Friday, January 9th

No Points

This morning, I found myself, not entirely unexpectedly, in Sydney. When I finally stepped outside the climate controlled hotel, the sticky, hot city air hit me like a brick wall. I picked up my new car and, like it is somewhat traditional by now, drove to a nearby shopping mall. It turned out to be a rather big and, worse, a busy one. When I found a parking spot on its roof, I had forgotten what I actually wanted. The only real need was water which I could get from a supermarket along the way.

So I turned around, went back to the car, and drove off towards the south. The road soon led by a beach. Disappointingly, it wasn’t white at all, more the customary yellow. But, boy, was it busy.

After a short shore stint, the road went back inland and through the suburbs. First they were city-like, with two storey shop buildings lining the road. They turned residential and shortly thereafter the road crossed the rather wide Georges River by way of the Captain Cook Bridge.

More suburbs and some complicated intersections later I arrived at the entrance to Royal National Park. Finally, the houses ended and the trees began. The road, however, remained busy. It wound down to cross another river only to rise again and climb into a plateau.

The forest was very dense with lots of thick undergrowth, something that had been missing in the west. The trees weren’t particularly tall, just high enough you couldn’t see a thing. There wasn’t any parking bays along the road either. This surely was a curious national park.

So I just drove along. I should have looked at the map instead because I took a wrong turn and ended up at the village of Maianbar sitting by a fjord. While it surely was pretty, trees and small houses in large gardens and the river down below, it wasn’t in any way prepared for visitors. There was no parking possible.

So I just drove back.

Back on track, the trees started to become taller and taller as the road dove down into a deep valley. The undergrowth was still impenetrably thick. The desperately winding road probably would have been a fun drive hadn’t I been stuck behind careful drivers.

Eventually, the fun ended with a surprise return to the coast. Except, the road was a good hundred meters up. It provided a grand view south. All into the hazy distance, the coast immediately turned into tall mountains with only little space left for humanity.

I had stopped at a lookout as a small Nissan turned up and five tall Germans comically climbed out of it. None of them were wearing a shirt. They were sporting a dark tan, though, and terrible haircuts. They poured over the views and I decided that I didn’t need to hear German today.

Instead, I followed the switchbacks down into Stanwell Park, which marked the beginning of an endless settlement along the shores. Or almost endless. At one point, the mountains came too close to the sea and ended abruptly in vertical cliffs. There wasn’t even space for a modern road—a narrow way had been carved into the cliffs—so there was Sea Cliff Bridge for it instead.

After, the mountains started to step back, leaving more and more space. Everything was tremendously busy. There was cars everywhere. Any metre of beach was in use. The madness continued all the thirty or so kilometres to Wollongong, the next city. This made Margaret River look quaint.

I stopped at Stewart Park, a strip of green along, yes, the beach just before the city to have a look at the map and figure out where to go next. Originally I had thought to just continue south along the coast, but with summer holidays in obvious full swing, I started to have my doubts about finding accommodation in the small towns that would follow. Turning inland had worked quite well last time, so I decided to head towards Goulburn, about half way between Sydney and Canberra.

Wollongong itself was a bland cluster of condominium towers and shopping concrete. I quickly crossed through and found the rush-hour motorway south. It claimed to be going to Nowra, but I couldn’t find bloody Nowra on the map. Soon, though, the motorway ended and I turned right towards the mountains. In Albion Park, last town before those mountains, I remembered my water quest and stopped at a supermarket.

Picking my path through the parking lot, I was startled by the sound of a truck backing up. But it wasn’t a truck but one of the local birds performing a very believable imitation. The birds here sure have the weirdest calls.

The mountains turned out to be a proper barrier. The road started to climb up to Macquarie Pass. And what a climb it was. Hairpin after hairpin, the road becoming narrower and narrower, all the while hidden away in dark, dark forests. This kept going on and on with no end in sight.

But, yes, there was an end. Suddenly there was green mountain meadows. The road kept winding for a bit longer. It offered an option to turn to Jamberoo Pass for a repeat experience back down to the coast. Instead, I kept going west.

There had been foreboding clouds hanging over the mountains back down at the coast. Although they had become lighter up here, a few raindrops started gracing my wind shield. Up ahead it looked like it was raining rather dramatically, and indeed, once I arrived up ahead, it was hard to see anything even with the wipers on full: big, fat, heavy raindrops kept crashing down, forming a layer of spray over the road and the car.

But, yes, there was an end to that, too, and a few kilometres on the road wasn’t even wet.

Moss Vale was the next town and I was happy to see that here, too, the steel metal arcade main street was alive and well, even if there was signs pointing to ‘shopping villages’ on the way in and out of town. And, apropos of nothing, there was a sign offering bulls for sale.

The road was still rather busy, so I decided to try for a side road. Sadly, though, about half of the cars in the queue did the same and no freedom was to be found.

With every passing mile, the landscape became more English. There were meadows and fields and tree groves. The plots were relatively small and separated from street and each other by brown wooden fences. The road was frighteningly narrow. Even many of the houses looked very Victorian and English.

The reverse happened further on. As I got closer to the main highway leading from Sydney to Canberra, the Englishness slowly disappeared and Australia returned.

On the highway, which of course was annoyingly busy, too, I saw a car with ACT license plates. ACT, or Australian Capital Territory, is the area around the capital of Canberra and a subdivision of its own. As the good old game of Been There was still on, I decided to skip Goulburn and its historic downtown and instead gain points by spending the night in the ACT. It was a mere ninety extra kilometres or about an hour.

After Goulburn, the land started to become noticeably drier. The grass returned to a more yellow colour. The road crossed the Great Dividing Range at 724 metres elevation, or so a sign claimed, and then dove down into a long, wide valley with a remarkably flat bottom. It crossed the valley and followed along the right wall. There were dark black clouds ahead that really promised business.

Luckily, I passed the clouds by on the left but as I uttered a sigh of relief, I saw the misty grey of proper rainfall ahead. And indeed, I soon entered into a torrential downpour of truly biblical dimensions. At least that’s how it felt driving along.

When it ended, I crossed the border into the ACT with about ten kilometres to go to central Canberra. I stopped at the visitor centre, even though it was closed already, and picked up a map to figure out accommodation. It listed several properties in Queanbeyan where indeed I found a lovely motel. I moved in and, as I started to write this, checked the map. Queanbeyan was actually beyond the border, back in New South Wales. No points for me.