We drove in to the state of new souh wales and stopped at a place called darlington point and got some supplies for lunch simon planned to go crayfishing with his new net but there was so many flies about that we ate quickly and went on our way

We stopped at a small town called griffith where we discovered that instaed of paying to stay at van parks we could use the camp ground in one of the national parks for free...fantastic

The first place we tried was by a lake and had the same amount of flies as dinner so we drove to another national park called cocoparra

The road leading to the park was a dirt track and the camp site was about 30 km inside the park it took us ages to get there as we could only drive about 10 miles an hour on this track but we did see lots of kangaroos really close up and loads of other wildlife this was proper camping out in the middle of nowhere amongst loads of wildlife what a good idea it was to stay here and it was free we loved it

After a lovely night not as cold as it has been we thought we would set off early and cover lots of miles on our way to queensland If only we'd known how wrong things were about to go .....

Emma had this great idea that because we were low on fuel and in a rush to get to queensland to sort out our van that instead of going all the way back the way we came into the natiomnal park we could carry on up the dirt track and come out a bit thurther up. Our road atlas showed a road coming out of the park but the parks map didnt indicate any such road we should have realised the road wasnt shown for a reason

We drove for about an hour not passing a single vehicle or house nothing the road looked like it hadnt been used for years but still Emma was sure this was a good idea we saw a big muddy and as simon was saying "if we get stuck in this we are b*****ed " the van slipped down in to the mud and got stuck

we were miles from any where we tried to reverese out of the mud ...nothing, we tried wedging wood and rocks under he wheels .....noting, we needed help simon said he saw a farm house a few miles back all farmers have tractors and a tractor is what we needed to tow us out of the mud so we walked for about an hour and a half to the farm

We climbed over a fence displaying a 'tresspassers will be shot' sign and walked over to the farm house we nervousely knocked on the door but no one was in. We didnt know what to do we decided to walk back to our van and try again, the weather kept changing from bakeing hot sun to rain and even a sand storm

We walked back and tried again in vain, we even tried walking in the other direction but nothing .....The only thing for it was to walk back the way we came and hope for the best as we passed the farm we tried again and still no one was about. so we walked and walked and walked for waht felt like days

Eventually a car we couldnt believe our luck we jumped out and waved our arms the driver just waved back thinking we were just saying hi, so we shouted like a pair of crazy mud covered lunatics and he stoppped. He said he couldnt tow us out of the mud as he was in a rush but he did give us a number to call and lent us his phone we phoned a recovery company thanked the man and waited for the recovery man to turn up

the man couldnt believe how far we had walked it took ages to reach our van all the way the man was telling us we were stupid for not bringing water with us and not having a moblie telephone and how lucky we were to be alive and how we could of died. We didnt care we were happy to listen as we were gonna be ok

So much for staying in the park for free it cost us $150 to be rescued