Not much to say about today – we left Polkobin Hill at 8 a.m. and stopped at the Pokolbin Village Resort to check the internet and to look up travel directions to get to the hotel. We decided to drive towards Newcastle and make our way to Sydney via the coast. At one beach (the name is escaping me at the moment), we saw 17 freighters lined up waiting to make their way into port. As we were looking at them, I saw a movement in the water and we spotted dolphins. I actually managed to get a partially clear picture of one of them.

We meandered down the coastline until noon and then decided to head for Sydney as we didn’t want to hit the city at rush hour.

It didn’t seem to matter that it wasn’t rush hour – traffic was heavy. I was trying to navigate by the map we had as well as the road signs and somehow managed to point John towards the wrong exit – so instead of taking the Harbour Bridge we ended up taking the Harbour Tunnel. They are both toll roads but the tunnel doesn’t have cash booths. Ooops! Of course, taking the wrong way into the city meant the instructions we’d written down earlier in the day weren’t going to be much help. After a little agonizing, we pulled off the freeway we were on and headed into a residential type area. Finally we found a business and John went in to see if they could give him directions. The lady was fantastic – she even went out to her car and got her road map to help him see which way to go. It turned out that we were only about 8 blocks from the hotel.

The hotel room is pretty tiny – but we’re not going to be here for that long. We’ll be up by 6 tomorrow morning and off to the airport soon after. Our flight leaves at 9:45 and arrives in Los Angeles at 6:05 a.m. We have a 3.5 hour stopover in LA and then off to Phoenix where Lizz’s flight is supposed to land 5 minutes after ours (at different terminals of course!). Qantas has been having labour problems recently but, according to the tv, they are targetting domestic flights and Melbourne is the targeted airport. Whew!

Will post again from Tucson – when we’ve recovered from the flight.

Temperature: 20 C – overcast with showers