Winifred Wilson's Exciting Adventures in Space

With the general negative reaction to how the ABC handled the hosting situation in Manilla tonight, specifically in relation to the body out the window images, I would to heat from people on this.

• What was your specific take on the broadcast? Do you think it was handled well or could have been handled better?
• What is the general standard on how these kinds of difficult situations should be handled, who set this standard and how is it kept in line with changes in public opinion?
• I vividly remember the image of people falling from the WTC during the news broadcasts of the horrific events of 9/11. This was also a very difficult series of events which was broadcast to the world in a reasonably raw format, how does it place in modern ideas of how news broadcasts of difficult situations should be handled?
• Where and how do we draw the line between broadcasting the reality of an event and gratuitous imagery? What impact does this decision have on the quality of the news, positive or negative?

I really want to hear peoples opinions on this in the comments below. Let me know what you think and point me to any references that you think would be relevant to check out.

For those who don’t know, CeBIT is the show intended for the technology industry to all get together and show off their wares to one another and potential customers (as in distributors, etc. not end users). A few years ago this was a really great idea and very relevant to everyone. Companies used to time their entire product release cycles around shows like CeBIT to get the maximum possible impact on their clientele, that’s how relevant they were.

CeBIT 2009: A show that is no longer relevant to it's own industry.

However in the last three years of my (enforced) attendance at this show with my employer, I have watched the show shrink and fade into obscurity. In 2008, CeBIT was all 5 halls of the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre, along with conference facilities in the Bayside Convention Centre and Parkside Convention Centre. This year, it is a measly 3 halls plus a small, under visited e-Health hall in Parkside.

In isolation, it is possible to view this as a vendor revolt against the obscene costs SCEC impose on their exhibition companies which then impose on the exhibitors, however CeBIT Hannover is faring no better on the other side of the world. I attended last year with my employer there and found that even though the show stretched over an impressive 22 or so halls, most of them where only half full with walls up to give them impression the show is still large!!

With the rise of the Internet and the savvy nature of the technology business, shows like CeBIT are beginning to lose their value to the industry. I for one would never employ someone into a technical role who was not able to research solutions to their problems using the Internet, telephone calls and maybe the odd vendor meeting here and there and therein lies the problem – any technical person worth their salt knows how to leverage the Internet to avoid shows like CeBIT.

We, as a company, have decided to roll back out exhibition presence worldwide. Once of the first shows to be cut: CeBIT Australia.

It’s not every day you wake to someone cooking your breakfast. It’s certainly not every day you wake to one of your travel companions cooking you breakfast. But that is exactly what I woke to on Monday morning. This is certainly no bad thing as Monday and I are known to not be on speaking terms. By the time I had showered, Mal had prepared a pretty sweet spread for the three of us, including mushrooms, ham, scrambled eggs and tomatoes which we promptly devoured!

Local ingredients used to make an awesome breakfast, thanks Mal!
Photo credit: Alison Young

We didn’t want to leave Crystal Creek at all, however check out time was approaching and we still needed to shoot some video and take some photos of the place! Luckily, Alison had been wandering about the gardens and bumped into Sophie who was happy for us to take a little longer to get all packed up to head off so that we could continue filming and photographing the place. She was even kind enough to allow us to look through one of the couples-only cottages. These are just as beautiful as our cottage and definitely make the sexy weekend list!

Once again, we got to drive the awesome road through the mountains to head back to Berry. This is such a fantastic road, but this time we decided to stop at the Fudge stand we saw yesterday! At the top of the mountain is a fridge filled with fudge for our eating pleasure! Naturally, we all brought some fudge (and yes, we were honest!) and left a little note in the visitors book. I really loved the visitors book idea, there was a very cool comments – one from Argentina really stood out to us all as the lady writing it had mentioned that this idea would be impossible in her home land. Really cute and reminds you which part of Australia you are in now.

