The Purple Penguin

Woke up in Sydney and started our road trip by going in the wrong direction. Google let us down. Once we found the correct place to rent our car from, we left the city heading for adventure, the Outback, and an Australian Road Trip! Reality set in as we worked our way around the motorways – M4, M7 (with delays) M5 and finally to the Blue Mountains.

We stopped at the tourist information in Glenbrook and they basically told us that the Blue Mountains were shut due to the fires. (K: Not completely, we could go to the lookouts – more on that later.) We got a map with highlighted routes and bits to see and crosses over bits that were closed. And we got a coffee.

So we decided to stop at the bits highlighted but pretty much they were empty apart from smoke, obscured views, and very little water. So the waterfalls were trickles that you could barely see through the smoke and the paths down were definitely closed. The highlight was seeing a Crimson Rosella (actually a pair of them but one didn’t like to come out). Got some nice photos.

We decided to leave the smoke (K: sore throats, painful sinuses and burning eyes!) and head for Parkes. Headed up the A32 for quite a while before we managed to leave most of the smoke behind. Decided to find somewhere to sleep around Orange and do a bit of restocking. Had a wander around at Bunnings, but they didn’t have what we needed (K: we didn’t need to build a house or have a huge barbecue with hundreds of people.) Found a small car parts place that had exactly what we were looking for – car sunshades! (K: Got one in purple, of course.)

We found a motel and sorted out a few bits and pieces, along with a cup of tea, before going out for dinner. We had a very nice Indian dinner. Did a bit of late night shopping at Coles and on our way back we saw our first lit up Australian Christmas decorated House.