South Coast New South Wales, Australia

Hi everyone sorry we have been slow in the updating but it has been busy. We cycled from Sarah and Paul's home in Kerrajong and spent the first night in Camden. It was a lovely day through rolling hills and small towns. Coffee shop stop in the pm. Hot day. The next day another hot day riding through more lovely rolling hills with farms and small towns. Diana was not good at keeping hydrated and got a little heat stroked in the afternoon. We found a caravan park in Mittagong which was home for two days. We had our first close encounter with the parrot wildlife here and visited a lovely cut sandstone Angican Church.

Then we were off again. It rained through the night but cleared in the morning so we pushed off. We had to go through the McQuarie pass which everyone kept warning us about, to get to the coast. It was lovely riding through farming territory, a light rain began mid morning and as we pulled into Robertson it started raining harder. We stopped for coffee and found out we were actually at the top of the pass, the rest was down - imagine our pleasant surprise! Now the down was hairpin and narrow but the rain let up enough to make it pretty good going and fun! We camped that night at Killalea State park. It cleared as we put up our tent but drizzled or rained most of the night and next day. It is a lovely spot cliffs to beautiful ocean beaches. Very hilly towns. Encountered the Australian equivalent of a raven which is a very chatty bird indeed. Also saw a kangaroo again alive. We have also been seeing kangaroo road kill :-(

Much of the next day was through small towns on bike paths and some highway riding. It isn't so bad riding in the rain when it is warm! We finally decided to stay at Werri Beach as it was getting later and the rain was wearing us down. There were some amazing views though. We seem to have missed the worst of the rain there were wash outs and flooding ahead of us on the road but we were thinking it would be clear by the time we got there. Next day clear skies and lovely riding - this is a beautiful place the beaches are fantastic water blue blue. Surfers paradise.

Kiama

We stayed in a lovely campground at Tabourie Lake and these guys came in to see what we had to share with them - nothing of course but they took good photos. So we rode on weather has been great!

lunch

large waves

We decided this is a big country much like Canada and getting to Tasmania which is where we want to get will take longer than our leg power will allow us so we hopped a bus in Narrooma and are now in Melbourne. We have hooked up with the Bike Friday folks in oz. We may do a tour with them the end of March but in the mean time we are going to a bike shop that knows BF's for some tlc before we take the ferry to Tasmania.

Talks to you later.

Diana and Ian