Australia East Coast by Campervan

Day 1 Sydney
Had our last Ramen at Tokyo airport. Arrived in Sydney at 6am after 10hours flight. Slept one or two hours maximum. Seen three films, one decent (film italiano con la Cortellesi, ottimo si chiama “Scusate se esisto” da non perdere soprattutto per le mie amiche architetto Eugi e Yugi), two bad romantic films that kept me calm during the flight though. We then got our luggage still half asleep, entered security, (I got my stamp while Bruce didn’t since he got in through the electronic passport desk!) got our sim card (much more expensive here than other countries) and got to our hostel called Wake up! Sydney in Central. We got there too early and couldn’t check in for a few hours. We killed the time looking like zombies, went to a library and bought the Oz Lonely Planet and the one for South America. For the rest of the day we snoozed and did the laundry, until it was time at 5pm to meet Ian and Rachel, our friends that we met in Halong Bay Vietnam a month or so ago! Had a lovely evening with them, we met at the Sydney opera house which is so stunning, and had a drink near the harbour outside despite the rain. We then walked and had another drink in the area called the Rocks along the old 200m wooden walkway near the wharf theatre and then had a lovely (and huge!) Italian dinner at Cafe Sopra at fratelli fresh (we think?!) – they were so kind they insisted to treat us to this lovely meal, THANK YOU and it was so amazing to catch up with them and meet Rosie their daughter. Despite a bit of rain we loved to see Sydney at night, the harbour and rocks areas are so beautiful. A great intro with great guides, which made us look forward to our 6 days here at the end of our Australia tour!

Day 2 Port Stephens
We got a bus from the hostel after a nice breakfast in the bar downstairs (and free coffee!) to the Jucy headquarters where we’d pick up our horrible tacky Jucy van that we named Britney in honour of the queen of tackyness. There are many campervan options that we found on this website which is good to compare, and Jucy resulted as the cheapest for us especially since it had no extra fee for picking up and returning in two different locations.
It wasn’t too encouraging that they had to show us three vans before giving us one – as during the demonstration of how things work, the first two fell apart… Ridiculous and also a bit worrying! We got Britney in the end, and started driving after stopping at a supermarket to get food and drinks for the coming days. It’s pathetic how excited I got about finally buying fruits and veg to cook!!
By the time we did everything we left at about 1pm and drove an hour before stopping for lunch and petrol, we had a nice lunch in a healthy fast food called Oliver’s. Crispy green beans instead of fries and tasty salads and veggie wraps. We then kept driving towards Port Stephens, our first stop where we stayed at Big 4 Koala shores, a lovely spot overlooking the sea and beach!
Had dinner cooked from the back of the van (where our kitchen is), nice fresh seafood mix and veggie stir fry with pesto! Very satisfactory to finally eat a home cook meal! A very nice campsite with good showers. Our friend Sam that we met in Namibia at the beginning of our trip did recently drive up the East coast by campervan too and gave us two great tips:

1. Wiki camps: a good database of campgrounds, caravan parks, backpacker hostels, day use area, points of interest, information centres and it’s user based and has reviews which makes it more reliable. The app costs about £4 but it’s worth if you are camping/campervan-ing across Australia!

2. Maps.mebasically a google maps without internet required! It’s free and you just need to download the map of the area before being able to use it, works even in airplane mode if you need to save battery! Thanks Sam for the super useful tips!
After dinner we had our first night sleeping in our cozy penthouse at the top of the van, we soon named it “the coffin” due to the too much space that we both had to move and to breathe. We survived.

Day 3 Port Macquaire & Coffs Harbour
We left early in the morning after a nice salmon and muffin breakfast in the campsite kitchen and drove to the Koala Hospital in Port Macquaire (2hrs drive) where they rescue Koalas that have illnesses, are blind and wouldn’t have a way to survive in the wild. In most cases they are able to quickly release them in nature, other times they have to keep them. We then had a quick look at Roto House, a typical aussie house from the 1800’s which is right next to the Koala Hospital. We then stopped at the town and had lunch at turkish place called Reyhana which was so delicious. Very big and tasty, I had the Pide which is a pita bread which tastes like pizza, with spinach, feta and minced meat (so good!) while Brucey had lamb shish which also was very good. The lady was also so nice that let us use her phone to call some of the places we have booked for the next few days to confirm. Bruce had to call his fishing charter that should go tomorrow from Coffs Harbour, but the weather is looking very bad, we already had a lot of rain on the road and overnight so they had to cancel the fishing because of strong winds, and Bruce was devastated about it! Unfortunately we don’t have many extra days in each place, so we can’t wait for the weather to get better as we need to keep driving up. It is the first time in our trip that we felt that we mis-planned, this part of the coast is so long and so nice that it would take much longer to do it properly! Anyway we kept driving to Coffs Harbour, had a lot of hours driving, Bruce drove for the first time, and we stayed at North Coast Holiday Park after too much driving and too much rain. It’s also quite sad the huge amount of dead kangoroos that you see on the side of the road… It made us be wary of driving at night! Once arrived we cooked a lovely steak and veggies on the BBQ plate in the kitchen, and had a nice bottle of Australian Shiraz to go with! We were in doubt on whether to go to the pub, since today it’s Anzac day (which stands for Australia and New Zealand Army Corp?) and apparently in pubs you can witness a betting game that involves two pennies, which is normally illegal but it’s allowed only on this special day (so we were told). I was far too tired from the drive though and we ended up renting a dvd of the latest Mission Impossible which we watched downstairs in the van before going to bed upstairs in the coffin.

