Saturday 21 September 2013 – Road to Sanctuary Point

It was probably about 9.30 before we left the caravan park this morning on the next leg of our return to Newborough.  Once out on the Pacific Highway we made our way towards Sydney, hoping that Zola was going to take us on ring road route or at least avoid the city some how.  She did well – taking us on freeways most of the way, with only one seven kilometre stretch going through a couple of outer suburbs where even there the traffic was horrendous.

Once on the southish side of Sydney you go onto the M7 tollway which took us in the direction of Canberra for about 100 km, then turned us off to Nowra, heading for Sanctuary Point.  Before we turned off we came to a really good roadside stop where there was a coffee shop, and a truck with the whole side of it set up with shelves of fruits and vegetables – mangoes, avocados, strawberries, peaches, corn, etc, etc.  We had a stop and Grant had a coffee and I bought avocados (Small but yummy 10 for $5) and a kilo of strawberries for $5. 

Grant then told me that it was my turn to drive (I haven’t had a lot of turns this trip), which was fine, but I immediately thought of the last time we came down through here and the road you have to drive down (a scarily steep and winding 7km descent) caused the brakes to get VERY hot and we had to stop for ages until they cooled down.  So I was very nervous about driving down that very nerve wracking route.  However I didn’t say anything to Grant, as perhaps this wasn’t the same road.

Well we came down the freeway, then took the turn off Zola indicated, making for the coast.  All went well, we came to Mittagong and Zola suggested I turn off in 400 mtrs onto the Bowral Road.  Well I jumped the gun by about twenty metres and drove into a car park, but managed to find my way out of it via a back route, and thought I had got back onto the correct road.  Well, perhaps not quite, as I was to discover later.

As I continued along the road I was now on, I must admit that it did look a bit dodgy, but Zola wasn’t ‘recalculating’, so I assumed it was right.  Grant however, told me that I should just turn around and go back to where I had made the mistake, but as the road was pretty narrow I was unsure about being able to do that, I pulled over and just to be sure, put in our destination again, and Zola just told me to continue on this road for 9km.  

So I proudly forged onwards, the road was obviously narrow and rough, though still remained bitumen, and so I was confident.  Then I came to a 90 degree right hand bend in the road, but there was another road (same condition) going straight ahead, so I went onto that one, only about twenty metres – when I noticed the NO THROUGH ROAD sign.  Ooops! That meant I had to reverse!!  And reversing the van was something I had never done before, and I was reversing into any oncoming traffic about to make the right hand turn, and of course any traffic coming the other way had to be considered as well!  Very tentatively I put the car into reverse and started reversing slowly, with Grant sitting silently beside me.  The caravan was not going where I was trying to make it go, so I asked him to tell me how to get it going in the right direction.  So with him telling me ‘hard down on your right’, (whatever that means!), etc., then doing that badly and having to have another go, I made it and we continued on this obviously ‘alternative’ route.

Eventually we got onto the main Nowra road and yes – we came to the steep descent, and I managed that quite well, but then a further ten or so kilometres we came to yet another four kilometre VERY steep, winding descent, which was interspersed with some steep climbs as well, and the car was really pulling.  We are positive we never had that hill last time we did this road, so the hill must have popped up since then.  Anyway this time I had to pull over and the brakes were very hot, so we waited for a while to cool them down before getting down to the bottom.  So my drive to this stage was doubly stressful.

Zola again did well and we reached my cousin Margaret’s place in Sanctuary Point without any further ado.  It was lovely to see her after about two and a half years and she made us very welcome.  We then had to make the decision about where we wanted the caravan to be parked, as we are staying in her house for the next two nights.  Marg has an upward sloping drive, quite long, with kind of man-made bumps in it, so she had asked Deidre, and we had the option of parking it at her place.  However while we were bringing our stuff in to the house, Grant established that in Marg’s meter box which is on a pole in the front yard there is a power point.  So we were able to plug our van power into that to keep the fridge going and park it on the nature strip.

After a few cuppas we went for a walk to the shoreline of St Georges Basin at the end of Margaret’s street and walked for about an hour partway round the shore. It was a most enjoyable walk, and we saw a few people fishing and canoeing.

We had a nice evening here, catching up on lots of news, after eating a lovely roast tea, watching the preliminary final Fremantle vs Sydney footy, and eventually getting to bed about 11.30pm.