The fudge fridge - the fudge from this was delicious.
Photo credit: Alison Young

Onward we drove! Another exciting journey through the mountain roads on New South Wales and we arrive back on level ground, headed towards Berry. Berry is a cool little town with a pub literally COVERED in canoes! The whole thing! Roof, verandahs, everywhere! It’s quite an awesome site. Anyhow, we were here to try the sourdough from the Berry Sourdough Bakery, so off we went in search of it. When we got there, we remembered that it is Monday – the country weekend, so the place was closed. Luckily, Chris has told us about The Treat Factory which was around the corner. This is the place that produces all the (complimentary!) chocolate for Crystal Creek, so we were excited to visit the place.

The Treat Factory has an awesome lot of Jams, Relishes and such, totally work a visit!
Photo credit: Alison Young

We poked around the offerings here for a bit before a huge bus load of adorable old ladies arrived. Watching these ladies was like watching a room full of young kids run around being excited at all the different types of lollies and chocolate that The Treat Factory has to offer. These ladies where a real highlight to the day because they were just so damned cute! As they busied themselves selecting all their fantastic sugary treats (you know, so they can manipulate their grandchildren), we poked through the jams and honeys offered. The strangest one? Patersons Curse honey. Coming from a farm-boy background, this stuff is an absolutely pest and it really surprised me to see honey of it available! Naturally, I grabbed a tester pot of it, but haven’t tried this one yet.

These lovely ladies where like kids in a candy store - totally adorable.
Photo credit: Alison Young

Buy chocolate. Lots of it!

The Treat Factory really produces an impressive array of chocolates and lollies that you really need to get hold of. I brought a mix of a bunch of different chocolates from the cabinet and worked by way through them recently. My favourites were the amazing truffles, in particular the rum truffles. Certainly something I would recommend. You can also get loads of nut clusters and rocky road here, all of which are deliciously tasty! If you can time your visit to include old ladies, then you will get the real Treat Factory experience!

It was getting late and we still needed to make our way back home to Sydney tonight. As we left Berry, I shot a quick, cheeky message to Kate (@wollongong_nsw).

@teknetia: We don’t wanna go home yet. Can you house us a your place, @wollongong_nsw? We’re real good houseguests and we can cook! #S2MT

To our incredible surprise, Kate came back to us with:

@wollongong_nsw: @teknetia You guys want the roadtwip to last 4eva! If you’re serious about staying in Wollongong we’ll sort you some accommodation! #S2MT

How freaking awesome is Kate?! That’s right, cooler than your Mum and your Mum’s Mum! You can’t touch this girl, she rocks that hard! We hold a very special place in our memories of this trip for Kate and all the work she did to make us feel welcome.

We were all hungry so we headed down to the highly recommended Diggies (@diggies) for a late lunch. Diggies has a fantastic view of Wollongong’s North Beach as well as being very classy (Mal and I both approved of the font and layout of the menus!). Diggies was another place where the #welovethegong campaign was in full force, our waitress, upon finding out we have #welovethegong t-shirts wanted to know where they could be purchased for all the customers that kept asking for them. We were really impressed with this! Kate and the rest of the Wollongong Tourism staff have done an awesome job on this campaign and we saw it only a few days into being active, I can only imagine how much it has taken off now.

Diggies make an awesome lunch. Go here.
Photo credit: Alison Young

While we sat here, enjoying our meals and the amazing view, all three of our phones vibrated at the same time. We checked them out to be greeted with awesome news:

@wollongong_nsw: Hey @Alegrya @maldamkar @teknetia The guys at @NovotelNthBeach are putting you up in ocean view rooms + balcony for the night! #S2MT

How awesome was that?! Not only had Kate gone to the effort of getting us somewhere to throw ourselves for the night, she had secured amazing rooms in a gorgeous hotel with stunning ocean views of the harbour! We were quickly welcomed by the Novotel North Beach:

@novotelnthbeach: Hey @Alegrya @maldamkar @teknetia Looking forward to welcoming u 2 the hotel 2night. We hear u love the Gong almost as much as we do! #S2MT

To be honest here, we were all flabbergasted by this. We had never expected that we would receive such a warm welcome and be taken in by such awesome people all in response to a cheeky comment as we left Berry. We have many time and will continue to offer our enormous thanks to everyone on Wollongong for being so awesome. It’s certainly true that #welovethegong!

