Newcastle to Wollongong

Google Maps….you rock!  I wrote out the directions from suburban Newcastle, through the western suburbs of Sydney and into Wollongong (well Port Kembla to be precise) and you didn’t let me down.  There were a couple of times when I thought Google Maps had lied to me….either that or I’d stuffed up but I knew I was still heading towards Wollongong and then the street would turn up out of the blue, much further along than I expected.

The drive today was tough, while only 234kms it took 4 hours along the Semi Super Highway and while the sky was cloudless and beautiful blue,
it was incredibly windy and very cold.  My bladder has decided that it doesn’t like the cold.  Yesterday in 5 hours, I had 2 pee stops and today in 4 hours I had 4 unscheduled pee stops…..very annoying.

My first unscheduled stop I also used as an excuse to check out Lake Macquarie which is impressively big but it was on 14 degrees and bloody freezing.  Some impressive waterways today – Lake Munmorah, Mooney Mooney Creek and the Hawkesbury River.  Leaving Sydney the amount of bush was phenomenal, just trees as far as you could see and the cliffs (where the road has been cut through the mountain) were exceptional.  There was an awesome view from the lookout at Bulli Pass showing the entire area and then it was an impressive downhill run into Wollongong.

I’m staying at the Nan Tien Temple Pilgrim Lodge.  The Temple is quite nice although they don’t do guided tours and the information is minimal and a lot of the room are locked.  But it wouldn’t be a Lindy trip if there wasn’t at least one religious monument involved somewhere along the line.  One of the challenges for this trip is to do/see something at each town I stay, rather than simply driving through.  Coffs, of course, was the dolphin swim and Newcastle missed out entirely, Wollongong is the Temple.  After checking out the temple, I decided I’d better see Wollongong which is about 20 mins down the road.  As the temple is closer to Port Kembla, I had a bit of drive round and found the iconic chimney tower (absolutely huge) and I think I found the main street which resembled a ghost town.  Found my way to Wollongong and it’s okay, nothing to write home about but the two areas combined are huge.  I drove along what I thought was the foreshore and assumed I was looking at the ocean and it turned out to be Lake Illawarra.  It was shame that I got myself hopelessly lost trying to get back to the temple…..I didn’t have Google Maps to guide me, thankfully I had the GPS on my phone otherwise I’d still be driving around.

Off to Bega tomorrow….say cheese!! Google is telling me it’s 342 kms and should take 4 hours 17 mins so I’ll say 5 hours driving.