dylan told us it wouldn’t take more than a half hour so we went for a walk thinking about those darn marker/clearance lights. Upon returning, we learned that the vehicle did not pass but it was not due to the marker lights – it was the front driver’s side tire, a bit worn and the front bearings were loose. He recommended we head over to Typrepower around the corner to get a new tire and the bearings fixed and come back anytime to get the inspection certificate and that we didn’t need an appointment to do that and confirmed we had 14 days within which to get the repairs done. We went straight over to the recommended shop and they said they could have a tire by morning so to come back tomorrow at ten to get is all done. Great.
We returned to the park, got settled, paid Vern and had a quiet cool night with no rain. So nice not to have to use the AC and still be comfortable.
Thursday morning, we had lots of time so Fran defrosted the freezer, cleaned the AC filter and other chores and some working time. The sun was shining this morning and all seemed right with the world.
We arrived at our appointed time and the work was done within an hour; Fran left upon arrival to get some steps by walking to the grocery store to get a couple of things 5km / 3mi away. Doug went for a walk and met her back there around 11 and he returned to the inspection place to get the Blue Slip – done!
For more photos from the time above, click here.
We left Coffs Harbour after shopping the next day and made our way south to Waterfall Way – a scenic road heading inland with, you guessed it: waterfalls.
We stopped in the small town Bellingen to get some info there and then carried on to Ebor Waterfalls – the main one we wanted to see from the photos we’d see. The drive took about an hour up a winding road that took us to over 1300 M / 4265’ and it got quite a bit cooler. Roadside, were two waterfalls that we couldn’t really stop at:
Sherrad Falls:
and Newell Falls:
Ebor Falls was the best of the lot. There is a large lookout to the Upper Falls (which are the ones we wanted to see) and you are quite close.
You can see we put jackets on! You can then walk 50 m further to get even closer but not a head on view.
There are lower falls but not as photogenic we thought from the photos and you quite a distance from them. We turned back eastward to the coast and stopped in Dorrigo which had this weird sculpture:
This got us to Dangar Falls – quite spectacular as well:
Here’s a “slo mo” video of these falls:
We spotted two emus in a field on our drive back eastward. Here is where there are more photos of our drive along Waterfall Way.
It’s now almost 3 and we’ve had enough so Fran found us a “by donation” rest area near Fernmount with toilets and we pulled in there for the night. We spent about an hour taping in preparation for the painting touch ups we wanted to do to cupboards etc. tomorrow morning then chilled. We had a pretty quite comfortably cool night and we up on the early side thanks to the birds.
After morning routine, we got out the painting supplies and got to work. Doug did the small roller and Fran used a small brush – there were lots of areas too small for a roller. We were done by 9 am and we have to say it all looks nice and fresh. It was too bad we had to buy a whole litre/quart of paint as we barely used an inch of it! But since we needed perfect colour match so as not to have to paint everything, we couldn’t buy smaller.
We left Fernmount and made our way to Hat Head National Park. Hat Head is a long skinny park that stretches 74 km along the coast from one point to the next one with beaches, rocks and hikes. We had thought about doing the hike around Naked Island but when we got there, it seemed like a bit much from Fran’s knees and it was rated quite difficult so instead we enjoyed the rocky shore views:
We did do the walk over to the nearby pedestrian bridge over the Korogoro Creek. It was shallow there and the water was clear enough to see the fish below.
As we’d done over 100 km / 60 mi already, we decided to head to Kempsey to an inexpensive campground at their showgrounds. For $30 a night you get power, water, hot showers, and there’s a basic camp kitchen. We booked two nights as the cell reception is good here (it’s not been great the past couple of nights) and Fran wanted to get some website work done. It was another sunny day although rain was forecast for 2pm it but didn’t show up till 10 pm and it did not last all night. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.
