A few weeks back we headed off on a tag-a-long trip with our mates at Great Divide Tours. We do a lot of travel by ourselves, so sometimes it’s nice to get out and meet some new people.
This tour took us up to Barrington Tops for some great 4WDing and amazing scenery and then to Myall Lakes for some beach driving. The best thing about this trip was that it was accommodated, camping in Barrington in winter is not our idea of fun! It was 7 degrees up on the mountain during the day!
Saturday morning was an early start for us to drive from Sydney to meet up with everyone at 9am at Singleton. We then headed off towards Barrington Tops National Park. It was very foggy in the morning as you can see from the photo above and with rain on and off, combined with the recent rainfall in the area, we knew this was going to make for an interesting day on the tracks! It was a good test for the new car to get out and play in some mud!
Majority of people on our tour had not done a lot of, if any, 4WDing offroad, so with the muddy tracks, it was quite an adventure! As you can imagine, they were a little intimidated with the situation and their car’s ability, but we all need to learn somewhere right! As we are mates with the tour leader, we were put at the back as ‘tail end Charlie’, George and I joked that we needed to be put on payroll because of all the help and recoveries we undertook! It did make for an interesting day and in a way, it was great for everyone else to experience it all in a safe environment, rather than being caught out there on their own.
One of our stops was to visit ‘The Rock’ / ‘Cock Rock’ / Dick Rock’! Whatever you call it, it’s a funny sight to walk through the bush and be confronted with this! A few funny photos were taken here, as you can imagine, boys will be boys!!
Rumour has it that any couple who are having trouble falling pregnant should visit this rock. If they manage to have sex on the rock, they will be rewarded with a pregnancy!
After a great day of 4WDing, we arrived at Gloucester, our home for the night. We stayed at the Gloucester Country Lodge, a great hotel, rooms were great, service was great and the view …. WOW!
View from outside our room
Saturday night we all went to the golf club for dinner. We had a few drinks and laughs and of course, birthday cake for Shelly! Sunday was Shelly’s birthday, the last year of her 30’s. We were surprised to find that the club was completely empty at about 8.30pm and when the staff started leaving to go home we got the hint that maybe we were about to be kicked out! At that moment we realised that we certainly weren’t in the city!
Sunday morning kicked off with breakfast in our room and then to meet up with everyone for the day’s briefing. We headed off towards Myall Lakes via the back roads, such beautiful scenery, so lush and green. The day was sunny and warm compared to the day before. Morning tea was spent visiting The Grandis, the tallest known tree in NSW. The tree and picnic area is located just off the Pacific Highway, north of Bulahdelah.
We then headed down to Bombah Point for a coffee and to catch the barge/car ferry across the river. From there it wasn’t too long before we hit the beach for some beach driving and lunch. Again, no-one else had done sand driving before, so we had a quick lesson and what to do and what not to do before heading down on to the sand.
Our lunch spot was great, we had a huge pod of dolphins entertaining us while we ate lunch and went for a walk up on to the headland.
We all said our goodbyes around 4pm and headed back home after a great weekend away. Couldn’t have asked for a better way to welcome in the last year of your 30’s!
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