Made it up and out at the crack of dawn, well before dawn actually, to the airport and onto our 6:30 am flight! Yuk! But we knew we had a huge day in front of us driving half way to Sydney from Brisbane. It was a very long day, but it was great driving down the coast through all these little seaside towns and farm country. The coastland is lovely, but it quickly turns in to farmland. Then the farmland turns into semi-tropical pine forest that also has banana plantations scattered through them! After a while the road then follows a river around for kilometers – just a hugely varying landscape the whole day.
There are great signs all along the roads- watch for Kangaroos, Koalas Wombats. Signs telling you that there is “crossing stock” on the road. A kilometer didn’t go by when I wasn’t on a Koala, Roo or Moo lookout! Fortunately we didn’t see any – live or road kill.
One thing we did notice here is that they are big time serious about speed limits, fatigue and “drink” driving. For speeding they use cameras that take your picture and then your ticket just shows up in the mail. People pay attention, that’s for sure. We have not seen hardly anyone speeding, or driving crazy. They all go the speed limit or a little above. And rightly so, most of the time the speed limit is 100Km so it’s not like they want you to go slow!
The fatigue thing is big here – we guess because the country is so huge and you do so much driving. Everywhere on the road are big signs tell you to stop every 2 hours to rest, revive, survive. They even have driver reviver stops where you can get free coffee. Big banners are placed up and down the road asking you to “Please slow down”.
Also drink driving is under intense scrutiny over here. Every day there are articles in the newspapers about offenders, on TV there are shows about it. Apparently Easter weekend is a huge drinking holiday here and they stepped up the media because of it.
The schools are all out for 2 weeks this time of year too, so there are lots of folks out and about on holiday. Not too crazy the places we’ve been, but people have said that it’s been very busy.
Other things we’ve seen on our drive: The Big Prawn (huge prawn in the lawn of a restaurant of the same name); The Big Banana (huge banana over the entrance of the Big Banana gift shop); Big Rock (a restaurant that had a roof that look like a huge rock). They like BIG things here!!!
Arrived in Port Macquarie after our all day drive. The hotel was awesome. Huge one bedroom apartment looking right out at the water and the small beach in town – it’s a shame we’re only here for one night. Wandered through the little shopping town and hit the bottle store (OK – Maggi and Richard stop reading) – found the deal of the century on box wine. Lindeman’s no less, 4 liter boxes of wine for 7.99 Aud – that’s like $6 US. Yeah, I stocked up! Hoping to find more bargains like that to keep me in wine for the entire trip!
Dinner at the restaurant downstairs at the hotel/apartment complex, salt and pepper calamari salad to start, then mahi mahi with garlic parsley sauce and Mixed grill which had enough meat for both of us – lamb chop, filet, prawns, sausage, bacon with a seeded mustard sauce that was so good I had to ask for the ingredients. All excellent – we shared everything and were very happy.
Oh – another thing now that we’re in New South Wales, lots of restaurants have BYO where you can bring your own wine and pay a small fee (4 Aud at this restaurant) and drink your own. You also have to look out for restaurants that aren’t “licensed”, they are BYO only.
That’s it for our long day’s drive. Tomorrow the Hunter Wine Valley and Blue Mountains.
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