Category New South Wales
Travelling South
Travel days are often tedious – up early, pack up, drive for hours, grab a quick lunch at a roadside stop, and press on. Arrive, figure out how to get in, unpack, familiarise yourself with new surroundings, shop for food. Rinse, repeat. Today was no real exception. It was gloomy, windy and humid, which made […]
I Love the Smell of Jet Fuel in the Morning … and the Feel of Sand Between My Toes in the Afternoon
There’s something of an aviation theme to this trip. In three short days, we took ourselves from the earliest days of human flight, to the latest in military technology. The RAAF base at Williamtown has a large collection of fighter aircraft on display, and their observation deck provides a means to view them in action […]
Newcastle Revisited
Many years ago, I worked for a mining company that had a smelter and research centre in Newcastle; I used to fly up reasonably regularly for overnight business trips. So I was interested to see what Newcastle is like 25 years on. A you’d expect, it’s larger and more modern, with less of an industrial […]
Worth the Wait
Thanks to the ever changing border situation, we changed our travel dates for this trip no less than five times; every time I did so, the owner of our Nelson Bay accommodation texted me with a friendly message to say “hang in there – it will be worth the wait!” She was so right. This […]
Up Up and Away (In Our Beautiful Balloon)
I woke at about 3.30am and didn’t really get back to sleep, anticipating the alarm. It was a clear, still morning. We got ready quickly, and by 5am were on our way to our ballooning rendez-vous. I could hardly believe it was going to happen. Formalities and paperwork dispensed with, we were divided into groups […]
Sunday on the Central Coast
Seven hours on the road to get to Cessnock passed uneventfully; we stopped briefly at Goulburn at the Grit Café which did very good gluten free burgers (and will probably earn a return visit); the Big Merino was as weirdly impressive as ever (though nothing will ever beat stepping off a Greyhound bus at 4am […]
Breaking Free
This trip felt like it would never happen – right up until Wednesday I wasn’t convinced it would go ahead; but when NSW announced another covid free day, it was finally time to pack up and head north. I booked the trip way back in June 2020, when it looked like Australia had collectively “flattened […]
The Grand Final
Not only was it the AFL Grand final (more on that later) but it was ours as well – the week culminating in the Australian Long Distance Champs today. We were back at Hill End, in the gold mining and erosion gullies of last weekend. I was quietly hoping for another good result, but as […]
Day in the Forest
We woke to light rain, for the first time this week. The radar suggested it would clear out during the morning, but it hung around until lunchtime, dampening conditions for the Schools Relays, but not dampening their enthusiasm. It’s always great fun watching them race so hard, hair dyed, faces painted, and barracking loudly for […]
Playing With the Big Girls
Phew – today we were out of the forest, and back into Sprint mode. In a moment of madness, I’d entered the Womens B course, the equivalent to the Senior Girls Schools Sprint course. At 3 kms and 27 controls, it was a bit longer than what I’m used to – but what the heck. […]
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