Winifred Wilson's Exciting Adventures in Space

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!