We got up on our last morning in Sydney and finished packing up our stuff at Gary and Rayes', before heading out towards the train station again.

After a couple of train journeys, one involving sitting beside a mother with her three kids screaming and climbing all over the train while she sat doing nothing (a fairly common parenting technique in Australia we've discovered) we arrived at our final stop near the airport. From here we had a rather uncomfortable walk for the best part of a kilometre in the sun with our now heaving backpacks until we finally arrived at the campervan company's depot.

We spent a while in the office getting our paperwork sorted out and pre-purchasing toll passes for the roads we'd be using, before being introduced to our latest mode of transport, the Hippie Camper we christened 'Little Peewee'. Slightly smaller than Happy Diwali both in the living and driving compartments, the van was nonetheless clean and well appointed, with the best feature being the fridge which ran off the 12v power supply. This was much better than the cool box we'd had in Happy Diwali which required constant refilling with ice, emptying of water, and chucking out of saturated food which had slipped into the meltwater.

With our gear chucked in the back of the van, we hopped in and set off rather jerkily, thanks to the cockpit being designed by Mitsubishi for the rather more compact Japanese gentleman resulting in my feet having to be either bent at improbable and painful angles or held hovering off the ground to operate the pedals.

We made our way north back through Sydney, contending with the busy highways and the incredibly awkwardly placed pedals which had my ankles growing more and more painful as we drove. We crossed the Syndey Harbour bridge and made our way through the northern urban sprawl of the city before eventually emerging into countryside a good while later.

For some reason I always imagine everywhere outside a town in Australia to be bright orange desert but of course it isn't, and we drove north from Sydney through hilly areas which although green, had unfamiliar trees such as eucalyptus growing.

We decided to get a bit of ground under us by sticking to the freeway, so carried on up the big and fairly busy road through landscape which didn't vary all that much with the next stop of any note being Newcastle, where we stopped in the mid afternoon to stretch our legs.

A coastal town popular with surfers, Newcastle wasn't big but did have some nice sandy beaches which we took a quick look at before it started getting dark. Before leaving town we grabbed some food supplies at a supermarket then made our way a bit further north before turning east to head out the Tomaree Peninsula, which forms the lower bit of land surrounding Port Stephens, a bay we had heard was pretty and worth visiting.

We arrived around an hour later in darkness in the town of Nelson Bay, the main town around Port Stephens, and found our way to a holiday park down near the beaches. Unfortunately the office was closed so we had to spend the night in the latecomer's parking spaces outside the main park. It wasn't too bad as we just wanted to sleep after a busy day, which we did.

The next morning we got up early and got properly checked into the holiday park for another night, deciding we wanted a day to check out the area. Unfortunately that day looked a bit grey and it wasn't long before it started raining, luckily not too heavily.

After parking the van up, we made our way down a little path to the beach behind the park which, despite the grey weather, had great views around the bay and over to rugged islands out in the water. We had a walk up the beach, exploring some rocky cliffs with cool geometric formations at one end, and Lucy continued her neverending search for cowrie shells, shuffling along with her head fixed at a 90 degree angle facing the sand.

With no luck in the cowrie search, we went back to the van and drove out of town, heading a bit down the peninsula to Anna Bay where we parked up and got out to check out the incredible sand dunes behind the beach stretching miles and miles down the coast.

The dunes were used as a substitute for desert in Mad Max 3 and it was easy to see why. Stretching for miles back from the beach and down the coast as far as the eye could see, the windswept dunes were desolate and quite eerie especially under the cloudy sky.

With the poor weather we decided not to opt for one of the 4x4 tours of the dunes and instead mucked about on the beach for a bit before driving back to Nelson Bay in an attempt to avoid the rain.

Once back in town we decided to stop at Red Ned's pies, a shop in town which we had read about which offered a mind boggling variety of pie fillings. I was starving so went for kangaroo teriyaki and chicken satay with macadamia nuts whereas Lucy had a beef stroganoff pie and a cheesey pasty.