We both went for walks after brekkie and then read in the shade of our awning for a while before going in to get online and have dinner etc. It didn’t seem to rain much overnight and we awoke to a mixed bag of a sky in the morning we rain forecast once again.
Doug went for his long run and was very happy having done a half marathon, and after her morning routine, Fran went for a walk and managed to get a lot of website work done today. It didn’t rain today until after dinner and more at bedtime.
Sunday, we awoke again to mixed skies, some sprinkles and large periods of sun; still unsettled in other words.
We waited until nearly ten to leave as we wanted to check out the Aboriginal Art Gallery in this town. Upon arriving there, we met the woman who was to work there that day but no one had arrived to open the attached museum yet and that’s how she gets into the gallery. She made a few calls with no success and after waiting around till 10:15, we gave up.
On Friday, Fran had made reservations for us at one of the campgrounds at Myall Lakes NP about 150 km south of here so that was our destination today. It’s pretty much wild camping with toilets but as it’s a national park, it has to be booked ahead. It’s between the ocean and one of the large Myall Lakes and it could be out last camping spot on the sea in this country. We arrived around 1:30 after stopping once to make and eat brekkie at a rest stop. The sites are a decent size and we paid about $17 a night for a site. Other than the aforementioned toilets, there are rubbish bins and an okay cell signal.
After setting up, we walked across the road in front of us to check out the overflowing lake and then Doug decided to sit and read and Fran needed steps so she went to check out the beach on the other side of the main road.
It was a hike over the dunes to a lovely view:
The beach is a bit sloping but clean and has nice sand with shells at the high tide line. The water is many shades of blue/green as the surf comes in and it’s quite hypnotizing. It is, unfortunately, cold so the idea of going in was not appealing and the signs warned of a drop off and strong current anyway.
The sun did set over the lake around 5:45 (remember the ocean is on the east):
and we had a quiet night under a full moon. As when we booked, we could only stay one night at site 74, we had to vacate it by 10 am the next day but couldn’t go into our new site (28) under early afternoon. As we wanted to spend some time at the beach today, we went over to a day use parking area around ten and spent a couple of hours on the beach under our umbrella – Fran did a long beach walk too:
We left our chairs and umbrella on the beach while we went to have brekkie in Matilda around 12:30 and then returned. The beach is pretty empty – the odd couple of people have come to check it out, but most did not stay except one couple to the south of us.
At one point a number of birds gathered at the water’s edge for some reason or another:
When we returned after lunch, the wind had picked up and by 2:30 we decided to pack in it before we lost our umbrella. We drove back to the campground and got parked in our new spot and headed over to the lake to sit there where there’s no wind. There’s actually a sandy beach too!
We read for about an hour and called it a day.
Sunset on the second night over the lake:
We left Mungo Brush campground in the Myall Lakes NP early as we had a few things to do today enroute to Sydney.
For lots more Hat Head and Myall Lakes Np’s photos, click here.
First we stopped to pick up a free suitcase (Doug found a few on FB as we are going to ship some things home ahead of us) and then we went to a place in Newcastle where they purchase used RV’s to get a price if that’s the route we end up going down. (We weren’t all that impressed but it’s an option if we can’t sell – they also didn’t seem all that keen about it as it’s more than 15 years old.)
By now we’ve about had enough so we stopped at a Woollie’s to get groceries (our cupboards are getting more bare each day as we finish up things) and then went only another 50 km / 30 mi to a large highway rest area where we’ll spend the night. We have an appointment tomorrow with a potential buyer before checking into a campground on the south side of Sydney where we’ve booked a week hoping that’s long enough to sell it.
Wednesday morning, we left the rest area after a pretty quiet night (especially for a motorway rest stop) and our usual morning routine. The sky was partly cloudy but by the time we reached the city, it was completely overcast and the wind had really picked up. Since our appointment is not until 2pm we decided to go check out a few beaches on Sydney’s east coast. The most famous, Bondi, is very beautiful and there were even in the water despite the cool temps of about 18C / 67F and the strong wind. We actually had to pull out jackets! We were concerned about parking down at the beach but there’s plenty of it and people don’t hang around long at $10.40 an hour!
