Heading north

It's been a while since our last post, so there is quite a lot to update you on, we'll try and summarise, so we're not here all day.

The buying car week had been majorly stressful for both of us, even in the RTA office where we transferred the car into our name, we were both bricking it that the guy was going to tell us there was some problem, or the car was stolen etc. After him making a couple of phone calls it was a done deal and we now offically own our van!

We left sydney and drove to the blue mountains. Getting out of sydney was a bit of a baptism of fire trying to get to grips with a gear stick on the stearing column. Adam was having a major stress trying to get the hang of the van, it's a bit like driving a tank, and the lack of power steering certainly doesn't do us any favours (except maybe beef up our arms a bit). In the blue mounains we only stopped for one night at a spot called perry's lookdown out in the middle of nowhere, we made our dinner by torchlight, and then settled into our first night in Bruce. It was suprisingly comfy, and we both slept really well.

The next day was a bit cloudy and instead of doing a bush walk we had breakfast at Hatters on the reccomendation of Adam's parents. We had a quality breakfast and were both really tempted to by a aussie hat, thought they were a bit over budget though! As it was cloudy we decided to hit the road and head to Newcastle. We knew we will be coming back to the bluemoutains at christmas so will have a proper explore then.

We didn’t quite make it all the way to Newcastle and as it was starting to get dark pulled into a national park to spend the night there, but the facilities were pretty rubbish, and you still had to pay, so we decided instead to just go to a caravan park and pay for the night.

The next day we made it to Newcastle and spent two nights sleeping in a car park by the beach! Not too glamorous but there were showers and toilets on the beach, so at least we didn’t stink. We also had the chance to buy another few bits for the van, a spare fuel can, jump leads, travel kettle and a huge box to put our clothes in to save having to drag our bags apart everday.

The travel kettle is worth noting because we’ve bought a power invertor to charge our batteries, mobile phones etc whilst on the move. We had already bought a kettle, but nearly blew up the van trying to use it. Our power pont can handle up to 150 watts of power, and we didn’t realise that the kettle took 2000 watts. Fortunately we only blew the fuse and obviously I payed enough attention to my dad when he was constantly fixing my car, and I was able to find the fuse and replace it!
We’ll update move soon, including our trip round the wineries of the hunter valley, but the internet café we’re in at the moment is rubbish so we’re giving up!! We’ll also upload some pictures for you.