It has finally happened, I have the lurgy 😳, I suppose it had to happen and luckily I am currently in Queenstown, South Island and I had planned to stay here for 3 nights and I can chill.
I have been on the go and possibly putting too much pressure on myself to keep doing things constantly, probably not eating the most healthiest and it was very cold at 15,000 feet – more on that later!
I started my first road trip out of Sydney and JoJo told me to take a cool bag and a couple of ice packs – I thought she was mad but I have to say, it was a really good idea!! She had taken me shopping and I bought the basics – milk, bread, butter olive oil etc, and then I bought fresh stuff as I went on and stored it all in the hostel fridges – what a genius plan – thanks JoJo. I had bought some great spices by the ounce in Perth which kept me going. Needless to say that I got a bit bored with this routine, mainly meat or fish pan fried or roasted depending on the facilities available, and salad. Toast for breakfast and then some form of lunch where ever I was at the time. The shopping centres have small food courts so I selected whatever was the better – Chinese or sushi mainly. Most of the other stuff is friend – fish and chips etc, lovely fish but fried food all the time, or burgers, isn’t great. What’s turned out at times is I would check out of my accommodation by 10 then go and find breakfast – at home I used to have overnight oats with nuts and dried fruit which I really miss and thing that I will look into doing that from now on – eggs, avocado on bloody everything, toast and sometimes bacon. Then maybe have an ice cream or BOOST (obsessed by the juices) and then dinner. As I am sure Rajiv and Ajay may recall, being on holiday meant being able to have ice cream every day, but I soon realised that this was not sustainable on a 6 month trip 🤦🏻♀️.
Basically I got lazy and have possibly lost my cooking way and need to get back on track.
By the way, a slight typo above where I say the food is friend, I meant fried!!
The hostels are fine and they provide good kitchen facilities but it’s us lot that stay there that make the mess and don’t clear up after ourselves! Not everywhere mind, some places have loads of signs saying clean your own dishes etc but a couple of the kitchens have been awful, and when I talk to the staff, they think it’s really bad too! I really don’t understand people, mostly the younger ones, sorry to say, that just leave their pots and pans for the cleaners to clear up! OK, rant over!
So, above is a graphic showing the stops on my road trip, there are no name labels but I can detail those. I started in Sydney on 8th December and finished in Cairns on 2nd January. I had done a lot of research before hand as I wanted to book everything due to it being high season, I could change the accommodation up to 2/3 days before but at least I had something sorted
There were a lot of similarities of places along the way so I won’t bore you all with the same old stuff, just some highlights and observations! I really wanted to get in to the East Coast of Australia as I think that I am a beach bum at heart, I am a bit of a water baby, love the ocean, swimming, sailing and exploring what lies beneath. The pull was the Great Barrier Reef and what it had to offer – the rain stopped some of that but not all!
Looking at the map now, I went to loads of places, looking back, maybe I could have missed a few but hindsight is a gift and also the weather was not kind. If I had a £ for the amount of times I was told ‘this is unusual, it’s not normally like this’, I could have paid for my car hire! BUT what an experience!
As I said earlier, I researched the route extensively in the months before booking, I read every road trip guide out there, I could have asked AI to sort a route for me but where is the fun in that?!
I did take a picture of the dashboard but I think that I will as those of who would like, to guess what my final KM total was!! I will put the final total in my next post!! No prizes though for the right guess – sorry 😎.
My itinerary was Sydney > Port Nelson/Stephens > Port Macquarie > Coffs Harbour > Byron Bay > Gold Coast/Coolangatta > Noosa > Hervey Bay > Rockhampton > Mackay > Airlie Beach > Townsville > Cairns.
My first stop in Nelson Bay/ Port Stephen’s it rained so couldn’t do much, it was a lovely area though with lovely beaches and supposedly a good spot for dolphin spotting!
Coffs Harbour was a bit wet too but I was able to get to a real lovely village called Bellingen, very arty, retro and a bit touristy but nice to see!
