The trip home

We headed off on Thursday morning for Sydney to meet distant Wellington cousins at Mona Vale. It was interesting navigating with a GPS which took us on the route I knew as ring road 3 many years ago when Mum and Dad lived in Gordon. We stopped for lunch at an environmental place at St Ives then spent a couple of hours with Ros before heading back into mad traffic congestion at Pymble around 4 pm. We were anxious to get out of the city as we had not planned where to camp but turned off the freeway SW of Newcastle and found a deserted National Park just on dusk. In the morning we had a nice climb up sandstone cliffs then tried a walk in rainforest at the end of the road amid campers litter. We had not gone far before leeches appeared so we retreated to a pleasant drive north with morning tea at Stroud, a pie at Gloucester and another stop at Walcha. Through Uralla and Armidale, we got to the Cathedral Rock campground in time for a late afternoon dip in a narrow trench of creek. We had an early morning walk and climb up the rocks before the long drive down to Grafton past about 100 motorbikes, stopping for morning tea at the Nymboida cemetery, lunch at New Italy and getting to Mullum in the afternoon for Mum's birthday. Then it was home again on Sunday.