Winifred Wilson's Exciting Adventures in Space

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.