See what I mean about bacon and avocado!?
It looks really sunny in those pictures, I may have inserted the wrong ones 🙃.
So from Coffs Harbour, I was heading north towards the Gold Coast and I had read about a town called Woolgoolga, and why it really interested me is because it was the site of the first Gurdwara, Sikh Temple, in Australia.
Woolgoolga was an early centre of Sikh migration to Australia. I went to the museum and there was a lovely Sikh gentleman who told me the history behind it all. Sikhs had migrated to New South Wales and Queensland prior to the imposition of the prohibition of non-European migration under the White Australia Policy in 1901 and many of them then led a marginalised life on the north coast of New South Wales and in southeastern Queensland. They were initially asked to come to Australia as they were farmers and the area needed help with the banana plantations. Some Sikhs began to settle in Woolgoolga during WWII because war-time labour shortages led to a relaxation of the previous prohibition of non-European labour in the banana industry. After the war they were able to acquire leasehold and freehold banana plantations. Woolgoolga had the largest regional Sikh/Punjabi population in Australia, and they are now said to own 90% of the banana farms and are also diversifying into blueberries as banana plantations fared better in Queensland. The museum was great with pictures of the original settlers, and then I went into the Gurdwara. The tradition for Sikh Gurdwaras is to feed anyone and everyone who would like to eat, this is called Langar. Everyone volunteers to cook and food is available all day, anyone can come and be served a traditional Sikh meal. When I was there, I saw lots of non Sikh’s enjoying the food. I did not take pictures of the Langar hall as I thought it might be disrespectful.
I came away and reflected on the hardships that the original settlers had to endure, to be asked to come and farm land then be told they could not be legal as they were not white. And during all this time, the Government were sending British people. The community seems settled now and they should be proud of what they have achieved.
After the temple, I made my way to Byron Bay, it is supposed to be THE place to be, although I think that since the England team went to Noosa, that is now THE place 😎!
Byron is one of those places where everyone is young, beach beautiful and like to be seen – it is a very nice town, lots of things to see and do with good food and shopping. I will sound like a really old, frumpy woman now and I am not going to make excuses for it, but the skimpyness of bikini’s is not good! There were some really young girls, and older ones too, who were wearing basically string and a napkin – not on the beach but in town! Laugh as much as you want at me but I really do not want to see boobies and bottoms – both back and front ones, when I am going to buy pizza. We are trying to stop women being objectified and I am not sure a girl riding a bike with very little on helps. I am recounting something that I actually saw here, and maybe yes, there is envy in that I am approaching 60 and can never wear a bikini again (not that I could before anyway), but we are living in a world where everything and everyone wants to be beautiful, to be the biggest Instagram hit and want the adulation of our peers. I will stop there as I get really wound up about it!
What I did enjoy was meeting up with a friend of a friend, Roger and Alaine are a lovely couple that live about 1 minute walk from me in Newlyn and are on the Newlyn Flora Group that I volunteer with. Roger’s friend Stuart lives near to Byron and he very kindly put us in touch. It is really nice to know that if there is an emergency, I know someone locally. Stuart and I met for a drink and we exchanged Roger and Alaine stories!
Another very amusing thing happened when I went in search of ice cream. I was sat out on the terrace with whatever ice cream I had chosen and I looked across and there was this group of 4 ladies who had obviously got together to exchange gifts and it reminded me of the Taunton Girls and the FWC – you know who you are – and they started exchanging gifts…..
I am not sure that all of you will appreciate the hilarity of this, but one of the ladies, they were all older than me, said that her daughter had a job lot of these shopping bags, they were the net type that were around years ago. They then, obviously after a few vino’s, likened them to hair nets and proceeded to put them on their heads!! They were laughing hysterically and I thought how amazing that these friends were sat having a laugh and taking pictures of each other. I went over to them and told them that they had made my day and reminded me of my mad friends! They thought that I was going to complain about the noise – ME????!! It turns out that they met through ukulele lessons – no joke! I still smile about that!
Adventures of Nisha 