Wow what a day :). After a quick stop at the factory, we made it to the airport with time for lunch . We had a good flight and landed in Sydney onetime. A very short walk and we found the courtesy bus that took us to collect our hire car at East Coast Car rentals. I had booked a small 4cyl Nissan but we were up graded to a mid sized Suzuki Swift. :).
It was surprisingly easy to find our way out of the airport district and onto the road to Wollongong and then on to Berry.
We had planned on finding a supermarket and a quick look at the Woolworth’s app showed one at Engadine, just off the highway we were on, so we pulled it to do a quick shop of “necessities ” …..milk, bread, butter, eggs, some fresh meat and vege.
We had heard reports on the radio that there was very heavy traffic at Kiama. We thought we might have dodged it due to us being a bit later than peak hour, but alas it was not to be :(. We were stuck in an 8km traffic jam that added an extra hour to our trip. We arrived at our cottage in Berry at around 7:00. http://berry.org.au/shipton/
After unpacking, a thrown together dinner of lamb chops and vege and we are in bed early, looking forward to a relaxing holiday.
We have a relaxing break planned in Berry, NSW. We passed through Berry on our last road trip over the Christmas break.
We were impressed by this quaint little town and decided we would like to look around a bit further. There is lots to see around Berry. It is just inland of Shoalhaven and Kangaroo Valley is just to the west.
Learn more about this lovely little town here…..http://berry.org.au/
Throughout 2008 I have been doing a few trips to Yamba for work, so it was a good idea to spend Easter in this gorgeous seaside town and have a look around properly.
For this trip we had a large unit at The Cove Apartments and was a nice surprise to be able to take Mick’s parents away with us.
There was a lot of relaxing and doing”not much” on this break. We took the ferry across to Illuka nd had HUGE hamburgers for lunch.
Each morning we were able to feed the visiting lorikeets.
If you have not been to Yamba, do yourself a favour 🙂
We spent a week in New Zealand to celebrate our daughter’s 21st birthday in September 2007.
We arrived into Auckland and found our accommodation at a self-contained apartment in the centre of Auckland.
We had not been in the apartment long when it got really foggy and we were amazed as a cloud literally went through the building. I was glad that I made hubby quickly close the glass door to keep it out. Even then, we could feel the temperature drop significantly. The fog was so thick we could barely see the building across the road. Thankfully it moved away as quickly as it arrived and the sunshine came out again.
As hubby had not been to Auckland before, I took him for a walk around town and showed him some sites, including a fun afternoon watching penguins at Kelly Tarleton’s
We had a lovely birthday celebration dinner at a local restaurant.
After the celebrations, we had decided to take a 3 night roadtrip from Auckland, up to Dargaville, across to Whangarei then back to Auckland.
In Dargaville, we came across a museum that showed all about the logging history of the area. It reminded us a lot of the history we had seen in Tasmania. Also in the museum is a display of the Indian motorbike that was the “star” of the movie “The Last Indian”
We checked into the local caravan park, where we had booked a cabin and had a look around. In the park, we found a cage with some cute black bunnies. Being Queenslanders we rarely get to see rabbits. We spent a pleasant few minutes feeding them grass and water crackers 🙂
Our caravan park was located on Bailey’s Beach, so we went to have a look. Bailey’s Beach is a lovely long beach and it was nice walking along it.
Leaving Dargaville, we headed cross country to Whangerei. The paddocks in New Zealand are so lush and green in comparison to our sometimes very dry landscapes. We took this shot of some very content sheep 🙂
Sheep
From Whangerei we headed south back to Auckland, checked back into the same apartment we had been at earlier, ready for our flight home the next day.
As you may have guessed from out mid-winter Tasmania trip, we both really enjoy cooler climates.
The closest we can get to “cold” is the Queensland town of Stanthorpe in the Granite Belt region.
We have holidayed in this region many times. Sadly, we have not ever had snow (missed out by one year), but we have had good frosts on a number of occasions.
Here are photos from a few of our winter trips 🙂
1: July 2007 This was our first trip to Stanthorpe and we stayed at the “Apple & Grape” Motel for just 2 nights. We had a lovely crisp weekend as you can see by the frost on the car 🙂
Driving around the region, we were surprised to see how dry it was :(. We were in the middle of a drought, but seeing dams so empty was sad.On one drive, at the top of a hill, there appeared to be a TRAIN!! ??? so of course we had to investigate. It was indeed a train. It was a dream of the owner to have a train. It is on the Harrington Glen Estate. These are the beginnings of what has now been turned into award winning accommodation.
Not far south of Stanthorpe is the Queensland – New South Wales border and the first large town in NSW is Tenterfield, home of the “Tenterfield Saddler” of Peter Allen fame.
We stopped at a park for lunch and saw this ‘weather rock”. 🙂
Of course we could not have spent the weekend in Stanthorpe without the obligatory Wine Cheese and Nibbles 🙂
2: July 2008
We went back to Stanthorpe in July 2008 to another frosty weekend. A cozy fireplace is always a lovely touch.
