Day 62: Moving out of Sydney to Halliday's Point

Ok, so for those of you who have been working so hard, and following our holiday thinking 'lucky buggers', today is your day to gloat.

We had a revoltingly stressful day today.

All seemed well as we packed up and headed out of Narrabeen onto Sydney's Saturday morning roads. All was not as it seemed.

As we turned onto the Pacific Hwy, we found ourselves in congested traffic, on a very steep hill, with trucks and their fairly unforgiving drivers thrown in. All of this, plus a 3 tonne van on the back, made for a very unhappy clutch and the smell of burning soon reached our nostrils. The traffic was backed up for ages and the terrain did not seem to be flattening out much. It was certainly all very dramatic.

Both Duncan and I were EXTREMELY stressed, and the boys very quiet. I actually felt sick, thinking that we were going to break down in the middle of the very busy traffic flow and become the 'traffic event' that Sheila so glibly points out a lot of the time. We fortunately found a place to pull-over just as the clutch was beginning to shudder under the strain, and parked there for at an hour and a half. This allowed the clutch to cool down and the traffic flow to ease.

Duncan had the great idea of putting the ute in 4WD for the next 4.7km, which was how far we still had to travel before getting onto the freeway. We did eventually get away from the kerb OK and onto the freeway. It was excruciating. I had to close my eyes at the end there and pray...

The rest of the trip was uneventful (HALLELUJAH) and we reached Halliday's Point 6 and a half hours after we set out! (It was a 300km trip!)

Andrew had a great time feeding the parrots/lorrikeets (?) at the park, as Duncan's video will show. Of course, he was not just satisfied with feeding them the bread - he put it on himself and let them climb aboard. Have a look...