Hello from Canberra

First a disclaimer – please excuse the spelling…this keyboard is awful and the machine is soooo slow I can’t be bothered to fix mistakes…

The past few days have indeed been an adventure!

Jessica has pretty much been on hunger strike. She is eating bread and peanut butter and cheerios almost exclusively. Every place we went to in Sydney she would ask the waiter: “do you have peanut butter?” Poor munchkin. Now that we have the campervan, though, things are a bit better and we’ve been able to supplement her diet with some fruit and hot dogs!

Our second day in Sydney was fun, still a bit jet lagged. We caught a ferry to the aquarium and saw the sharks and a platypus. A bit steep at $60 for an hour, but it was a wonderful aquarium. Jessica didn’t have much in the way of patience until we hit the play centre in the cafeteria and she spent an hour in there climbing around. We spent the rest of the day just wandering about in a haze of jet lag – saw a bit of china town and some of Paddy’s market. Ate dinner at harbourside over by the aquarium where an industrious waiter unearthed some peanut butter for the uber picky among us…only to discover that it had “lumps” in it (those would be peanuts) She soldiered on and ate about half her toast, though.

We picked up the campervan on Sept 4 at around 10 am. The place was understaffed due to a virus, so we waited ages, but what nice people there! They spent a couple of hours pulling apart the campervan to try and put a safety hook in the back for Jessica’s seat. No such luck. So, Jessica has to sit up front with Daddy. She can reach the dash with her feet and spends her entire drive opening and closing the glove box and changing radio stations…much to the annoyance of her father!

Driving out of Sydney was interesting (not to mention a test of any marriage!) I had to sit in the back window of the truck cab (picture a truck and camper) which is elevated so I am sitting on slippery linoleum and leaning forward to see the roadsigns. Not exactly legal, but Grant needed someone to navigate and Jessica was busy with the glove box. We got there in the end, after a bit of swearing and a few missed turns, and pulled into the campground just as it was getting dark – 6pm for anyone who is wondering! Luckily we had managed to stop for groceries on the way – an adventure in itself! We stayed in a little place just outside shell harbour an hour and a half or so south of Sydney in a national park on the Tasman Sea.

Morning came early as Jessica woke up at 4:30 am afraid of the dark and her flashlight battery was dead from being on all night. Thankfully, the beds in the campervan are big and comfortable, provided there’s not a cold footed three year old wedged between you! Actually the bed up top really is big – it’s probably close to a queen size. We have our own shower and toilet, as well. But we’ll save those for emergency potty breaks – provided her highness ever gets round to toilet training. We’re putting her back into diapers as soon as the pull-ups run out. They’re about half the price here in Oz, so that’s what she’s going to have to deal with until she’s trained. Hopefully that’s an incentive for her.

The campground was lovely, although I did count five spiders in my shower with me! The view was amazing as was the birdsong in the morning. We drove through Macquerie (sp??) pass on the way to Canberra which was a bit hair-raising, but very very pretty!

We stayed just outside the city last night at the exhibition centre. Got some laundry done and chatted with some locals. The heater broke in the campervan so we’ve spent most of today driving around trying to get it fixed…it was COLD this morning!

Well, I’ve got a line of people waiting for this computer so I should sign off here.