We were back on the road again, Betty was fixed and raring to go, our belly’s were full from the delicious eggs for breakfast at Nana and Miles’s and it was time to start the final leg of our oz journey – onwards to Wilson’s Promentary. 
Red Skies at wilsons prom
A fantastic national park and one of the few places on the East coast where you can see the sunset. Unfortunately a lot of the park was destroyed in a fire in January last year so its not as pretty as it once was I’m sure, but it still beat the majority of the up north driving through red/ brown dirt!
Next stop headed towards Lakes Entrance where we experienced the Chav side of Australia, I cant believe it but we actually got EGGED whilst driving along, poor old Betty covered in egg, and me slightly shaken by having something thrown at us. Anyway, Lakes Entrance….very touristy, I think that the three mini golfs in a row on the esplanade give that away, but we were here for another activity…fishing. After finally deciding on our trip our hosts Anthony and Heather plied us with tea and tim tams – vital for catching fish! Well it worked… 7 Australian salmon in total (I think Nige managed slightly more than me – but considering I had no idea what I was doing it wasn’t bad!). Back to camp straight away to fry the beauties up in flour butter and oil – some of the freshest fish I have ever tasted and all the better considering we caught it ourselves.
mmmmmmmmm
With the fishing bug in our bones it was off to Mallacoota to fish off the wharf with all the old men and crazy ladies. We managed loads of fish, 2 flat heads, 1 bream and 2 toothbrush
leather jackets but sadly all too small to keep – oh well Pie for lunch again.
Xmas BBQ!
Our final stop of the road trip was Lake Conjola, an amazingly pretty bay and lake, a perfect place to chill for a few days and wait for the arrival of Katie and Bill and amuse ourselves looking at the crazy Australians chasing possums around the campsite with a rake ( who brings a rake camping??)….enough said. After a few very boozy nights with Katie and Bill it was back to Sydney to say goodbye to Betty….hopefully!
We were in luck, everyone was desperate for a van and we managed to sell her within 3 hours of reaching Sydney and even had people fighting over it (I still slightly feel for the 18 yr old Germans who just lost out and turned up with their rucksacks as they had no where to sleep!) So in true Nige and Fran style it was time to celebrate, a few drinks later and we were finally getting in the Christmas spirit!
FRIENDS!
the Boys and Silly Hats!
And the Girls.....
Then the clan arrived, Abi, Nick, Katie and Bill – it was definitely Christmas and definitely party time – a few too many boozy nights led us to a hungover Christmas day but determined to soldier on in style with Bucks Fizz, smoked salmon and Croissants for brekkie, a quick nap then onto the mains. I should add that by this point we were probably the most hated people in our hostel, all because we were celebrating Christmas with yummy food and great wines (courtesy of Katie and Bill) and all the baa humbugs in the hostel were a bunch of miserable gits…rant over!! So the food… typical ozzie Xmas, prawns, sushi, steak, cheese – all amazing apart from the untypical ozzie weather – cold and wet.
Christmas Day!
With Christmas over there were still a few celebrations to go – Nicks 30th Birthday which put us all out of action for a couple of days after amazing Japanese food and a lot of wine, then New Years Eve…… Up and sat in a park to watch the fireworks at 8.30AM – yes we were mad… it slowly filled up but by midday totally full of English idiots basically, one delightful character near us had passed out by 4pm (not such a bad thing!) Finally after sitting for 16 hours the fireworks were amazing and well worth the wait – Definitely would not do it again next year though!
New Years at 8.30am...
NYs a bit later.... and a bit busier!
IT was all worth the wait!
- Happy New Year!
And the oz adventure was over and time to move on to Hong Kong. Now I normally hate flights as they are tediously boring, but this one was bizarre. We still don’t really know what happened but apparently we were seated in the ‘honeymoon’ seats so all through the flight we were given champagne, wine, vodka and lots of special treatment – we dodged answering the honeymoon question in case the treatment stopped – it was all very strange but fantastic!
So the next adventure is Hong Kong in the next installment….
