Day 4 - Gundagai to Melbourne

March 5th.

On the Hume Highway at least ...

Looking good ...

Trees still not got new branches and leaves after the Feb 09 fires ...

And some have ...

Houses still being replaced ...

At Yarra Glen, with Annette. A beautiful cafe with lots of lovely gardens and an old building.

 This is where we were when Debbie rang :-)

When we got to Debbie's, I took a photo of the odometer. 58 km from Yarra Glen :)
A lot of excitement and talking to do ...

Steve is settled in, and got himself two new friends ... :)

Annette gave us some home made tartlets to bring with us to Debbie's, and Buck was just wondering if that included him ? So as you can see we were in for a good time in Melbourne, with a planned meeting of some of the girls from Nuts4Digi, giving all of the shops in Sorrento a good looking over, to take place tomorrow ... Day 5.

Day 3. Around Sydney

March 4th.

A beautiful sunrise ... from poolside of the Motel we stayed at.

And what a glorious day it looks like it will be ... no rain ... at last.

On the Freeway at last, heading over to Blacktown area, to visit Nikki, and some of her family. Suddenly I started to tense up, knowing I was in the 'big smoke'. At least Steve knew the area we were heading to.

Imagine cutting through all of this rock, to put roads through, years ago, before bulldozing equipment !

We followed this car pulling this boat all the way, some 2.5 hours, from Hornsby to near Blacktown, Western Sydney. The man must have rocks in his head to go all that way to go fishing ! In the rain, at that ! The fine morning lasted, until we packed our bags back in the car to leave. Just when we crossed the Hawkesbury River it started to pour !!!
We got to Nikki's for morning tea and had a good old chin wag, and some laughs, at some thing's Miss Isla said, but she has beautiful manners for a little girl her age.
From Nikki's we travelled to the Blue Mountains, primarily to see the rock formation The Three Sisters. We were going to go to the Tourist Lookout, but Nikki told us you had to pay, and can get just as good a look from a turnoff before Katoomba, so we went there. She was right, too ! It was a glorious drive through all the trees just starting to turn yellow and red.

This is over a major river on the western side of Sydney, on the Great Western Highway, but just can't remember it right now. Must look at one of those maps ! LOL Steve tells me it is the Windsor River.

Some of those roads are pretty tricky going up the Range to Katoomba.

This is where we got to look at the Three Sisters, at Leura, before Katoomba, NSW.

The track has been cleared, to follow to look at the Valley and Three Sisters formation.

More clearing being done.

A sign to say there is a cliff ahead, on the building.

Another sign. Just beyond that rock is the edge !

There are the Three Sisters, and see the blue hue, that is why it is called the Blue Mountains.

A closer view ... and clouds, and no sun ...

Looking down the valley, and a little bit of sun ...

When they say cliff, they mean CLIFF !!!

A couple of adventurers, or suicidalists, we thought ... they had lots of ropes and hooks tied to their waists.

On to see how far we could get, towards Melbourne. Whatever we did today, we had less to do tomorrow, to reach Melbourne by late afternoon, with a stop off at another "nuts" home - Annette. If you look on top of these hills, there are a lot of windmills, on a wind farm. There were about 10 of them, but every time we tried to get a photo there was a bunch of trees in front of them ! LOL

 Near Bathurst, lovely and green. Wonderful roads, too.

Those of you who enjoy car racing will be familiar with Mount Panorama. This is the turnoff to all the excitement :)

Cootamundra - birthplace of Sir Donald Bradman.

We came across this set of traffic lights in the middle of nowhere, and we waited, and waited ... for 5 minutes ! We were wondering if they were actually going to change !

Just about to turn right, and join the Hume Highway, to go south to Gundagai.

Well, we got as far as Gundagai, NSW, and dropped in to say G'day to the Dog on the Tuckerbox, which is a Tribute to the Pioneers of Australia, which was NSW to start with. This was opened by the Prime Minister Mr Lyons in 1932.

See the signs behind the doggie :-)

I think the doggie hopped off his Tuckerbox and probably didn't read the signs !

Our home for the night, a well priced room, and FREE internet that WORKS !!!

Our alarm clock for the morning ... same as at home ...

So another day begins, and the last leg to Melbourne !!!

Day 2 - Singleton to Gosford

Day 2. March 3rd.

 Good morning, everyone :-) Sunrise, an hour earlier, because of daylight saving, and I am feeling it already. LOL It is 6.20am here.
We left Singleton, and drove towards Sydney. We are actually stopping near Gosford, called Kariong, to meet Marg, at 11am. She rang us when we were about an hour away on the Freeway, and was so excited ! We arrived at the motel at 10.30am so I took a look around, and a few photos. This is the view over Gosford from the Motel.

