Tuesday 18 November 2008

Friday 14 November 2008 - Gloucester NSW

We had packed up and were on the road a 6am to try to get to the National Park we had been heading for the previous night. 












The road got very wild and rough/ We passed a sign which said a particular bit of road had been closed 2 weeks previously, but it didn't say “no through road”, and the GPS didn't mention that road so we pressed on. We started to get a bit worried when we passed what looked like a Lada, crashed, burnt out and abandoned, and further on was a dingo pup, then a scrub turkey. We wound up and down the sides of the mountains, and eventually made it to Willy Willy Lookout (this being Willy Willy National Park). 


The views were lovely, but further on we came to, what looked like an old abandoned schoolhouse, and, unfortunately, the ‘road closed’ sign, and there was no way forward!
We drove back retracing our path for much of the way....although Darryl said we had only done an extra 70km, but it took us an extra 3 hours!
We ended up having morning tea in a park at Kempsey, and then driving south along the Pacific Highway. There were lots of roadworks – something like 32kms! We turned west again just past Taree, driving along 'The Bucketts
Way' to Gloucester, having lunch at the Apex Lookout which looked down over the valley with Gloucester nestled in the bottom....a very picturesque area. We continued and turned off to pass through Dungog, before getting into Singleton just minutes before 5pm. This meant we missed the Tourist Information and so just stayed at the only caravan park we could find. (This was not made any easier by the bridge being closed – so it really was a day of ‘closed signs’). While setting up I could see pending storm clouds, and a check of BOM showed a line of severe storms hitting Sydney, and the tail end due to hit Singleton, so we put up the tarp around the Hilux. After dinner the storm hit, although it was not too bad. Darryl went to bed early as he was very tired, and I stayed up on the net.

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