We headed up to the rooms and dropped all our gear (got to get those phones charging, kids!) and decided what we wanted to do for dinner. Earlier in the day, we had received a suggestion to visit Amigos Mexican (@Amigos_Mexican) for lunch, although they were only open for dinner. Amigos is the oldest Mexican restaurant in Australia, so of course this is the place we chose to go to! While chatting about this, we realised we needed to thank Kate properly, so we DM’d her and invited her to join us for dinner. We set a time for dinner and then went about getting ourselves ready.

Absolutely stunning view from the hotel over Wollongong
Photo credit: Alison Young

Kate was kind enough to pick us up from the hotel to go to Amigos (yay Kate! This means we can drink, thanks!). We met her in the hotel lobby in time to head on over to the restaurant, presenting her with a box of flowers to thank her for her hospitality over the road trip. On the way, we where updated onthe progress of how the #welovethegong campaign was going so fair for her (great, for anyone interested!). Just as we were walking up the street to the restaurant, I recievied this:

@Amigos_Mexican: @teknetia when you get to #Amigos_Mexican ask Katie at the front counter for a cocktail on the house

So I replied that we had just entered! We took our table and started looking through the amazing menu that Amigos offers. If there is a Mexican food that you want, they probably have it along with several variations! Amigos service is very friendly and very prompt! We were served our food in no time at all and all got to demolishing the fantastic offering in front of us. Just as we were finishing and preparing to be on our way, Katie (our waitress) popped over and said “I believe we owe you all a round of cocktails!” We were impressed at her detective work to find us (we had been all very inconspicuous on arrival!) and where promptly served 3 enormous Margarita’s and a Mexican Hot Chocolate (hey, Kate had to drive, give her a break!). These where fantastic, I can absolutely see myself visiting for the cocktails alone! But it wasn’t over yet, we where also treated to a fantastic sticky date pudding dessert to share. This was amazing and I am a big fan of sticky date, so it was a double win!

When Amigos say cocktails, they mean cocktails! This is serious business folks!
Photo credit: Alison Young

All of us stuffed to the brim and well and truly cared for, we headed back to the hotel to get some sleep. Not too much of course, we still had to be in Sydney in time for work the next day!

Waking up in a proper bed and my own room for the first time on this trip, could there be anything sweeter? Well, being able to sleep naked was sure up there in the awesome stakes as well, but I’m sure you don’t wanna read about that too in depth now, do you? After doing all the normal mornings things (feeling hateful towards the alarm, willing myself out of bed and then eventually showering), I wandered out into the living area to greet Ali and Mal out on the verandah having a coffee. We chatted for a bit before being joined by a Rainbow Lorikeet which tried to steal Mal’s coffee. Needless to say Mal was having none of that, so ran inside and wet a leftover bread roll from our BBQ the night before!

The friendly Rainbow Lorikeet at Narooma
Photo credit: Alison Young

Our little friend hung round for quite a while before eventually heading off (we had run out of bread rolls for the fat little thing!). We once again had to pack our enormous amount of tech back into bags and then into the car again to head off on the next leg of our great adventure! But as any great adventurer knows, you need to start the day with a good, nutritious breakfast and what could be more nutritious than pastries and pies?! With a good old country bakery breakfast in our bellies and much distance to travel, we all piled back into the Camry and headed North to Berry.

Of course, for anyone who knows us, or was following the #S2MT hashtag, you will know we didn’t make it that far. We were distracted on the drive by a town called Mogo. It’s called MOGO, how could we not stop?! This was possibly the most surprising detour we made on the whole trip due to the amazing reaction we had on Twitter (with what little signal we could get).

