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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4],"tags":[25],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4T97-154","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4208,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/05\/final-road-trip\/","url_meta":{"origin":4158,"position":0},"title":"Final Road Trip","date":"Sunday, 5 January 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Yesterday was driving, just driving pretty much! We woke up to a bit less smoke - not sure if it was the towel or the a\/c but slept better. Up and over cups of tea we worked out a safe route - we wanted to spend a couple of days\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4254,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2023\/12\/10\/bits-and-pieces\/","url_meta":{"origin":4158,"position":1},"title":"Bits and Pieces","date":"Sunday, 10 December 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"So the bits and pieces we may have missed out. First, the drive yesterday through the Laurel forest was a bit scary. It was the first time we'd been up there without any cloud - glorious day, bright sunshine and no clouds at all, not even a bit of mist.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Frog Blog"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4187,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/29\/road-trip-part-2-every-kind-of-road\/","url_meta":{"origin":4158,"position":2},"title":"Road Trip Part 2 (every kind of road)","date":"Sunday, 29 December 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"So we have travelled on motorways, A roads, B roads, and C roads in Australia. We've also done sealed and unsealed (ie paved and unpaved) roads, as well as named and unnamed roads. All the roads. We left Victor Harbour after a walk about the area. We found a nice\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":82,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2003\/04\/23\/yet-another-pre-trip-update\/","url_meta":{"origin":4158,"position":3},"title":"Yet another pre-trip update","date":"Wednesday, 23 April 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Yet another pre-trip update. We went out at the weekend to do a bit of trip shopping. It was mainly to get the rucksack mended; the zip is busted and we've taken it in to see if it can be repaired. Good news is that it may still be under\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4257,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2023\/12\/15\/and-back-to-doing-as-little-as-possible-with-some-travel\/","url_meta":{"origin":4158,"position":4},"title":"And back to doing as little as possible (with some travel)","date":"Friday, 15 December 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Monday started well, got up early, had breakfast, and down to the harbour to go whale watching. Were far too early, as is normal, so found a bench and watched the boats. Saw the ferry come in and so checked the timings and realised we can get the ferry back\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":331,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2009\/12\/31\/last-day-of-2009\/","url_meta":{"origin":4158,"position":5},"title":"Last day of 2009","date":"Thursday, 31 December 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"And last update from Death Valley - our internet connection runs out this evening and we'll be out trying to get photos of the full moon. So next update will probably be 2 January. Definitely a rest day. Woke up around 5.30 but decided I didn't want to be awake\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Frog Blog"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4158"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4158"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4160,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4158\/revisions\/4160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}