We took a stroll along the beach and Fran did her usual putting of her feet in the water and then a rogue wave came up behind her (Doug claims he didn’t see it since he was reading buttons on her phone) and she got soaked up the waist! After changing (handy having your “house” with you in these situations) we decided to have an earlier brekkie and went to one of the cafes in the Bondi pavilion. It was very cool sitting outside but they had their propane heaters running and although that didn’t stop the wind, it did make it more comfortable.
Where we had brekkie at the Pavilion:
We took another stroll on the boardwalk after lunch and and saw lots of murals:
then drove away to see Tamarama beach
and Bronte Beach nearby – both within 2km of Bondi.
We moved on to Marouba Beach for our appointment and our so called potential buyer never showed up and stopped responding to messages. Some people!
This is the link to the photos for the part above.
We continued south of Sydney, south of the airport to the suburb of Miranda passing by Botany Bay:
arrived at our booked campsite in the suburb of Miranda, south of the city and got settled in. At Sydney Tourist Park we are paying $50 a night for power, water, bathrooms, Wi-Fi, laundry room, camp kitchen and good sized concrete sites. We spent some time online adjusting our ads (FB marketplace and some RV sales pages as well as Gumtree – an Australian online classified site) and then just chilled before dinner.
Thursday morning, we got a huge amount of laundry done and it dried pretty quick in the wind; it did sprinkle for about 2 minutes but then the skies cleared some and it stayed dry. Doug walked to pick up another free suitcase and some luggage straps and we began sorting through all out stuff to determine what stays, what we need for the next few weeks and what we can ship ahead to Kurt & Serena to hold for us.
We are finally getting “bites” on Matilda but no one has shown up as yet. You can check here out for more photos or our drive to Sydney.
Good Friday was a glorious sunny day and we decided to take the train into the city and go to the Taronga Zoo. It’s a holiday but the public transport is half price today. We had to walk a klik to get to the station, take the train downtown to a bus that took us across the Harbour Bridge to North Sidney to the Zoo. We wanted to come here to try and see any Australian wildlife we had not encountered in our trip.
We arrived around ten and stayed till one (having lunch early to beat the crowds). Being Good Friday so there are A LOT of people here – it’s been a while since we’ve been in such crowds.
We didn’t visit the entire zoo and we half to say it was a bit underwhelming. The very first exhibit was, of course, sleeping koalas:
We wandered through the African section:
then saw the lemurs through dirty glass:
and gorillas:
a fennex fox:
before making our way to the Oz section – even here there were not that many animals and often only one of each kind.
In the Asian sector we saw:
We skipped the reptiles section and the farm animals – there was no Americas section.
Fran had paid a little extra to get a “Koala Encounter” – this used to mean you got to hold a koala but no more at this zoo as due to all those big fires a couple of years ago, the number of koalas has dropped drastically in this state. That was okay with Fran as we often feel too much interaction with humans is not good for animals and holding them will stress them out.
This is where that happens – they have 4 stations with timed slots.
So at 12:45 pm she got five minutes with a ranger and two female sleeping koalas. She could ask any questions and take photos.
- Why do koalas sleep 18-20 hours a day? Their diet is not very nutritious; if you only ate celery all day, you’d have no energy and sleep a lot too!
- How did Koalas evolve to what we see today? They used to be a type of wombat; they adapted to climb trees for more food and voila!
Outside the “Encounter Area” were a few more koalas and one was actually awake – see the photo above.
This was a good way to end our visit and we’d had enough of the crowds and had seen enough – maybe ¾ of the zoo(?) and opted to take a slightly different way back. Instead of the bus (which had crawled in the traffic this morning) we took the ferry across the harbour and it was a super day to do this with the clear skies. We got to see the Opera House from the water and the famous Harbour Bridge. (BTW we looked into doing the climb on that bridge and they charge $400!!! so we’re not doing that).
