On the way out of Adelaide we explored the local area a bit. We did stop at the Barossa valley brieflyas it is a renowned wine region, and after realising how expensive everything was, we left. Next stop was Hahndorf, a predominantly German settlement town which really liked to express just how German it was. Everywhere up and down the high street were bratwursts, beer houses, German sweet shops, strudel bakeries and Germanic music floating up and down the road from various establishment.
After Hahndorf, we started our epic trek to Sydney - a 15 hour drive across what is essentially...absolutely nothing at all.
Somewhere in this picture there are emus and a ball of tumbleweed. Pretty much the only things we saw for 15 hours. We did stop at a couple of 'towns'. By town I mean petrol station with a bakery and perhaps a couple of houses and a startled looking horse. We skipped across the South Australia and Victoria borders before trundling along New South Wales.
At night, we stayed at the actual town of Hay which impressed us by having a large camping ground and even a swimming pool! The swimming pool was loudly and proudly advertised as being Hay's most famous tourist attraction. Well done guys. Not bad for being in the middle of absolutely nowhere. This, incidentally, would also be our last night in the van!!
After a long and arduous trip, during which I'd managed to start and finish Bear Gryll's autobiography and still might have had time to learn Chinese as well, we pulled into Leura! You may recall this from the Blue Mountains blog post - I've updated that with details of what we did for the next couple of days while staying in Margaret and Daryll's mountainside house which they'd very kindly allowed us to stay in!
After 2 days in Leura adventuring around the Blue Mountains (see the previous blogpost), we drove into Sydney and to Margaret and Daryll's house proper!
It was cold. Charlotte wore her onsie and people were ice-skating at Bondi.
We were amazed by what then transpired. We met a French couple on our first day back in Sydney who came to look at the van. We met them at Tamarama (Bondi) and they took the van for a (terrifying) test drive in a way that could only be called...French. After managing to throw half the kitchen out onto the bed through some vigorous and enthusiastic cornering, they agreed to buy the van for $4000. Not bad considering we'd paid $3700 for it and then thrown about 10,000km onto it. Granted, we'd then spent a further $1000 fixing it up and making it awesome, but still. Not bad at all, particularly as we later found out people had been trying to sell their vans for weeks to no avail. We sold it on the first attempt, for a profit on the base value.
I also sold this, which made me sad:
We stayed with Daryll and Margaret for a few more days as we sorted our life out - we had to use the van money to buy flights, accomodation, bus passes etc and figure out a basic plan of action for the next couple of months. We stopped occasionally to play with the dogs - Minty and Winston:
Also, Minty can't walk up stairs properly. Watch this:
On our last day in Sydney, we popped down to Bondi again to chill at the beach before going back into town to meet Daryll, Margaret and Tim:
Margaret, Charlotte, Tim and Daryll.
They then very kindly drove us to the airport where we said out goodbye's and thank-you's, and jetted off to Perth!
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