At the Motel I handed over a folder of family history to Marg, and she couldn't wait to find out if there were any skeletons in the cupboards LOL  mmm my lips are sealed ... then it was lunch time, so we followed Marg to the Mt Penang Gardens, and had a lovely lunch. She was still bouncing with excitement LOL We had waited so long for this day, constantly missing each other in our travels, since our paper scrapping days, till Marg designed a couple of pages and put them in the paper scrapping gallery.... well I was hooked, and saw the light and haven't regretted changing to digi, except that I have many boxes of paper scrapping items - some beautiful papers, and elements. They can be scrapped when the power goes off LOL

This is where we had lunch, and toured the Gardens afterwards.

This is how big the Gardens were. My first thought was how this map looked like a brain ! LOL

 Marg and Steve deep in discussion about something to do with plants.

This huge cactus was ready to flower, the next day, and if it had of been sunny, it would have made a glorious display for THIS day.

A beautiful smelling Ginger flower. We had our photos taken in front of this plant.

There were a few of these ponds, just filled with waterlilies of different colours and shapes.
So we looked around the gardens, and journeyed back to the Motel, where Marg had a "mentoring" look at my two scrap albums I brought, to see how her protege was progressing. I'm pleased to say she "approved". :-) So brings the day to a close as we said goodbye to Marg, for now.  Also, after Tea we went to our various amusements - Steve to Pay TV and me - well, the internet was not working on my laptop, so the Motel owner said I could use his, to get my "fix" of N4D LOL He was sitting opposite me when I was looking at the site and watching my face. Probably wondering what was making me smile all the time... let him wonder LOL
  Another day over ... tomorrow we meet another "Nut" and some of her family ....

Where do I begin ?

Going back to the 1st of March ...

Our trip started, by packing all our stuff, in the rain, more than we needed, as usual, but it's a long way away if you need it LOL I'm sure half of the car's contents consisted of maps !

Most of the week before consisted of heavy rain and flooding to the west of us, and it was moving east, so we decided to pack everything and get on the road, before we got cut off, on the northern side of it. The idea was we would try and keep ahead of it, moving faster than the showers, at least.

We set out about 6am and drove via Stanthorpe, Qld, through Tenterfield, NSW, and south to Tamworth, NSW, where we eventually left the showers behind and could get a few photos. As we had travelled this route a few years ago we did have some photos as far as Tamworth, so we start with what Tamworth is famous for  the Golden Guitar.

You can see how overcast it still was, and still spitting a little bit. Heading for Muswellbrook, and Murrarundi, which was as far as we thought we would get, but had a few hours extra of daylight, so we travelled on to Singleton. Bad mistake. Most expensive motels outside of Sydney City I think, as Singleton is well known for the Horsing and Wine industries, not to mention the Mining, and that was why we may have got the last room in town, because all the motels we tried were full, of miners that get their accommodation paid for by the mining companies. They get a "slightly" higher weekly income than me ;) and they can afford it ! 

After we unpacked what we needed, we went for a walk around the nearby streets, and came upon a Subway, so that was tea (and pretty much lunch as well) for the day. On our way to Subway we found the NRMA (car insurance company for breakdowns) and managed to get a few NSW and Victorian maps (just in case we needed a few more) and bought our tickets to go to the Taronga Western Plains Zoo at Dubbo, on the way back from Melbourne. I managed to BUY some 'not so cheap' internet at the said Motel and managed to log in to N4D, so the day ended happily, anyway, although still raining lightly outside ....  Day 2 to be continued

Sunset in Singleton, NSW.

Sorta Back ...

We are back from a fab-u-lous  visit to Debbie and Paul in Melbourne.
So much to catch up on, but this exciting news from Di for now ...

“We Rhyme” is a kit filled with 10 papers in harmonious greys, blues and pale greens and 28 coordinating elements. It’s available at DSO for $3.50 until Monday the 22nd of March then it reverts back to it’s normal price of $5.00.
http://digital-scrapbooking.org/shop/we-rhyme-p-3011.html

Contains
10 patterned and textured papers 4 ribbons and bows 4 flowers 1 butterfly 3 buttons 3 frames 1 lace bit scanned and extracted by myself 2 leaves 2 strings 1 musical notes cluster 3 swirls and waves 2 tags 1 photo corner


There’s also a new CU product out – Floral 1 at 30% discount until Monday the 22nd of March. That’s $4.20 instead of $6.00.
http://digital-scrapbooking.org/shop/floral-1-p-3014.html

Five gorgeous flowers extracted for you to create new elements or clusters. All png format at 300 ppi and quality checked. Can also be used for PU/S4O/S4H.
Here’s what Di's newsletter subscribers are getting on Sunday – a coordinating freebie with “We Rhyme”. You can sign up to Di's newsletter through the link on the right, to her Blog.


Some pages I made with this kit are shown here, too.

 Just love these little fellas :)

And so many photos yet to be shown and scrapped of these amazing Sculptures, near Frankston Pier, in Melbourne. The two other people, on the left and right of Debbie just happen to get in the picture, too. There were quite a few "bodies" to try and dodge when we grabbed our shots :) Most of them trying to get photos without US in them too, no doubt LOL  This page was created for Nuts4Digi's Sketch Challenge.

Hope to be back again later today, with some more of our trip way.

Bye for now, and have a great weekend !

Deb :)