After disembarking the ferry, the train station was a couple of hundred metres away. We grabbed a cold drink and it took two trains to get back. We’re not sure how much the transportation cost exactly as we used our credit card to “tap in and tap out” so we’ll see when we get the bill. Our understanding from the website is the max to get from where we got on to the zoo was $9 on Fridays (half of the Monday to Thursday price) so we’ll see.
It’s much warmer today 24C / 76F f and supposed to be in the high 20’s over the weekend but night time temps still drop to mid teens so it’s comfortable.
Here are more of the photos we took at the Zoo.
We spent Saturday and Sunday waiting for potential buyers to respond/turn up – it’s a very frustrating experience. One lady had come Friday, came back with her husband on Saturday only to learn he wanted an automatic transmission! How she didn’t know, were’ not sure.
Here in Sydney we are further south than we’ve been in a long time. It’s fall so the days are getting shorter; the sun comes up just before 6:30 am and sets by 5:30 pm. There is not much humidity here and when it doesn’t warm up a lot, it does feel like fall in Canada.
On Sunday morning another couple did show up but really low balled us and also said they wanted an automatic!
By Sunday afternoon, the other two we expected had canceled until Monday.
In the meantime, Doug had arranged with a luggage shipping company to ship two bags to Serena’s in Reno so we don’t have to haul them around on our way back. We got them packed, did the customs forms and attached the necessary labels. They are set to be picked up on Tuesday, arriving by the end of the week in the US. It’s not cheap by any means, but saves us hauling around two heavy additional suitcases on what could be at least six flights and paying the excess baggage fees on each leg.
The weather this weekend has been quite lovely – even a bit too hot! We reached into the 30’s C / 80’s F with no humidity and no rain! At night it still cools down enough not to need AC.
We wasted our time on Monday and Tuesday dealing with a few buyers online and by phone; one guy actually told us he was renting a one way car rental to come get it Wednesday and we spent all day waiting – when we tried to call later in the afternoon, he didn’t answer so we called on Fran’s phone and she gave him what for and he ended up hanging up – he also sounded drunk. It’s taking longer than we expected to sell, but at least we haven’t booked our flights as yet.
On the bright side, our suitcases for shipping were picked up Tuesday afternoon and will be at Serena and Kurt’s on Friday waiting for us. This did not happen as expected. Doug called DHL around 1 to get an estimated time of arrival only to learn that although we had a reference number, the pick up had not been “Booked”. WTH?
Tuesday was an on and off again rainy day with Wednesday was better with fewer showers. Our food supplies are diminishing so we’re trying not to purchase much more. So for lunch on Wednesday, we met over at Subway after Fran went for a pedi nearby and for dinner we treated ourselves to delivery pizza, buying large ones so as to have enough for two nights.
Side bar: We have heard from several people that they only look at the photos in these posts; that is perfectly fine but for those who do that, there are WAY more photos in the galleries than in the posts and they are available sooner. Check out the “Pics” directories from the home page.
Before we leave Australia, we’d just like to comment on the similarities between in and Canada:
- the vast, open remote areas
- indigenous peoples and the problems that stem from that
- colonization by the British
- most spoken language: English
- gun laws (which we drastically changed in 1990’s after a few mass shooting – the citizens agreed to this mass restriction)
- both are federal states and constitutional monarchies
- both nations have relatively small populations that occupy physically large continents (26 million vs 40 million)
- both are commodities producers
- both have a highly diverse population with Australia having 26% of its peoples born in other countries while Canada has 22%.
- Both countries have “plastic bills” and no pennies as well as $1 and $2 coins
- 90% of the population lives on the coast – compares to 90% of Canadians live within 100 km of the border!
- We have snow stakes in Canada on highways; here in Oz, they have flood markers
