Two Days of Traveling South

Our last two days of travel have been less than exciting – one by accident and one intentionally.

Yesterday we were late in leaving Port Macquarie after fiddling around checking some local sights and stopping at the supermarket. It was after 1100 by the time we were on the road. Our plan was to travel to Lake Macquarie with a distance of 270 kilometres and three hours of travel and this was was not quite correct.

We made the mistake of leaving the Pacific Highway and travelling down a road labelled as Ocean Drive.  It took us a lot time for little reward. We were hoping that it would take us through a number of beach towns that would give us some interesting coastal views. These coastal towns actually added to the time that we took as the speed limit through all of them was only 50 kmh. In the end, we did not have enough time to visit any of the beaches or scenic places.

I did use some time going to the lookout at Hawkes Head. The road finished at a carpark after driving up a very steep hill. The track was muddy and the lookout was at the top of a tower. It was really a complete waste of time as the view was limited by thick trees except for a small section looking back towards Taree.

Most of the road was very winding and littered with potholes and road patches. It was worse than any road on which we have driven in Victoria. In addition, every now and then we saw the wreck of a car that had the misfortune to fail to negotiate a bend. I’m not sure whether they were left as a warning to other motorists or only because the owner had not yet arranged for their removal.

We didn’t reach our motel in Lake Macquarie until after 5.00 pm. It too was unexciting as was the local Sports Club, where we went for dinner.

Today, we understood that our drive would be rather solid. We had to circumnavigate Sydney and most of the route would be on motorways. There were limited opportunities to explore any passing points of interst. To avoid the problem of yesterday where we chewed up too much time in the morning, we decided to belt along the road and use whaver time we had left to look around Ulladulla.

From just south of Lake Macquarie, the highway became a four lane motorway. Driving was easy and we travelled for over 200 kilometres (almost to Picton) without seeing a traffic light. One part of this route was through a nine kilometre long tunnel that had some interesting lighting in the middle.

We crossed the Hawkesbury River with its old road bridge and deep cuttings.

The first rest spot we found was well south of Sydney and we stopped for a welcome break (about 2 1/2 hours from departing Lake Macquarie). Most of the highway rest places in NSW are named after Victoria Cross recipients. This one was named after Frank Partridge and we have a distant memory of him appearing on an old B&W TV Quiz Show named ‘Pick A Box’ with Bob and Dolly Dyer.

The road south through to Kiama and almost to Ulladulla was another four lane road. We did stop at Kiama for lunch and a look at the lighthouse (along with hordes of other people).

We reached our stopover point at Ulladulla late in the afternoon after stopping at the local Woolworths store to buy some microwave dinners. These saved us having to drive back into town to buy something to eat. There were some oppresive looking clouds in the sky over the harbour and it decided to rain just after we had unpacked our things.

Our day ended with a nice sunset over Burrill Lake and the caravan park in which our cabin is located.