Wanderung 33

Drive from Sydney to Canberra

Our main goal was getting down to Canberra to visit Karen and Jeffie, but we also wanted to see the coastal area from Bondi Beach southwards as far as possible along the way. That is NOT, of course, the most direct way from Sydney to Canberra, more like taking the two sides of a right triangle rather than the hypotenuse. In the end, we made it as far South as Bateman`s Bay before turning inland, but the extra distance for this scenic drive took us from 10 o`clock in the morning to 6 o`clock that evening.

Getting south from the Sydney airport onto M1 was surprisingly easy, although it helped that I had had 10 days of driving on the left side in West Australia under my belt. What did NOT help was that our rental car, a Kia Rio, had a very tiny engine coupled to an automatic transmission, which combination made the throttle very difficult to modulate. Roughly, the first 0-20% throttle travel gave gradual acceleration, but then the next 60% did nothing much at all until you reached the final 80-90% which gave moderate acceleration and the final 90-100% that gave full passing-lane acceleration. That extreme non-linearity in response made driving the car much more difficult than a manual shift car would have been. But I digress.

The M1 motorway (American: limited-access Interstate highway) would give way to the A1 non-limited-access version at somewhat unpredictable intervals. The A1 sections led us through places like Bondi Beach and some other very charming towns, whereas the M1 Motorway sections tended to bypass the towns.

I particularly enjoyed where the coastal mountains came down to the sea and the roadway was carved into the shoulders of the mountains and right on the coast. It reminded me of the coastal Autostrada in northern Italy in the region around Imperia, and was equally scenic. Where the road shifted to traverse the small towns on our route, we found the old architecture rather fascinating as the stark, sun-baked buildings reminded me of small towns in the desert in the USA, but here we were right on the eastern coast of Australia!

We stopped every couple hours for a quick rest or a bite to eat, and occassionally a short walk in a park to stretch our legs. One park was an old aboriginal camping site, which was explained in several plaques along our path. The path ended in a stony outcrop heading out into the ocean, and we were surprised to see SCUBA divers out there, exploring a WWII wreck, I think.

It was very pleasant to see the headlands reaching out into the Tasman Sea and the beautiful harbors with the inevitable accompaniment of small sailboats along the way. It really was very pretty and I regretted not having time to stop and properly soak it all in, but we were running out of days in Australia and simply could not do so. [I am no doubt biased by having friends in Austalia, but truly it is a big, welcoming, and multi-faceted country. So if you get a chance to actually spend a long time there, (whatever time frame tourists are limited to), consider living and driving about the various sections of the country.]

The final stretch up from Bateman`s Bay to Canberra was basically straight up the coastal mountains onto a bucolic plain, and then across to the ACT. But wow it was exciting trying to navigate those 25 kph hairpin turns in the mountain switchbacks with an underpowered car! Our GPS had chosen that afternoon to suddenly die on us by refusing us access to the maps, but there is only 1 route to Canberra at that point, so we were OK until we reached Canberra and even got to the correct suburb, but then just couldn't figure out the last mile or two.

So once again we had to call Karen, who obligingly drove over and guided us in the last few blocks. We had a good laugh about that and then settled in for an evening of chatting until Jeffie came home, when we all had a nice, home-cooked dinner. We talked a short bit afterward, but then all turned in for the night.