Livin in a Van down by the Ocean

After a weekend of getting cheeky in Byron Bay and soaking up the sun and surf we hopped on a train back to Brisbane for the night.  We knew that we wanted to drive and camp down the east coast on our way to Sydney and upon the recommendation from our friend Keith we looked into this company called Camper Van Relocation's. Essentialy it is a company that works with all the camper van rental companies to arrange having their vans relocated back to the major cities travelers drop them off in random places or if they get to many in one city. We ended up getting a wicked deal on a van that needed to be moved from Brisbane back to Sydney over 4 days - for that bargain basement price of 1$/day we had ourselves some wheels and a home for 4 days!!

Picking up our home for the week

We only had the one night to spend in Brisbane so I can't say that we saw too much, but after being directed to a hostel close to the station, Tinbilly's, by a few neighborhood drunks and getting settled in we headed down to the west end to grab some dinner. Although we didn't have to many expectations about Brisbane (Jonny had been before and thought of it as kind of the Hamilton of Australia), we were pleasantly surprised at how pretty the city was at night. Once in the west end, a pretty hip neighborhood filled with restaurants and bars, we settled on a gourmet burger place for some dinner. Jonny had his much anticipated Aussie burger, complete with beets and an egg on top and I had a delicious chicken burger and then we headed back to the hostel to grab some sleep.

Brisbane skyline at night

The next morning we got up early to run a few errands before heading out to pick up our van. We planned to take public transit which would take about an hour to get the van but we were running a bit late from our errands and really wanted to hit the road so we asked a cabbie approximately how much it would take to get there - about $20, one quoted us. So we grabbed our stuff and hailed a cab out to the van pick up.......$50 dollars later we arrived, good thing that this van was only costing us 1$/day. A pick up we thought would only take us about 20 mins quickly turned to 2 hours. The poor guy who was at the van pick up place was a bit overwhelmed since we didn't have all the info from the van company and had about 3 pick ups already. He was a very lovely man, but organization was not his strong suit, plus he loved to chat to. We heard all about the time he spend in Canada 20 years ago in Picton working on the shipyards. After getting to know him a bit a getting the paper work out of the way we finally got our van, which obviously drives on the right side of the road it being Oz and all but SURPRISE..... its also standard! After taking a few tours around the parking lot (I say we, but mean Jonny because I wasn't going near that steering wheel) getting used to the clutch we hit the open roads on our way South......FIRST STOP - SURFER'S PARADISE (or is it....)

We had planned to skip surfer's paradise all together since it wasn't really the vibe we were going for our this journey. We were looking for serene, picturesque, secluded, etc and Surfer's is more like Niagara Falls on a beach (with the Ripleys Bealieve it or not and all) but we decided to stop anyway just so I could see it. We were planning to spend a bit of the afternoon bronzing there but we were running a bit behind schedule so instead we just took a bit of a walk along the beach and then hit the local bottle shop to grab some supplies for our nights camping then it was back in the van to head to our stop for the night - Yamba.

Yamba is a picturesque little seaside village a few KM off the highway right at the tip of Yuragir National Park. We found a place to park our "home" for the night near the beach and drifted off. The next morning we woke up at the crack of dawn, drove the 2mins down the road so we could be right on the beach and watched the most unreal sunrise come up over the combination of beach and rocky coastline. All I could think was.. 3 more days of these sunrises and sunsets... what better way to take in Australia?

Entrance way to Surfer's Paradise

Sun rising over Yamba

Fisherman in Yamba at sun rise

 After an epic morning barefoot run on the beach and cooking up a quick breakfast in our van kitchen we hit the road to make up some ground we had lost yesterday. We had a big list of coastal spots that were very far off that beaten path that we wanted to hit.

The first place we planned to hit for the day was Minnie Waters, a tiny town hidden deep in the Yuragir National Park about 40KM off the Pacific Coast Highway. Minnie Waters was a breathtaking little beach, we even pulled our van right up onto the sand and just enjoyed the solitude for a while. Also known for having lots of wildlife given its location deep in the national park, Minnie Waters was also where I spotted my first and second Kangaroos on the trip! The first one we spotted as it hopped along dirt road in front of us as we made our way to the walking trail. The second one we spotted however was a bit different. We drove by one that I swore was "sleeping" on a little slope just on the side of the road so I made Jonny reverse so I could take a picture of it but as we approached a little closer we realized that it wasn't actually "sleeping" on the side of the road.... it was actually dead on the side of the road. I decided it would be a bit to morbid to take a picture of a dead 'roo so we kept driving. The rest of our day included stops in the quaint coastal villages of Scots Head and South West Rocks before we parked for the night in Bonny Hills. Once we found our spot for the night in Bonny Hills we headed down to the beach to take in another gorgeous sunset before cooking up some dinner again in the van.

Empty beach at Minnie Waters

Chilling with the van in Minnie Waters

Enjoying pre dinner drinks in the Van

Dinner in the van

The next morning the weather was a bit off so we skipped our morning beach run (or at least that was our excuse), made a quick breakfast and then headed in to town to pick up a few Long Blacks (what they call a regular black coffee here in Oz). Then we hit the road.
Our first stop was in a little town called Forester the beach there was nice but we had seen better so we continued on to our next stop for the day - Seals Rocks. This is a gorgeous little spot, hard to even call it a town really because there is pretty much nothing there. We spent the better part of the afternoon there swimming and tanning on the beach and taking up hike up to Sugarloaf Point to another one of New South Wales (NSW) iconic light houses. From the top of the lighthouse there was an epic view of the coastline,which is known to be quite dangerous due to the jagged rock faces on one side of the point and the large rocky points that stick out of the water stretching a few KM off the shore. After taking in some great sun at Seals Rocks we headed about another hour south to find a spot for our last night of camping. We had arbitrarily picked a spot called Hawk's Nest to call home for the night because it would only be a few hours drive to Sydney the next morning. It turned out to be one of our favorite spots along the coast. It was a completely secluded beach hidden behind these massive sand dunes. When you climbed up on the sand dunes you got a great view of the Ocean to your left and the river to your right - perfect spot to spend our last night camping.

Looking down over Seals Rocks

Walking path up to Sugarloaf point

Sunset in Bonny Hills

Sand Dunes at Hawk's Nest

After taking in 1 final sunrise and a morning swim/shower we hit the road for the last leg of our journey to Sydney where we would be staying with good friends of ours, Kiera and Dave, who were my old roomies in Uni. After a quick stop at Kiera and Dave's to drop off our stuff and take a real shower for the first time in 4 days we headed into the van for the last time to take it to the rental return place. I am definitely going to miss our little "home".....perhaps we should consider a "van down by the lake" as our new home in Toronto...thoughts?


OOO_Talia