John and Laraine's - Heathcote Date: Dec 14, 2004 - 09:00 PM A few bits of paperwork needed sorted with the car and soon as they were done, we headed an hour south of Sydney to Heathcote to stay with John and Laraine. John goes way back with Joo's Dad and has lived over in Oz for 30 years. John took us out to National Park, where we spotted an echidna (ant eater hedgehog thing) and also an iguana. In their garden they've got a family of possums and a load of wild cockatoo's. Quite bizarre seeing them just flying about the place - the cockatoos that is. John dropped us off at Bundeena and we sat on the beach waiting for the ferry over to Cronulla. We'd forgotten the suntan lotion and started to look like lobsters! Both Bundeena and Cronulla were beautiful places and it was nice to escape the hustle and bustle of the city. The Blue Mountains are about 2 hours away, so on the Sunday we took a day trip over there. The reason they are blue is because of the blue haze caused by the fine mist of oil given off by eucalyptus trees. It was freezing up there and we were almost as blue as the mountains. We stopped at Echo Point and took some piccies of the '3 Sisters' and then drove along the old Bell Line Of Road over to Windsor to see Australia's oldest pub, the Macquarie Arms Hotel built in 1815. Apparently, there's a few more pubs in New South Wales and Queensland vying for the title of the oldest pub. Aah well, we'll have to go and have a beer in those too then! From Windsor, we decided to head south and take a look at Woolongong. By the time we finally got there, it was getting dark and we were starving. Grabbed some food and headed back to John and Laraine's for some well earned kip. A 400Km day trip! This is a huge country!! On the Monday (18th Oct.) we set off from Heathcote and left John and Laraine's. We had a great time with John and Laraine who really looked after us both. We had to venture back into Sydney to pick up the insurance docs and then we could finally start our Oz roadtrip. John thought we were mad to be driving around Sydney city centre,but it wasn't too bad at all. Enjoy the pix... Royal National Park John This article comes from globaltour.co.uk The location of this page is http://globaltour.co.uk/article132.html