#TeamMal before leaving Narooma
Photo credit: Alison Young

Mogo, New South Wales

Mogo is a little town that straddles the Princes Highway surrounded by national park with just 257 permanent residents. This town surprised us in many ways. First and locally, the main street was PACKED! Absolutely full of people wandering in and out of the shops, eating at the café or getting ice cream at the Ice Creamery. I was impressed not only because it was packed, but by just how many people where obviously not from the town and had made the trip to see the place. The second and more national thing that amazed me was the sheer number of people who replied with excited tips when we mentioned we were in Mogo! We had suggestions of visiting the Zoo (yes, they have their own zoo complete with LIONS!), the lolly shop, the leather shop and Old Mogo Town. The best part about all of these recommendations? Not a single one of them was on the main road!! These were places you need to actively seek out and we were getting all sorts of recommendations. the zoo alone was a 5 minute drive OUT of town, AWAY from the highway!

Not as exciting as it sounded with the 'ALL THINGS LEATHER' sign, but still fun!
Photo credit: Alison Young

What was even more interesting, is that according to a few Twitter analytics sites, the conversation about Mogo was the second most popular conversation in Australia for the day! All this from a tiny little town of 257 people in southern New South Wales. Impressive, eh?

We stopped at the Mogo Outdoor Café for what would end up being lunch and planned our next move. Naturally, we had to explore the town first – especially the All Things Leather store! Taking a walk through Mogo is very relaxing and the locals are very friendly. We visited a few of the stores along the main road, as well as venturing to the leather store and lolly shop off the main track. Unfortunately time was getting on and we still had a fair distance to cover so we all piled back into the car and headed to Mogo Zoo for a brief visit before hitting the road again towards Kangaroo Valley.

Narooma Outdoor Café lunch for Alison and I
Photo credit: Alison Young

The road to Kangaroo Creek

Our destination was Crystal Creek Cottages, which comes with a page long explanation of how to get there as apparently every GPS is wrong (which we can totally vouch for). If you love driving, you will love Kangaroo Valley. To get to this town and our accommodation, you drive through a winding mountain road with hairpin turns that are about as sharp as the turning circle of our car and as steep as cliff faces! As you swing the car around the corners, you are faced with a wall of bitumen and have to slam down the accelerator to keep the car climbing. We later realised that due to the very poor design of the Camry’s gear stick, I realise now that I actually threw that poor car around in fourth! Certainly explained why it felt like such a heavy car the whole trip. None-the-less, this road is absolutely fantastic for people that love a good drive! I’m not sure how enjoyable it was for my passengers, especially Alison in the back seat being thrown around the car a bit. Oops!

After that fantastic drive, we set about trying to find the entrance to Crystal Creek. I suggest you don’t drive too quickly here as the sign is relatively small and pops up all of a sudden on a corner! The first thing you are greeted with at Crystal Creek is a beautiful ironwork gate produced by a local artisan in Berry (Berry is just the other side of the fantastic mountain road). The gate is a beautiful entryway for a beautiful site! The drive up to the main homestead and reception is lined with deciduous trees and a very english style hedge, creating a wonderful sea of colour at this time of year (Autumn for those of you unsure!).

The fantastic artisan gate on arrival at Crystal Creek and the gorgeous colours behind
Photo credit: Alison Young

On arrival at the reception area, we were greeted by Chris who is one of the owners of the property and maintains the spectacular gardens. Chris is a very friendly guy and explains to us all about the site and the eco-friendly things they have been doing since initial planning of the gardens. The achievements made at Crystal Creek are certainly something for Chris and Sophie to be proud of. The site is now completely carbon neutral, with no chemicals used on site at all – everything is made out of local ingredients, for example the cleaning products, aromatherapy salts, shampoo, conditioner and body wash. We are informed that we are in the only cottage with a WiFi connection, to which we probably cheered a little too excitedly! Chris answers a few more of our questions for us before leading us to our cottage, just around the corner.

