Sorry dear readers, it’s been far too long since I’ve managed to post an update. There’s just been so much going on and so little downtime! The stretch between Bellingen and Sydney was pretty dismal actually, save for a few stunning highlights. After leaving Bellingen (successfully this time!) we got as far as Taree, which was just so hot and dusty and dry. I didn’t have very good expectations of Taree and to be honest I was despairing at even being there, but when we got into the town it turned out that the annual taste festival just happened to be on, held along the banks of the Manning River, such a beautiful location. And possibly the only place in town that wasn’t 100 degrees Celsius. To be honest the quality of the food there wasn’t great, (think fairy floss and corn dogs) but by this point I was so hungry even McDonald’s was starting to look good (don’t worry, I would never!) and thankfully we found a guy making corn fritters with avocado mash and yummy salads. So delicious. There were also a few other great stalls amongst all the er… not so great stalls, some highlights were the blue pea tea company, a type of tea from Malaysia made out of just pea flowers that is bright blue and then if you add acid like lemon juice it goes pink! Another great company sold grow your own mushroom kits made from old coffee grounds inoculated with oyster mushroom spores!
We spent that night at a free camp in a small historic town just outside of Taree, on the banks of the river. That night I had the strangest sensation, lying in bed trying with all my might to remember the name of the town I was in, and for the life of me I could not remember where an earth I was! Super disorienting. Turns out it was Wingham, which as we discovered in the morning is home to beautiful bushwalking trails through huge grey headed fly fox colonies. The forest is actually regenerated bushland, although to the untrained eye you would never be able to tell, but it’s where the Wingham Brush Bush Regeneration method was established which is now a globally recognised method of restoring forests! The next day we stopped at the Hunter Region Botanic Garden’s in which Yilla loved running around pantsless! Luckily there was hardly anyone there (too hot). We then drove onwards to Morrisset which was another excruciatingly hot dry and dusty town with nothing much going on.
After trying in vain to find somewhere halfway naturey to stay we reluctantly checked in at the Morrisset Showground. I was feeling a little down in the dumps about the anticlimax of imagining the road trip to be so special and then the reality is sitting in the dust at the Morrisset Showground with a small child pulling my hair and yelling “Mama! Mama!”. But travel, like life, can’t be good on every leg of the journey, you’ve got to have a balance of experiences, so when life gives you lemons… make Morrocan Lentil Soup! Yep, classic Taurean move, comforting yourself with good food. And it works! Seeing all the special fresh veggies from Bello and inhaling the aroma of the spices frying… mmmm… definately lifts the spirits. Morrocan Lentil Soup is my favourite recipe at the moment (Yilla’s too!) and the next day I had 3 seperate people stand around me asking for the recipe while we ate the leftovers for lunch. So if you want to give it a go aswell, I’ll put the recipe here:
Well the comfort food definately worked its magic because no sooner had we sat down to eat than another group of campers pull up next to us and lo-and-behold, it’s a beautiful couple with a little girl exactly the same age as Yilla. We immediately got talking and turns out they’ve been on the road for 3 months already travelling absolutely all over Australia with their little one and now they’re headed to (wherever else?) but Bellingen to settle down and make a beautiful home. There is no such thing as coincidence in this world is there? So message received, (thankyou universe!) and by the morning my spirit was recharged enough to navigate me towards one of the most spectacular places I have ever been, Munmorah National Park. There’s no words for places like this. The road through the national park is like a theme park ride, up and down through so many different environments and microclimates before bursting out onto the coastal cliff side and down over a MASSIVE sea cave before finally tapering off into a walking track that takes you down the cliffs and onto the stunning and entirely deserted Bongon Beach where the water looks like a postcard and the seashore is so full of life that you can spot 5 different species of crabs in just as many seconds. Paradise.
After many many sunkissed hours of frolicking inbetween sand and surf and exploring all the micro worlds in the rock pools we finally dragged ourselves away to in time to make the final leg of the journey to Sydney, but not before stopping to treat ourselves to a post-sun smoothie bowl at Bay Organics, an awesome whole foods cafe just north of Sydney which has a kids play area inside (Hallelujah!!)
We drove towards Sydney through The Entrance which is a geographically awesome roadscape that connects two thin peninsulas by series of bridges. On the southern peninsula we started to drive through residential areas that had one or two high rise buildings scattered amongst them and I said to Yilla “Look Yilla! We must be in the city now!!” Wow so naive, I had no idea what I was about to drive into, in hindsight The Entrance looks like a tranquil get-away compared to the city we were about to spend 3 days in. But I’ll leave the story of Sydney until tomorrow, because that’s a-WHOLE-nother ballgame. But we are officially more than halfway to Tasmania! Yeow!
Food Oasis 