Sydney Road Trip #1

This past weekend Dave had professional development with the other exchange teachers in Sydney.  While Sydney looks to be close to us on the map, it is actually about a 3.5 hour drive.  So I made sure that everyone's devices were well charged.  We put a new battery in the car after far too many times having it boosted.  

I packed the car up, loaded the esky, packed all of the luggage and picked everyone up at school. It went pretty smoothly and definitely saved us at least an hour over having everyone come home first to try to get organized.  I took the route through the mountains that was recommended.

Oh what a DRIVE!!  The views were absolutely fantastic.  We did climb and wind, and climb and wind and then climb some more.  My manual transmission and other side of the road skills most certainly got some honing on this drive!






Then, just to add to the fun, it started to rain.  So now I have to think about using the indicator AND the windshield wipers, both of which are not where I expect them to be.  And I am winding and climbing through a narrow two lane road on an endless highway.

The margin for error is quite limited as you can see. If I swerve off on my left, the car will plunge to our deaths.  If I veer off to the right, I will either hit the side of the mountain face or plunge us off to our deaths.

This guy had less success than I did.  Dave didn't get the camera out quite fast enough, but the scene right before this one was of a transport truck jackknifed across the side of the road.  I'm quite grateful to the driver's foresight to get himself off of the main road.  If he'd blocked the way through, we would not have had a viable alternative without a lot of back tracking.

Next weekend we are off to Sydney again.  Luckily we are heading to a different part of Sydney so we can take the highway to get there instead.  I actually said, more than once during the drive, that I would rather be driving on the 401.

So there you have it.  A spider free post about our travels to Australia :)  We did have a very fun weekend and I will spoil the ending by letting you know that we all survived!  It was a truly beautiful drive.  It was, I just needed to take a lot of deep breaths while doing it!