I just have to explain to you how the toilet works

We thought we were being spoilt when we arrived at a 3 bedroom chalet in Narooma. We had seen nothing yet. Tonight accommodation, the Rosebud Cottage, was an absolute stunner! We were greeted by an entry hall leading onto a dining and living area complete with a wonderful fire place. Off of this room was the most enormous bedroom we have ever seen! It was easily the size of Alison’s whole apartment! In here was an enormous princess-style king size bed with a huge net draped around it, a sofa (that can also be a bed) and another fireplace! We were also treated to a spa, full kitchen and amazing gardens all around us.

This place was enormous and featured a FIRE PLACE!
Photo credit: Alison Young

Something about Chris and Sophie that really impressed all three of us was the attention to detail they applied to everything. They ensured that there were three of everything in the cottage – 3 lamingtons, 3 muffins, 3 port glasses, 3 orange juices. There were also other little things like ensuring the children’s movies where all lined up across the bottom of the shelves and adult board games where at the very top. Chris and Sophie had also prepared a list of activities to do on all sorts of days! There is no such thing as a bad day at Crystal Creek, they had suggestions for hot days, cold days, windy days, wet days, any day you can think of!

But then all our hearts sank just a bit when Chris mentioned that he needed to show us how the toilet worked. All of us had differing awful thoughts – a drop shaft, a bucket, something involving chemicals and a trap door. We needn’t have worried though, as it turned out to be one of the coolest designs we have ever seen. All of us wanted one! The unique thing about it that Chris needed to explain was that instead of having a toilet and a separate sink in the powder room, the two where combined so that when you flushed, the cistern would refill via a tap on the top – allowing you to wash your hands without wasting more water than was needed for the next flush!

These chickens are super free-range (all 16 acres of the property!) and provide all the eggs for our lovely breakfasts.
Photo credit: Alison Young

Local ingredients Thai? Yes please!

Earlier in the day we had asked Chris for some recommendations on dinner. He suggested we try one of the places that strives to use local ingredients and named a Thai place, Jing Jo. We headed down, tummy’s rumbling and ready to eat. Unfortunately for us, we arrived half an hour before opening time (seriously, why were we even this hungry at 5.30?!) and needed to amuse ourselves until we could be seated. Kangaroo Valley has this insanely cute little old bridge that we drove over to get to the restaurant, so we headed back towards it to take some photos. This bridge is really quite awesome, but only one lane, so both sides have to stop and go on direction at a time. There is also a huge sign recommending against two heavy vehicles at once, which is kinda funny to see coming from the city! Totally an awesome little feature for the town, really fits in well and makes quite the awesome landmark! Finally 6pm rolled around and we headed into Jing Jo to enjoy an awesome, local ingredients, Thai meal. Certainly somewhere I’d recommend, although service is a tad slow (by city standards, you’re in the bush – calm down!).

This awesome little bridge is totally worth the visit all on its own!
Photo credit: Alison Young

When we returned back to the cottage, I lit a fire and we all relaxed in the living room until we were falling asleep on the couch and the end of another day was reached.

Let’s be very clear about one thing straight up, 4.30am is an awful, awful hour of the day, especially when you didn’t go to bed until after 1am! Needless to say we were feeling less than friendly towards Emma (@lbdash) from Klick (she organised all the set parts and accommodation for us) at this point and contemplating pranking her so she could join in on the “experience.”

Early morning before the sun rises

By the time we got in the car, it was after 5.15am. This wouldn’t have been a problem except that we were meant to leave at 5am. Damn. Well, today was Alison’s turn to drive and boy can she! We had quite a fun trip that involved us cheering every time we wiped a minute off the arrival time on the TomTom. It was a great trip with one insane moment! Picture the scene – we are driving at 5.30am through pitch black country roads in 10º outside temperatures where the only visible area is the light cast from our high beams when a man wearing nothing but an orange sarong is outside the car walking along the road! We aren’t even near a town at this stage and as far as we could see, no nearby homes! Completely random moment which sparked a flurry of conversation as we drove up the hill (and subsequently lost the GPS signal in the mountains, oh no!) to the carpark outside the Illawarra Fly.

