Sydney NSW

I have loved driving my whole life and chose transport as my occupation for the second half of my working life but I wasn’t really looking forward to tackling Sydney traffic again. It really is the next level and takes additional concentration with bumper to bumper traffic and with so many trucks on the road now. I had a vague memory of the volume but of course it’s increased so much in 40 plus years. With so many new roads and tollways to avoid it was a battle of wits. I made it of course without too much drama. The GPS helped but not always.

We had 10 nights at Sheralee Tourist Caravan Park in Rockdale. It was situated on Muddy Creek and we were right down the back of the park beside the creek. It proved a good choice as it was a good walk to the train station at Rockdale where we were able to access anywhere in Sydney. In the opposite direction about 800metres away was Brighton Le Sands with a Coles Supermarket, plenty of eating places and a great RSL Club.

The days filled pretty quickly with 3 items off the Bucket List (Don Bradman Museum at Bowral, Three Sisters at Katoomba and walking the route of the City to Surf) and several days spent locating and photographing the bank branches that I worked at in Sydney CBD and the suburbs. This was done by train, bus and walking. Some were harder to find than others.

AFL Grand final afternoon we spent at Brighton Le Sands RSL Club. It wasn’t the best game but we sat at a table with 3 locals who originated from 3 different countries. One, a Hungarian born man invited us out on his boat. A few days later he picked us up from our accommodation and we spent a couple of hours touring around Botany Bay. We supplied lunch and it was a magical time seeing a different side of Sydney than we would otherwise. The kindness that complete strangers can show is absolutely amazing.

On our last day in Sydney we caught the train into town and then buses all the way up to Palm Beach. From here we caught a ferry around the various bays before catching buses back to Circular Quay and then the ferry across to Manly for a late dinner and returning to our Caravan Park after 11pm.