We’ve made it to Sydney!!

I’m writing this showered, warm, on a fully charged laptop and have the dull sounds of other people and traffic around me. We’ve made it to Sydney folks - how good is that?


We’re staying at the Lane Cove Tourist Park, run by NSW Parks and Wildlife. The park was recommended to me by Andrea, who travelled around Australia last year with Ash and daughters Kelly and Gemma. She thought the park was fantastic!! They call themselves the ‘best kept secret in Sydney’ and we can see why. We are about 10km north of Sydney CBD, near buses and trains and at the same time are smack bang in the middle of Lane Cove National Park.


The four of us went on a spotlight tour of the park tonight with a park ranger, including a short talk beforehand and then getting to see brushtail possums, a bandicoot, three kookaburras, native ducks, huntsman spider egg sacs and a couple of brush turkey mounds. All this for free!


A woodfired pizza “shop” runs from the park – I write “shop” as it is like an open walled kiosk, but very small with two men preparing, cooking and delivering pizzas with a pizza oven taking up most of the room. Max has created his perfect pizza from the options (basically double cheese and lots of meat) so we might just give one a try before we leave.


We drove through Richmond from the Blue Mountains, which reminded us a lot of Bunbury. When we got closer to where we are staying we came across this beautifully fenced park and playing fields which turned out to be ‘Kings College’ – we remember this being the most expensive school to send children in Australia. The grounds were simply enormous!


Harry was in the wars when we first got here today as he had a big fall from his bike. Poor thing landed on his hands while still moving which ripped his fingers open, and then the handlebars must have squashed his fingers as they are all bruised. In retrospect it was a bit funny (sorry Harry). Once he crashed he let out a massive squeal followed by sobs. I heard this but as I tried to find him the volume of his cries kept decreasing. This went on for a while as Harry has sensibly come back to our campsite and I was just following on behind. We'd been going round in circles trying to find each other.


I’m looking forward to exploring tomorrow!