Sunrise at The Fly

Rugged up in our lovely city-kid jackets (and Mal’s crazy bright hipster jacket!), we headed into Illawarra Fly to be ambushed by a man with a camera yelling “Got cha!” and then blinding us all with the flash (no, not that kind, get your head out of the damn gutter!). The man with a camera turned out to be the General Manager of Illawarra Fly, Sean. While our initial reactions were less than enthusiastic, Sean soon showed us how amzing and adept at early mornings by offering coffee immediately – I think Mal fell in love at that very moment.

The Illawarra Fly, it was worth the ungodly wake up hour.
Photo credit: Alison Young

We headed down the rough pathway through the gorgeous Southern Highland temperate rainforest towards the astonishing engineering effort that is the Illawarra Fly. This part of Australia is really quite stunning and definitely worth the visit. If I thought the walk down here was beautiful, I was in for a pleasant surprise! The view from the fly was absolutely spectacular! Sean took us out on to the first cantilever to soak up the gorgeous pre-sunrise views over Wollongong and the mountains which were covered in a beautiful blue mist while explaining to us that this cantilever is supported by just 2 wires and can support up to 800 wombats! That translates to about 25 tonnes of weight, with the whole walk able to support around 2,000 people at once (I can only imagine how awful this would be though, kinda like trying to shop at Woolies Town Hall).

One of our missions on the Road Twip involved taking a sunrise photo from the highest point of the Illawarra Fly. 106 steps later (I still maintain there are only 105 “steps” in the actual staircase!), we arrived at a platform 45 metres above the ground with a gorgeous 360º view of the slowly rising sun. It was absolutely amazing how the colours change as the sun creeps above the horizon. This was particularly special for me, as I have never seen the sun rise over the ocean before! Something I certainly recommend people do!

Sunrise from the highest point of the Illawarra Fly
Photo credit: Alison Young

So we’re up to about 7.30am by this stage and all of us are starting to get a little hungry. Luckily, Sean has amazing staff who put on an incredible spread for breakfast. It wasn’t just tasty, but one of the best presented breakfasts I have ever seen (and I travel a lot for work in nice hotels!).

This is possibly the best cooked breakfast I have ever been presented with!
Photo credit: Alison Young

After our scrummy breakfast, Sean told us about a few of the local attractions and area to visit. We marked out Carrington Falls and the Kiama blowholes on our little area map and got to driving once more! We headed to Carrington Falls to teach the Camry what a dirt track looks like (we even recording the de-flowering!). This was another beautiful area and we took an unbelievable amount of photos here. Eventually time was running thin and we needed to get back to Kiama if we wanted to make it to Narooma before the dark set in.

Mal taking some video of Carrington Falls

No, TomTom, 28km is not “close enough”

We packed our enormous amount of junk back into the car and got cracking on the next leg of our journey down south. I manage to sneak in about 45 minutes or so of uncomfortable car snoozing, to wake in Ulladulla, where Alison and Mal had decided we should stop for lunch (hey, I was asleep, give me a break!). We got a sandwich and a chance to chill outside the car at a beachside café for a bit before we all piled back into the car to head further south to Narooma.

Can't fault the view from the café in Ulladulla!
Photo credit: Alison Young

On the drive, we passed through a controlled burn. This meant we had fire burning down the road on one side of us and bush on the other side, which gave us something new to look at! As we were driving down the highway, with no buildings or roads in sight, the Tom Tom suddenly proclaimed “You have reached your distination” (yes, we had it on Kiwi, much more hilarious this way!). We were all taken a bit by surprise and glanced around, suddenly worried we had missed some critical step along the way or had somehow driven past the town entirely. We decided to keep driving and 28km later, arrived in Narooma. No, I don’t think 28km is really “close enough” for a GPS, especially in the middle of nowhere!