Day 4 Lennox Head and Byron Bay 
When we woke up we had a look at Coffs Harbour’s famous Park Beach, where a few early bird surfers where hitting the waves and around them only desolate sand and a cloudy but blue sky. We then started driving towards Lennox Head, where we wanted to see the Tea Tree Lake. Before checking out the lake we had a quick lunch at Fishy Fishy where we had a nice mixed seafood (all local they claim) platter. Then the lake, which was beautiful, with lovely tea trees coming out of the water and giving the water that red colour just like a cup of tea. The drive left for the day wasn’t long, and we arrived in Byron Bay only half an hour later, and we checked in at Clarkes beach holiday park which was really nice and near the center. We got assigned a spot, and I then decided I’d try and change it, since it was very dark, covered in trees and as it got dark, on the trees I started to see some weird animals crawling on the branches that looked a lot like rats. I then found out that they were POSSUMS! But I was still convinced to change the parking spot, and so we did.
We also met a nice couple from Brisbane, Leon and Maxime who lent us the lead for power since we were paying for a powered site but without having the lead there was not much we could use the power for. We had a beer with them to say than you, and found out that they have never been out of Australia and only have got their passport recently since they haven’t needed it in so long! I then made a quick salmon and cheese pasta with cherry tomatoes in the shared kitchen of the campsite, and we then went out to the main road called (Dave French wash your) Johnson road and ended up at the Northern pub where we tried the local pacific ale called Stone Woods Pacific Ale and listened all night to a nice bluesy live band (called Marshall o”Kell). Bit drunk but definitely fitting in with the hippy, laid-back vibe of Byron!

Day 5 Byron bay

We had a lazyish morning after a couple of “chores” mainly hair related (a wax and a haircut, guess who had what) and then went for a stroll in the main beach where we ended up having a quick snooze, followed by a nice and healthy lunch at Dip before our lighthouse walk. The coastal walk called Lightouse trail was beautiful, can be done in either directions, and takes about 2 hrs if you want to take your time. Really pretty and strongly recommend – there is a reason why it’s number one thing to do in Byron on Tripadvisor. At the start we saw a big bird called a Kookaburra sitting on a branch 2 metres away  (video here) which was a cool start to the walk . We were spoilt with beautiful views, including coast, lighthouse, birds (a nest of baby swifts), surfers, and bottoms (no surprises this is hippieland and nudist could only be expected). On the way back to the campsite for a shower we saw a crazy 1 foot long lizard that looks normal when still but looks totally nuts when walking as she stands up on the two back legs like a T-rex! After a well needed shower we went for a tasty dinner at the Bowling Club, at a restaurant called the Green Bistrot where we ate a delicious Barramundi fish with sesame sauce over a bed of delicious mixed salad. We ended with a cinnamony creme brullee followed by losing at music trivia (pub quiz) aka winning shity records! The quiz was really fun, and we saw some real characters including old hippies and country boys with hats, crazy mustaches and long hair. When they read out the team that lost we were so relieved it wasn’t us, but then they realised the other team had the exact same score as us, so we had to share the defeat and also the prize for the shittiest team, some shitty records that we had to give back since we don’t really have space for LP in our bags!

Day 6 Noosa Heads
Had an Italian style breakfast with biscuits and coffee in the campsite kitchen, then said goodbye and thank you to our friends Maxime and Leon, who kindly recommended us the place to stay in Noosa Heads tonight, and we gave them back the power lead. We then set off up the coast, for another long drive today, 3:30 hours and 300km.
We stopped for an early (and greasy) lunch on the road and got to Noosa Head at 3pm. Checked into our campsite called Noosa River Holiday Park which was wonderful, overlooking the river and with a nice beach and lovely spots for the campervan with power and with cement underneath (which always means less sand/mud in the van the following day!). They’ve also been so kind to lend us a power lead without deposit since we are leaving too early tomorrow to get the deposit back.

Everyone here is so friendly and helpful!! We then had to go and buy some beers for our trip to Fraser Island tomorrow. We found out that supermarkets are not allowed to sell alchool here so we had to find a liquor store. I bought a ten pack of pale ale from Matilda Bay brewery called Fat Yak which I didn’t know yet but it was soon going to become my favourite beer! We then got packing for our 3 days trip to Fraser Island starting tomorrow at 6am! We can only bring a small backpack so we have to pack the rest and leave it at the Drop Bear office in Noosa Heads which is our tour company, and we will also have to leave Britney-The-Van in their carpark. Hopefully we’ll find everything where we left it when we get back!
After a shower to regain powers, we cooked our last pasta and had our cheap £4 prosecco in the kitchen area of the campsite which overlooks the pretty river. A lovely spot! Bed early in the coffin since tomorrow we have a 5:30am alarm! Yuk! Overall we loved travelling by campervan, even though next time we might upgrade to a slight better/bigger one. We really would like to come back one day to do the coast properly, stop more and (for Bruce) fish more along the way, and hopefully find less rain! Until next time, thanks Australia for this nice road trip, we are ready for Fraser now!

 

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