I forgot to mention in the last blog that using the van for our trip to Sydney and beyond didn't work out in the end (you had probably worked that out when you read that we'd hired a Toyota) - sadly the van needed some work doing on it and understandably Debs was worried about us taking it all over the place. It worked out well though, and we enjoyed our drive up to Sydney.

Back in September, we flew to Adelaide to spend a week with Tim and Katie at their beach house in Victor Harbour. Aspen came with us all, and Katie's brother Luke joined us for most of the week too which was great. The Bunyips was just across the road from the beach and so Aspen was in her element all week, and to be honest so were we. We had a really relaxing time, taking walks along the beach, walking across the bridge to Granite Island (the waves were incredible, crashing up against the rocks), enjoying lovely dinners together and playing games afterwards, and a day of wine tasting in McLaren Vale. We all drove back to Melbourne on the Friday morning (leaving The Bunyips at six am) in order to be at home in time for the footy Grand Final on Saturday. It was a bit of a controversial match as it had already taken place the weekend before and ended in a tie, and so the whole thing had to be played again. Tim had managed to get a ticket for the match, and Katie, Simon and I went into town to watch at Federation Square where there is a permanent huge tv screen especially for events like this. The atmosphere was fantastic and the weather was beautiful - we spent a very nice couple of hours watching the footy/sunbathing (the sun bathing was mostly me actually).

We had booked a flight back to Sydney for the following Tuesday, and so with a couple of days to spare we went into Melbourne and did some more tourist things - we took a tour of the Rod Laver Arena (huge tennis venue for those of you who aren't avid sports fans) which was brilliant; we stood on one of the courts (and I lost a contact lens on the ground so I spent the rest of the day with authentic Rod Laver grit in my eye...). We spent a good few hours afterwards walking around the city (it's beautiful) and found several things to do when we go back for a week in November. On the Tuesday, Tim very kindly gave us a lift to the airport in the evening for our flight back to Sydney. When we were almost there, I remembered that Katie had told us something about the difference between Melbourne's Tullamarine and Avalon airports, and that it had something to do with one being for domestic flights and the other for international flights. As it turned out, we were at the wrong one, and so we had to pay $100 to change to the slightly earlier flight from Tullamarine as there was no way we'd be able to get to Avalon in time! Oops.

A week later, David and Victoria lent us their car for a few days and we took the tent with us into the Blue Mountains. It's only a couple of hours from Sydney, and we stopped for lunch on our first day in Richmond, a pretty town just outside the mountains. We were armed with a coolbag full of food, lots of drink, and a tent and sleeping bags. We went off the beaten track a little, into Wollemi National Park (we were looking for a Mountain Lagoon which was signposted for about 20km before the signs disappeared!) Unperturbed, we carried on and ended up on a very interesting and winding road through the forest, and then we discovered a route which would take us for several hours up through the park to Singleton and back round. The roads and scenery were beautiful, and we found a tiny homestead to stop for afternoon tea which was totally in the middle of nowhere but was very pretty and did excellent scones (we're so British).

Our map had several campsites marked on it so we had several options for somewhere to stay for the night, but in the end we weren't able to find any of them. We kept driving, heading for the next big town, and by about nine o'clock and in the darkness we finally spotted a tiny sign pointing to a campsite (Australians aren't big on large road signs - thank heavens Simon's eyesight is really good). When we reached the campsite (down a fairly long and winding road), it looked remarkably closed and there were no other tents, only caravans. We parked up and wandered around with our torch, but couldn't find anyone to talk to, so we went ahead and pitched our tent (I helped as well as holding the torch this time). We made ourselves dinner which we ate in the tent, and had an early night. When we woke up in the morning, we were surrounded by sheep (which was actually quite nice). We got up and had a look around as we didn't really get to see much when we arrived; the campsite was lovely although not much in the way of amenities, in the middle of a couple of large fields (hence the sheep). The chap who owned the site wandered over to meet us while we were putting the tent away and we had a nice chat with him. We offered to pay for our pitch but he wouldn't let us, and gave us advice about places to go for breakfast.

We stopped at a little place called Spencer for breakfast where the only shop was a cafe, convenience shop and petrol station all in one but it was a beautiful place, right by the river. We spent much of the day driving, and headed back down to Richmond, and then into the Blue Mountains themselves. Lunch (packed) was had at McMahon's Lookout, which was down the end of a 25km dirt track. The upside was that there was no-one else there and the views were incredible. We then drove through the afternoon to Katoomba to see Echo Point where the Three Sisters mountains are. We arrived at about four o'clock, and went for a wander along Echo Point, finding the Giant Stairway which consists of 900 steps cut into the mountain. It was a long way down, and once we'd got to the bottom we really didn't want to walk all the way back up again. A helpful man who apparently visits there all the time told us about a 3km pathway through the rainforest at the bottom which would bring us to another stairway to get back up to the top. It took us a good couple of hours but the walk was incredible, and we felt exhilarated (and knackered!) by the end of it. We treated ourselves to a nice dinner in town before finding a campsite in nearby Blackheath for the night, ready for a good night's sleep.

The next day, we drove by the Jenolan Caves to Kanangara Walls. We were stopped at some roadworks and got chatting to the stop/go man, and it turned out that he used to live down the road from us in Sudbury Hill - small world! Kanangara Walls was incredible and we walked along some of the lookout points and down to the Falls which were beautiful (you really need to take a look at the pictures as it's difficult to describe any of this trip and do it justice: http://cid-5d774445eca82dd2.photos.live.com/albums.aspx). We also climbed up to the plateau and along for a kilometre or so - the views were spectacular and it makes you feel very small to see the mountain range stretch out before you like that.

On our way out, we decided to take a more interesting route, part of which was marked on the map as "4x4 only". As we were in a 4x4 we relished the challenge and it was great fun - incredibly muddy and bumpy, and we had to drive slowly and carefully for quite a while. After a couple of kilometres, we ran out of dirt track and were faced with a river. The only way forward was to drive through the river, and on the other side was a really steep track which was full of enormous ridges. We definitely didn't want to turn back as it had been fairly bumpy, so we went forward - terrifying as it was - and just hoped that the car didn't get stuck because there was no way we'd be able to push it! The rest of the track wasn't much better, with some scarily steep bits where we weren't sure if the car would make it up or not, but after about an hour we found a normal road and followed our map to get out of the mountains. Unfortunately some of the roads we came across weren't on the map and we had to rely on instinct and a friendly farmer to find our way out! We found a much-needed petrol station in a neighbouring town and headed back to Sydney - a tiring but exciting way to spend a few days. Thankfully we had a week's holiday on the Gold Coast planned for the week after we got back to Sydney: sun, sand, surf and theme parks :)