Oz Circumnavigation: Out of NSW and into Queensland

This part of the journey led us out of Northern NSW, through Kempsey,Coffs Harbour on the coast and then Grafton, Casino, Lismore and Murwillumbah inland. The contrast was alarming has it showed the contrast between the luxury of coastal living on the South Pacific Ocean to the trials and tribulations of hard country living in a drought.

From our experience of the moment, given our mode of travel and thought process the counrty was a better experiece. Maybe if we were acting like tourists it would be differenet.

But after the interland of NSW it was back to the coast to have the joys of Tweed Heads/Coolangatta plus the Gold Coast.

Whilst it was impressive on the coast from the big building/money perspective - it just wasn't us.

Therefore we quickly moved off, the photographs below show none of the luxury associated with money, you can find these in the brochures and the quality will be much better than ours ; our views are more of the luxury one can see and feel, much of this is for free.

This is one of our typical stops is this convict built prison near

South West Rocks in NSW. Nothing new there you would think.

However having been closed down early in the 20th century was resurrected for world war one internees from Germany.

Their stories of life in that period were interesting and again extol the follies of war.

However the follies of not providing adequate support for one's partner is shown here.!!

From this happy scene you can see the internship at prison was not protracted. The waitress who took the photograph was an expert.

This was one of our nice evenings at a place called Sawtell.

Mike somehow managed to start the wine and biscuits first.

Not only was there the drinks but this was the view we witnessed for the next hour.

The Sawtell lookout was so good we went back up the next morning to have breakfast with this view.

Just to round the sequence off, this was the beach view with the breakers over the rocks, giving some perspective to the size of waves the surfers experienced.

Before leaving NSW we had the following 2 sights, firstly the new and impressive Sikh temple and in the same village since it was too small to be a town. This down and out temple, the story of which we no not.

This is very common in inland Queensland, the local shop. This one being at Crabbe Creek, where we used the postal facilities and bought 3 bottles of red for $5 each. "Gossips" make and great value for the quality.

This is the luxury we really appreciated, this was the scenes from another overnight stop.

No words the pictures tell all

Whilst the views were good, there is a ritual to perform each evening and Katherine here demonstrates the activity. Tea and Wine

Just to have you know this is real Australia we have some local friends to introduce - can anyone name the black Snake. Mike did not think to ask but went into reverse rapidly