Sydney to Melbourne (by Ben; photos by Will)

After our time in the Blue Mountains, Simon drove us to Sydney after our final goodbye to the rest of the Holloways. In Sydney, we went to the car rental place and sighed as we saw that the cars up for rental had their unusual name printed on them in many different places. Daddy said “what did birds ever do to them anyway?” as we walked into the office. 

 

After we had gotten the car, we had lunch with Simon in the car park and said goodbye to him as well. Then we drove down to a place called Jarvis Bay and slept at a place called Hidden Creek Campsite. And just as we were pulling into the campsite, we spotted our first kangaroos. They were lots of them in the field we were looking in. There wasn’t very much hopping going on, but two of the males were fighting. If you don’t know what that looks like, then I’ll try and describe it to you. They throw heads back, balance on their tails and slap and kick each other. It looks a bit like two possessed toddlers fighting over some candy. 

 

The next day we planned to stay at a campsite next to a beach for two nights but as the campsite didn’t have any water, we ended up going to another campsite for the second night. But the campsite wasn’t all bad, as the website promised, there were Kangaroos on the beach. You could see them up close, and these ones were hopping. The next day we drove and used Apple music for the first time but other than that, not much happened on the drive. That night we stayed in a suburban campsite/resort in Marimbula with a Wi-fi, a splash pad, and go-karts (you had to peddle them, sadly) and we used all three. (Picture demonstrates kangaroo fighting on a trampoline). 

 

The next night, we stayed in another campsite and there are three things worth note that happened there. First, since big oak trees were planted there by Europeans many years ago a lot of leaves were falling and after we woke up the next day, there were twenty or so leaves on our tent. The second thing is that when we were eating dinner (before we slept, I know the timeline is getting confusing) Mama made the mistake of feeding a Possum some banana, contradicting countless signs telling her not to, which then attracted a second. Then Clara dropped some of her beans on toast (the classiest of meals) and it went from “aww look at the cute possums” to “ok everyone, let’s just back away slowly”. The third thing is that it was the night that Clara decided to name a water bag (like a water bottle but it packs down more when it’s empty) with a filter on it. She came up to me after going to the bathroom and said something along the lines of “this is Owen, he is your child”. Owen calls me Dunc, because I’m his uncle and I’m like a father to him, so the two words collided and now I’m Dunc. 

The next day, we drove to Philip Island and saw Little Penguins (yes that’s their official name) and they were small and flappy, just as Daddy was hoping for. The campsite we stayed in smelt bad. Since we arrived in the dark, we thought it was just the bunny poo, as it turns out it was the combination of swamp and bunny poo that made the stench. I made it sound worse than it actually was, in fact, Mama was the only one who was bothered by it. Then the next day, we arrived in Melbourne. That’s all for this blog post, I’ll leave what we did in Melbourne for a different post. Goodbye! (This picture is the beach before the penguins came out).