New Castle,Lithgow,Orange

Just an update of what we are up to and where we are at present. We made it as far as Newcastle and stayed in a motor camp called the Stockton Beach Camp which was situated right on the beach front. It was great lovely sandy beach with a couple of big break waters that you could walk out on. They had a rusty old ship that had sunk on the side of it and memorium plaque to all the ships that had been sunk in the harbour - amazing how many were lost. The city itself is set on a hill and really quiet cool - some neat architecture in the buildings. What really amazed me is that we complain how close the houses are built to each other today but it has nothing on the ones from the area when these Cities were born.

On Tuesday we headed towards Sydney then turned off just before entering the City and headed for the Blue Mountains. We had received conflicting thoughts on taking the car and caravan over this range of mountains but hey! it was no sweat to the Falcon (Go the Fords). Some very pretty scenery and lots of apples grown in the area which resulted in heaps of home industries selling home made apple pies etc. Very quaint and country-fied!

We got into Lithgow at about 2.30pm and decided to spend the night here - every one of you Aussie's that have told us the further inland you go the colder it gets - is dead right - man it is freezing here. We had to put a little bit of Kiwi ingenity into place as the pop-top part of the caravan has some permanent vents set into the top of the vinyl with only flyscreen over them. We went down down and bought some of that stiff plastic used to cover chairs then some self sticking valcro and made up something to stop the cold air coming in as it was like a doorway for ice-icles. Seems to have worked alright although I don't know how long the valcro will stick to the vinyl. Lithgow is a far dinkum! mining town - which is cool!

We are now in Orange today which is only about an hour and a half down the road - and set up camp there for a week. We are going to Bathurst on Sunday (here's hoping the Fords win or Mike will be in mourning for week after) and catching up with friends from Fielding on another day so that will be great. Hoping to take them to see the Janolan Caves - which are suppose to be brilliant.

It is great being back to doing whatever takes our fancy on the given day! I honestly don't know how we are ever going to click back into the 8.00 - 5.00 scene when the time comes - but will enjoy it for as long as we can.