Photo credit: Alison Young

We arrived at the Easts Narooma Shores Holiday Park to another awesome staff member who was excited to see us (everyone does the keyboard action when we arrive, it’s kinda funny!). The lady here helped us get our bearings and pointed out where we could get oysters (another mission which Mal is taking the bullet for the team on) and most importantly pointed us in the direction of the nearest pub (WE COULD WALK!!!!). We headed down to own accommodation to find we were in an ENORMOUS three bedroom chalet, literally on the waters edge. On the front verandah (yes, that’s right, own very OWN verandah!) was a BBQ! Plans to go to the pub where quickly scrapped and changed to get food and BBQ the hell out of it! We invited Team Heather (@likeomg) to join, but they decided to sleep instead because apparently we are just too cool for them and it was all a little bit much! (Don’t kill me, Heather! I mean it in jest!!).

How amazing is this?! 3 bedrooms, BBQ on the front porch. WIN!

Another awesome day, another awesome meal with great company. This Road Twip is turning out to be pretty awesome and we already are working out what other routes we want to take around in the future. We eventually head to bed, but not before all falling asleep in the oh-so-comfy lounges for a bit. And so closes another day, with no awful 4.30am alarm in sight!

A few weeks back, Mal (@maldamkar) asked me if I wanted to be on a team with him for a promotional road trip around the coastal area of New South Wales.  Mal is a pretty awesome guy, so I jumped at the chance to join him on what was undoubtedly going to be an amazing trip!  A little later, we had confirmed that #TeamMal would comprise Mal, myself and Alison (@alegrya).  This was excellent news because Alison is pretty frickin’ awesome!

Wow! Look at all that - the title is right: God help us if anyone leaves the car unlocked.

Naturally, we are all geeks, which meant we needed to create a list of all the laptops, phones, cables and bits we would be bringing.  That way we could ensure that we had enough power boards to plug everything in even in the least power friendly places.  For the interested – we had enough power boards to plug in 24 items plus an extension cord or two for convenience – who doesn’t want to sit on the couch while chilling?!

The day of the road trip rolled around to see Mal at my door at 9am.  We wandered down to the Hertz Car Rental place (conveniently down the road from my place!) to collect the mystery car – we had no idea what to expect here, but just hoped it would contain our enormous load of tech!  We lucked out and were given the keys to a Camry Sportivo – a big ol’ sedan with plenty of room for our clothes, laptops, cables and a little room left over for ourselves.

This car got us by so well, shame the gear stick is stupidly designed so you drive in 4th instead of drive without noticing.

Imagine our horror when we couldn’t find an aux port or any way to plug an iPod into the car.  The thought of having to listen to radio personalities natter inanely for 4 days was enough to make us cry on the spot.  Luckily, about an hour later when we collected Alison, she spotted the aux port in her typical crafty manner and we were saved!  Oh thank the Gods, we could control our music!  Unfortunately that was the one cable we didn’t pack, so we suffered through some radio as we made our way to Wollongong.

The Harley Ride

We made our way towards Bald Hill, where we were told to expect a Harley Ride!  This was pretty exciting, however the GPS seemed adamant that we wanted to go to Victoria, which mean that we had to wrestle with our own maps a bit to work out where we were going.  We did eventually find it (after we got it straight in our heads – we were forever searching for Bald Head and Bald Eagle, we are a little green at this point – I even managed to get that wrong in the first version of this post, calling it Bald Head a few times!), programmed it in and off we shot, already running late at the beginning of the trip (wouldn’t be the last time either, we are just awesome like that!).  We managed to miss the first turn off to the coastal road, which meant we took Princes Highway for a bit.  This turned out to be a really great thing, as we stumbled upon a War Memorial in the shape of a castle turret!

Hey look, it's a photo of me running, like the world needed to see that...
Photo credit: Alison Young

This was pretty exciting and Alison took some awesome shots of the area including a SINKING JESUS left over from ANZAC Day.  We weren’t really sure what exactly the reason was for the sinking Jesus, but we decided it was because he had been a bad bad boy, or that the quick sand got to him.  Or something.  Yea, we are a little blasphemous.  And onto the road again we go!

