Day Six - The Road to Nowhere

Sydney to Canberra via the Blue Mountains.

We made our way out of Sydney for the drive to Canberra at 0800.  It takes a while to escape Sydney’s outer rim, following the Great Western Highway through a succession of frontier-like strips of hotels and shops, many of the facades dating to the mid 1800s.  Shame they’re now selling Carlton, mattresses and fake-Indonesian furniture. 

Eventually we reached Parramatta, a combo of Basingstoke and Crawley and made the mistake of trying to find a café.  After circling this little piece of modern Aussie hell for 15 minutes, spotted a colonial-looking building, which turned out to be Gosh – apparently the only proper coffee shop in Parramatta.  You cannot beat a bit of toasted banana bread with butter for breakfast and a flat white.  Or can you?  Dougie went mango and coconut.  Bit early for me that.

Hacked across the highway searching for the Blue Mountains.  Opted to take the northern rim via Bells Line of Road.  We drove through a series of typical Aussie farming community towns including Kurrajong (twice – nice though) and Bilpin finally stopping at the Mount Tomah Botanic Gardens, which contained some amazing plants and equally impressive views over the mountain region.

Protea at Mt Tomah

Along one of the series of ridges, stopped for a bit to take in the views of a lookout across the mountains called ‘The Walls’.  Proper end-of-the-world stuff once you’d trekked the 1.5km to reach the edge. We spent the next 3 hours following a series of highways (Lachlan, Hume) stopping in Bathhurst for lunch.  Bathurst was a centre during the Australian gold rush and there’s a giant statue of a prospector as you enter the town.

View of The Walls Lookout

Festive in Blayney

Got to Canberra at about 6, found the hotel about 2 hours later.  We don’t need to do the tourist sights tomorrow as we passed most of them at least twice circling the weird road structure they have here.  If you live in Milton Keynes you’ll be right at home.