Day 17 - Monday May 6th - 2500km travelled so far
My morning began abruptly when i heard Roy shout “fuck dude its 5am! We were meant to be up an hour ago!”. I was dropping the boys at Sydney airport for a 8:45am flight, so meant to be there at 7:45, and with a 3 hour drive there were in shit. I hadn’t packed anyof my clothes up or my laptop and hard drives, not to mention the bulk groceries were didnt eat so we packed up as fast as we could and hit the road. I was running on about 5 hours sleep but felt exhausted and not in the mood for driving, so i downed a couple of nodoz and powered through it. I struggled; shaking and eyes wide open trying to concentrate on the road but when we hit morning peak hour traffic it got hard. We couldnt get over the fact that people actually deal with this traffic every day, we took the main road into Sydney airport and were stuck in crawling/stopped traffic for over an hour, anybody who does that voluntarily on a daily basis can go get fucked catch the train or something else seriously.
We made it to the airport at 8:20 and they rushed in, i later found out there just missed check in and had to wait for a 2pm flight which is a real bummer. I negotiated my way out of the city and made my way out towards Cronulla to check Shark Island. Along the way i pulled over to answer a call from my sister who worked near the airport asking if i wanted to get coffee, I politely declined as i was totally over the busy city but i was to be back up the next week. I looked to the park next to me where i had stopped and the sun was shining through the trees of this magnificent park right next to the bay. I got out and walked around for a little while playing with the cockatoos and taking photos with my film camera.
I left and continued on to Cronulla, when i made it there the wind was strong from the South with a 3ft swell building, the waves were shit but it was a good sign for the next morning.
I went on the hunt for a coffee and found this little shop just back from the beach, my regular coffee; a large cappucino with caramel, which i like really fucking big, strong, smooth and creamy is rare to find perfect, and this shop delivered and i was stoked, so over buying shitty bitter coffees. I had parked my car right next to a beautiful park right next to cronulla beach so i grabbed my film camera and sat in the grass in the shade and just did nothing and it was great. I made a couple of sandwiches and ate them on the grass. I walked around to the point and took some photos. and made some phone calls to friends at Woolongong and Narooma to try organise something for the morning.
Eventually came up with the plan to meet a couple of mates, Joe and Luke, at a town just an hour north of their home Narooma. It was just after lunch so i hit the road, leaving Sydney and driving south past Woolongong to Shellharbour, i hung about there for all afternoon checking out a heap of waves, most were small but just good to have for future reference.
By this time it was nearly dark and i was to meet my friends further down the coast in a couple of hours so i kept on going. Timing it pretty well i arrived half an hour before them and we drove around this small coastal town looking for somewhere undercover to cook dinner, and came across the local convenience store that had a light and small over hang to stop the light rain. We cooked dinner on a small gas cooker and our meal comprised of mi goreng noodles and a couple of canned minestroni’s, which was enough to get us by. We drove back to the headland where we to surf in the morning and rolled out the swags on the grass next to the carpark and got a fire going. We drank beer and stared at the fire all night long, then curled up into each of our swags and watched the stars.