We arrived at Bald Hill after only a few wrong turns (not bad, considering the Tom Tom was completely lost still) to meet the Harley riders from Just Cruisin’, Ernie and Chris (two top blokes, we were definitely impressed!).  They had some beautiful bikes to take us into Wollongong for our next activity, a beer tasting at the Five Islands Brewing Company!  Someone had to drive the car, and I have had the pleasure of a Harley ride before, so within a few minutes, we were off, Mal and Alison on the bikes and me following behind in the car attempting to video what I could.  We will throw up some video eventually, after we polish it up a little.

Ernie on the left and Chris on the right, both top gents and members of Ulysses Club - the club for those that are cooler than you (man, I hope I am this cool when I get older!)
Photo credit: Alison Young

A Warm ‘Gong Welcome at the Five Islands Brewing Company

Our next destination was the Five Islands Brewing Company right on the beach in central Wollongong – you can not ask for a better location for a pub, let me tell you – for a beer tasting and lunch by the sea.  At FIBC, we were greeted by an enthusiastic Kate (@wollongong_nsw) wearing her wonderful #welovethegong t-shirt (which we scored exclusive first-edition runs of!!).  Kate introduced us to Mick, the GM at FIBC and all round great guy who got us promptly onto the beer tasting, as any good publican would!  We tasted all the local brews and heard some pretty rocking stories of the origins of a few (not retired) brews!  Seriously recommend a visit here.  Mick is also a personal champion of mine as he promises 10 pints and no hangover on any of the FIBC brews!  How can you go wrong?

Mick from FIBC giving me some sage advice (mostly regarding beer and other great subjects)
Photo credit: Alison Young

We tried a few different beers, here are some of our cups. No middies here, pints and half-pints only - a proper Aussie pub!
Photo Credit: Alison Young

After a great round of beer tasting we sat down with Katie and enjoyed a beautiful meal and a great chat about the We Love the Gong campaign (which we thoroughly enjoyed being a part of!!) and the awesome adoption seen through local businesses even as early as today, the launch day!  Mal asked Katie what she thought of Kiama, egging her on with comments of how much better The Gong was, but as the brilliant operator she is, she saw right through his charade and told us that it was also a beautiful place.  Soon after this, Katie had to run for the official We Love the Gong launch functions, so we were left to stuff ourselves on amazing food and chat amongst ourselves with occasional brilliant conversations from Mick when he wasn’t busy helping the bus of Asian tourists that had just arrived!  We eventually reluctantly dragged ourselves away from this fantastic place in order to make out way south to Kiama where we had accommodation booked for the evening.

Katie (#welovethegong, Mal and myself enjoying a brew and apparently some really great joke.
Photo credit: Alison Young

Arriving in Kiama

By the time we arrived in Kiama it had become dark, so I was in the position of finding a place I had never been with just the Tom Tom’s guidance and a car full of rowdy stories.  Naturally, I missed the turn and added the first of many straight-line-reverses to the trip.  This became a theme as the Kiwi voice on the Tom Tom had a habit of trailing off mid sentence, causing us to laugh and miss turns.  None the less, we made it there alive, quickly set up our charging stations, got a WiFi hot spot going with the Optus 3G connection and settled in to our 2-bedroom chalet.  It is a wonder all the lights in Kiama didn’t dim with the power we must have been drawing!!

After a few hours, it was unanimous that we had to go and get some food, so we set off on a hunt to find that little street we were sure we drove past coming into the Easts Beach Holiday Park.  Something cool about travelling to the country – there is always parking!  We never once had to wait for people to move or stop acting like jerks to get a car space, a very nice change from Sydney.  We took a walk up and down the main street until we finally settled on eating at Ritzy’s, which made us an awesome Chorizo Pizza.  After dinner, we headed home with the intention to sleep through til our ungodly wake up hour of 4.30am for something called the “Illawarra Fly.”  Of course, we are a little bit stupid and watch TV shows that Alison brought with her until 1am – oops.

We did eventually get to bed, drawing Day 1 to a close, 16 hours after we left Sydney and with time for only 3 hours sleep!  Man, did we not think that one though!