Driza-Bone

So as promised I bought myself a Driza-Bone oilskin coat and a matching hat down under. Now where's my horse?

Me, Lude and Rolph spent a very enjoyable (awesome) four weeks in Australia. After some hassles to get a rental campervan that actually fitted the three of us (one tall, one skinny and one slightly less skinny Dutchie only fitted in the old model Toyota HiTop, not the new) we started off from Sydney having first spent a few days there.

The first stop was the Blue Mountains where we found the Jenolan Caves township through rain and very thick mist (visibility of maybe 10 meters). We camped at car park number 2 because we heard car park number 1 would be full of tourists the next morning and also because there was a power cable there that we could use to keep our beer cold.

Having done the cave-thing and having spotted our first kangaroos we drove north towards Singleton on highway 69. But not before we had dinner in the bizarre and almost empty The Shining-like setting of the Jenolan Caves hotel (although the following weekend it was supposed to be very busy in the hotel..).

After a night at Lake Liddell where we camped on the recreation area with a lovely view of the huge Bayswater power station we stopped to see the town of Tamworth, Country Capital of Australia (but only during the yearly country music festival). During a good night out we saw the Disco Daddies as well as the excellent Blues Bombers play but we did get refused into a club because we "had enough to drink" (which was not true btw).

A long drive the next day to the opal mining town of Lightning Ridge. On the way we stopped at "The Koala Capital of the World", Gunnedah, but alas, no koala's to be found (only toilets). The roads that day were pretty much empty apart from the occasional crossing kangaroo or flock of sheep or cattle. We spent Christmas day in Lightning Ridge. Of course there was absolutely nothing to do in town apart from sitting in the 31 degree C hot water pool and driving around the mining sites looking for some black opal.


I will write up the rest of our trip in another post. In the meantime check out my photos and videos. I geotagged most of the photos using Flickr's mapping tool so you can follow the map around. I also geotagged a few photos using the excellent loc.alize.us so you can spot some of my photos using Google Maps. See for example the Crocodile Park photo above on loc.alize.us.

It was good fun using Jaiku to update my presence and upload some photos to Flickr whilst on holiday. Especially when you're having a (well deserved) gin-tonic down under while your colleagues are at work.