![Sydney to Cairns Map]()
Sydney to Cairns Map
We pulled out of the Jacka’s driveway this morning at 8.45am – only 3 days later than planned.
We had been held up on Wednesday by just not being anywhere near organised enough. At that point we still had: to go to Narrabeen to buy tubs for the cameras, clark rubber to fill the tubs with foam, last fill up with "cheap" diesel including the jerry cans, most important grop
shop stop, sort out insurance of trailer, contents for trip, house contents to cover stuff at Tony’s and then finish off sewing doors for the overhead consoles and then attempt to pack it all. We did OK until we got to the insurance part. We use the NRMA for our house contents insurance and so we applied for personal effects insurance on the items we were taking on the trip – we estimated about $25,000 worth. They wanted to see receipts for every item over $1000 (which is almost every item) and they needed to be no more than 2 years old or get a quote from a store verifying the value or a valuation certificate! It could’ve been quite straightforward but we had already sent all our paperwork and files with our belongings to Tony’s place and was by now
well buried until boxes on a
farm past Penrith.
We spent the rest of the afternoon on the phone trying to avoid using this process and contacted nearly every broker in
Sydney in vain. In the end at about 6pm I decided it was worth perservering with NRMA and finding someone to verify the value of our belongings.
Thursday – we got our papers together and headed to Macquarie Centre to sort out the insurance, adjust David’s NAB term deposit and then finish packing and leave around 2pm. Oh – and leave some last minute "leave behinds" in the warehouse at David’s work. I forgot the receipt for the camera and the computer. I returned
home and David stayed at Macquarie Centre. We met up around 12noon and left around 2.30pm. It took until 5pm to finish packing and we were pretty certain we would leave that night until it started to rain, got dark quickly and the thought of sleeping an extra night in the little single bed with David made us stay.
So Friday at 8.45am we set off – into the rain I might add which was the only disappointment. Dropped in to say goodbye to Nanna and had to attempt our first street
parking including reversing in a residential street!
Our first stop was at Raymond Terrace for cappuccinos, health bars and
toilet stop. I think we actually put our sunglasses on at this point. We spent $6.40. Here we realised we had forgotten something – the two boogie boards. Ah
well you say – we can buy them when we need them.
The mobile phone rang 4 times: Sue West to wish us a safe and happy journey, Dierdre (business), and Willhemina Davies to wish us a safe journey twice!.
At 2pm we arrived in Kempsey and stopped for lunch $12 at a Mobile servo. Here we saw a strange sight – an albino great dane dog with 2 masters and a chuihaha in a two door Hyundai car travelling from Dubbo to
Brisbane. Yuck. We spoke to an older couple who were visiting their old
home in
Foster they had left only 3 weeks ago when they moved to
Brisbane. They told us they we were definitely doing this trip at the right age because (as we know) we are
young enough to actually be able to open the car door and climb up into the big 4X4 yet alone "rough it". They told us they were heading to
Ballina for 6pm – we thought we’d like to stop around then too so out with the map to pick a spot for the night and we chose Evans Head.
We rolled into Evans Head around 6.15pm and found the Silver Sands Caravan Park which was on both the beach and river. Although it was raining hard we had a fabulous first night out of
Sydney. For only $9 (NRMA 3 star) it was the best caravan park I’ve ever been to. We set up, cooked Lentil pasta sauce and rice with a bottle of white wine and relaxed a little. We took an evening walk without torch around the beach and breakwall and bunked down for the night around 10.30pm.