There has been little action on the grey nomad blog for a while. This is a reflection of my slackness rather than a lack of grey nomad action on the ground. Since our Troopy trial run last year, we have done numerous weekends away and two longer trips.
The first was a five day south coast adventure for my birthday. We started in Canberra (I had to do some work and Luke checked out the National Bonsai Collection) and then travelled down towards the Snowy Mtns. Instead of turning right up to the peaks, we went left and down towards the coast. Our first night was in South East National Park - a massive park that I think we were the only ones in. Our only friends for our stay were wombats, echidnas, heaps of birds and wallabies. We decided to go exploring and 4WD'ing along some of the fire trails. This is where we learnt a few important grey nomading lessons:
1. Ailsa is a granny driver (well we kind of knew that already)
2. It is advisable to have a map
3. It is even more advisable to have recovery gear
We got ourselves a little bit stuck on a road (and I use that term very loosely) that we didn't really know where it was going. Obviously all was well in the end, as we are still here and I am writing this blog 4 months later (no it didn't take us that long to get out).
After South East NP adventures, we hit the NSW south coast for surfing and relaxing. The highlight was a great surf at Mollymook and a birthday dinner at Rick Stein's Bannisters. This was the best meal Luke and I have ever had and we are devastated that we won't be able to afford to eat there on our real trip and $500 a week budget - well, unless we don't want to do anything else at all one week!!
Out other extended trip was to the Gold Coast for Christmas. This was a lovely relaxing, albeit rainy trip. Troopy did her share of the work by transporting a whole lot of stuff up to my Mum's for storage. We took our time coming home and would recommend stops at the NP near Yamba (name escapes me right now) and Myall Lakes NP. We would not recommend travelling on the day before the end of the Xmas break (traffic and highway conditions in NSW - I needn't say more).
Anyway, photos from the above trips are on flickr (link below) ... (but it's been so long, i have forgotten my flickr login, so it's a new account from the previous photos - I really am a crap blogger!!!)
Photos
