October
5, Friday
Sorry, not many pictures because I needed to concentrate on the road. I was waiting to finally be driving along the coast again, but only saw a glimpse once or twice. The “highway” was more inland than it had appeared on the map.
I was not making good time, and if I had not already reserved my hotel in Sydney I probably would have stopped and found a motel along the way. But I needed to get into Sydney that evening.
The other thing I had not factored in was that the sun was setting a lot earlier than before now that I was on the eastern coast. By 6 pm it was dark and the road was a bit better, but I was still 200 km from Sydney. The road would widen into 4 lanes and 100 km / hour then go through a city or town and slow down again. The only good news was that I never knew when I “arrived” at the Sydney city limits because it was continuous city driving, in the dark. All I needed to do was stay on Highway 1, so I took all the turns along the way and was no longer seeing any mileage signs. I kept watching for the turn off to Cleveland Street and it FINALLY came up, then merged onto Dowling, just barely missing being in the wrong lane and a long tourist detour. I crossed Flinders Street (have you noticed yet how often the same city and street names are repeated?) and knew I was close so I was watching signs for Napier Street. Oh oh ! the next cross street was Oxford, so I had missed Napier. Luckily there was a red light and no traffic coming in the other direction, so I pulled a U’y and just as I straightened the car, there was the sign for Napier. (I later checked this out and there was NO sign for Napier when you were coming down Dowling.) I arrived at the back of Arts Hotel where the entrance to the car park was located and got the very last spot for my car. I was so proud of myself for having manoeuvred all that traffic in the dark.
My room at Arts Hotel
Left Lake Entrance at 10 am for my drive to Sydney. The first problem I encountered was finding
out that I was still about 600 km from my destination. This would not be a problem in Canada since
I’ve driven a lot further in one day before.
I quickly realized that I would not be averaging 100 km per hour since
the road went through every small town along the way. The views were spectacular however and Gilles
P. would have loved driving through here in his Porsche.
I drove through the ‘’Snowy River’’ area; from the movie ‘The Man from Snowy River’. I drove over mountains and valleys the entire day.
Sorry, not many pictures because I needed to concentrate on the road. I was waiting to finally be driving along the coast again, but only saw a glimpse once or twice. The “highway” was more inland than it had appeared on the map.
I was not making good time, and if I had not already reserved my hotel in Sydney I probably would have stopped and found a motel along the way. But I needed to get into Sydney that evening.
The other thing I had not factored in was that the sun was setting a lot earlier than before now that I was on the eastern coast. By 6 pm it was dark and the road was a bit better, but I was still 200 km from Sydney. The road would widen into 4 lanes and 100 km / hour then go through a city or town and slow down again. The only good news was that I never knew when I “arrived” at the Sydney city limits because it was continuous city driving, in the dark. All I needed to do was stay on Highway 1, so I took all the turns along the way and was no longer seeing any mileage signs. I kept watching for the turn off to Cleveland Street and it FINALLY came up, then merged onto Dowling, just barely missing being in the wrong lane and a long tourist detour. I crossed Flinders Street (have you noticed yet how often the same city and street names are repeated?) and knew I was close so I was watching signs for Napier Street. Oh oh ! the next cross street was Oxford, so I had missed Napier. Luckily there was a red light and no traffic coming in the other direction, so I pulled a U’y and just as I straightened the car, there was the sign for Napier. (I later checked this out and there was NO sign for Napier when you were coming down Dowling.) I arrived at the back of Arts Hotel where the entrance to the car park was located and got the very last spot for my car. I was so proud of myself for having manoeuvred all that traffic in the dark.
My room at Arts Hotel
By 8:30 I was in my hotel room; definitely not a 5-star
establishment but it is clean, the bed is very comfortable, it’s in a good
location and it includes free parking and free wifi. The receptionist indicated that there was a
pub next door so I went there for dinner and then called it a night.
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