Adelaide –  Sydney

We left Adelaide at 1400 after a rush around three Adelaide towers this morning.  

Leaving Adelaide we had to climb up through the Adelaide Hills and then the Mt Lofty Ranges, hard work for the troopie.    This was followed by some long downhill stretches through tree covered slopes that were full of autumn colours.  This M1, also known as the Dukes Highway, was quite an engineering feat as it wound its way through the hills. Eventually we reached Murray Bridge which as its name suggests was the crossing point of the Murray River , which even at this point (well downstream) was still quite wide and running well.  After this the road became a normal road with passing lanes every so often.

We headed for Keith and refuelled with 113 litres and then made for the camp site. A well laid out site with good clean facilities,  which is always a surprise considering that this is just in a tiny country community at the side of a main road.

An early start on Sunday heading for Ballarat, a relatively easy drive of 390ks on flat and straight roads, arriving in Ballarat at just after 1330. The caravan park was a bit small for us but eventually negotiated a decent sized site. Went to ring at the Town Hall, one of four Town Halls in the world with peals of ringable bells, the others being Adelaide, rang there on Saturday, Rockingham WA, where we we ring regularly and Manchester (where we don’t!)

Somewhere along the way we passed this …………………

Approaching Ballarat from the west the road takes you north of the Grampians to Horsham before turning south east again through Ararat.

We left Ballarat in 50–100 metres visability and persistant rain, must be in Victoria!  

This improved a bit as we approached the outskirts of Melbourne and by the time we were heading north on the Hume Hwy the weather had improved a fair bit and by the time we turned off to Glenrowan, where everything is Ned Kelly oriented, the sun had come out.   however, when we got out of the car the wind was freezing!

We eventually arrived at Beechworth our stopping point for tonight, the campsite being pretty high up in the hills.   Beechworth is quite an old town with some very attractive buildings.   Up here the trees are deciduous and as it is autumn the colours are fantastic.

Next day it was up the Hume Hwy to Albury, Wagga Wagga and Goulburn, passing through the Southern Highlands of NSW, the scenery is all rolling hills.

The caravan park at Goulburn was tired and in need of some tlc but it had power so that we could put the heating on!

On Wednesday Pat hitched a lift to Canberra and Yass whilst Roger took the van up to Orange by the most direct route.   It is a very scenic road (some of it unsealed) but it was quite hard work both for me and troopie with lots of climbs and descents, some of them in 2^nd  gear!   The 260 ks took me just over three hours but I was very pleased with the way the troopie handled the work.   However, about 15 ks out of Orange my fuel filter warning light came on and I thought I must have picked up some dirty diesel in Goulburn (easy to do in Australia I’m afraid).   On arriving in Orange I drained the filter but there was no water in it and it looked clean, so I took the troopie to Toyota who declared the filter to be very dirty but the fuel OK!   I probably need to have words with service agency back in WA, since the troopie had a 40,000 service before we left!  

Orange is high up in the Central Plains and in the morning we were confronted by a a very frosty landscape!   We’re not used to this at all!

The sun soon came up and burned off the frost but it had snowed on Mt Canobolas and that’s only a few 100 mtrs higher.   We were the first to arrive at Bathurst on this morning, one for the book! The new tower housing the bells is, architecturally, a very attractive addition to the cathedral.  After a quarter peal we set off again to drive through the Blue Mountains.

This part of the journey was a relatively short hop (but with a couple of steep climbs) to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains.    The mountains scenery is spectacular and difficult to do justice to, particularly from a moving vehicle.

Katoomba was to be our last night stop before Sydney and we had a sort of signing off dinner at the RSL Club in the town.

It turned out that Katoomba was even colder than Orange and in the morning we had to scrape the ice of the windscreen!!

Fortunately, we were moving ‘down the hill’ to warmer climes on Friday but before we left Katoomba we nipped down to Echo Point and took some pictures looking out over the Jamieson Valley and the Three Sisters.    This is a spectacular view in the sunshine (as Sparky will remember) but with the early morning low cloud ….!

  So Then we set off for the last tower of the tour, Castlereagh, another first for both of us and another quarter.

A short hop to Pitt Town where one of the Castlereagh bellringers has kindly allowed us to leave our caravan in her paddock.

Having sorted out the cases and cleaned out the fridge, etc, etc, …………………, we were able to make the short (and lighter!) trip into Sydney to stay with our friends in Epping.

We have a busy weekend ahead of us but then a few days R&R before planning a more leisurely return journey to WA.