Manly Beach, Sydney, Australia

Willie Nelson once wrote a song about being on the road again, I forget what it's called but it would probably apply to us. After the market in Bellingen we headed back on the road in our mighty Toyota Corolla Seca. Since Lara and I had been on the coastal road between Sydney and Port MacQuarie twice we wanted to avoid going on it a third time by taking the far inland road. That's why we left Bellingen and headed west for several hours to catch the New England Highway to Sydney. For the three hours from Bellingen until the New England Highway we drove along Australia 78, the Waterfall Way. The road is called Waterfall Way because of all the waterfalls along the road, or at least that's what the Lonely Planet - Australia said. Going from Bellingen westward we drove through several rainforests and saw a couple small waterfalls on the way. Since it was kind of early and we thought we had time we took a detour to Dorrigo National Park to go see another waterfall that our book recommended. Lonely Planet had a note about Dorrigo National Park that said, "It's well worth making the drive down to the Never Never rest area in the heart of the national park, from where you can walk to waterfalls or begin longer walks." We interpreted this to be the drive to the rest area from the main park area would take a little bit of time and from there it would be a short walk to some cool waterfalls, we decided to go for it. The rest area was only 10km (6 miles) from from the park area and it took us 45 minutes to get there! 1km past the visitor center the road turned into a dirt road that had been nearly completely taken over by the forest. Needless to say our Toyota Corolla wasn't built for this kind of driving. This was Lara's first experience driving in Australia and she wasn't too happy with it, but she did a great job. Once we got to the Never Never rest area the map there informed us that it was a 10km walk to the waterfall. We decided to walk around the forest but not make the big trek, since that would take us all day. We're pretty confident that the guys at Lonely Planet winged this write-up. Poor form.

Two hours after we started our detour to see a waterfall we were back on Waterfall Way. There were a couple cool little turn offs for waterfalls, but for the most part the waterfalls didn't live up to the hype. Continuing on the drive we stopped at a lavender farm that sold wine, go figure, and the Big Golden Guitar. Australians are serious about country music and we were in the heart of Australian country music. To honor their country music someone put up a big guitar. We didn't get it either.

We had hoped to get to the Hunter Valley in time to stop at a winery or two but we got in too late. We drove around the area but for the most part it was a dud. Hunter Valley is one of Australia's best and largest wine growing areas and we expected something similar to Napa, Sonoma, or even Livermore. There were a ton of wineries, but there was no town or interesting place to spend the night and try some local wines. Instead, we kept driving and got into Sydney around 8pm. We popped our tent and camped out near Manly Beach, where we spent some time our first night in Sydney.