With our pies we drove back to the campsite and tucked in, then chilled out for a bit. Our drama for the day came in the form of a young girl who crashed her scooter right in front of our van while we were sitting in it. I unfortunately caught a sickening glance as she fell face first onto the concrete roadway and saw the tiny white shards of her front teeth scatter over the ground. I jumped out the van but there wasn't much I could do other than give the her a bit of kitchen roll to hold against her bleeding lip and tell her 'you'll be alright' until her grandparents turned up, summoned by her younger sister.

Later in the afternoon the sun had decided to come out, so we went for another walk from the holiday park to the beach on its other side, with the first sight greeting us down at the beach a flock of pelicans gliding around, waddling about on the ground or just taking their leisure atop lampposts. It was the first time I had seen these massive birds and I was fascinated, spending ages watching them preening down at the waters edge and gliding around looking like big seaplanes.

Eventually dragging myself away from the pelicans, we wandered up the small beach with a different view across Port Stephens, enjoying the colours in the late afternoon sunlight and catching a few glimpses of dolphins swimming out in the bay.

We spent a quiet evening reading in the van and made some pasta in the tiny camp kitchen, not a patch on the big well-appointed kitchens we'd become used to in New Zealand.

The next morning it was time to hit the road so we grabbed some breakfast before making our way back down the peninsula and rejoining the Pacific Highway to head north.

After some miles of rather boring highway driving, with Lucy at the wheel this time to relieve my tortured ankles, we turned off the main road to take a scenic road through Myall Lakes National Park. The winding road through dense bush and alongside still, pretty lakes was a welcome relief.

We turned off the road through the Lakes at one point to take a dirt road a few kilometres south to the coast at Seal Rocks. Here, we passed a couple of beautiful quiet little beaches before parking the van and walking a short distance through the bush and up a steep headland to a lighthouse, which provided great views over the surrounding coastline and the rocks a short distance out in water giving the area its name. We didn't see any seals but we did see dolphins playing in the waves far below us and a few telltale spouts indicating whales out to sea.

After a cup of tea made on our portable stove down by one of the beaches, we were back in the van and on our way north again, along the coastline through some fairly pretty towns before eventually rejoining the Pacific Highway a bit further north.

The highway carried us further north, still a bit inland, before we took another turning east towards the coast. Driving along more minor roads, our route took us through flat farmland alongside straight, canal-like rivers with quirky old farm buildings lining the roads.

This landscape accompanied us until we popped out at the coast a bit unexpectedly in the small town of Crescent Head. We stopped at the beach here to watch the numerous surfers of all ages riding the waves, before carrying on through the countryside north to our next stop, the small town of South West Rocks.

We found our way to a local holiday park once again just as it was getting dark and, after getting settled down, spent a good part of the evening playing ping pong in the park's games room before cooking a quick dinner in the camp kitchen and calling it a night.

The next morning it was once again a bit grey and wet but we drove the short distance from the holiday park to a tiny nearby beach, with a narrow sandy shore sandwiched between two rocky walls. We spotted our first kangaroos here, grazing on some grass at a picnic site above the beach. I got quite close to them to take a look, and was able to watch a little joey poking its head out of its mother's pouch to nibble at the grass whilst she bent over.

It was great seeing kangaroos in the wild but we didn't stay long before driving a short distance up a hill to the historic jail on a nearby headland. Originally built to house convicts who were tasked with the construction of a breakwater in the nearby Trial Bay (a project which was abandoned before completion), the jail was also used to house men of German origin during the First World War. It was quite an imposing building sitting on the headland overlooking the bay but we contented ourselves with looking around outside it and peeking through the gates, too cheap to pay the entrance fee for a tour and knowing we had a long drive ahead of us.

After a look around the jail and the surrounding coastline, we made a start on that long journey, heading west to rejoin the Pacific Highway before making our way north once again.

We powered up the highway through the fairly nondescript farmland and bush, with the highway staying relatively close to the coast. We made a stop in Coffs Harbour, one of the main towns the road runs through. There was a market on down near the beach and we had a look around here and at the pretty beach before carrying on north.

At lunchtime we took a little detour to the small town of Red Rock, a quiet, pretty little place set beside a shallow sandy inlet with lush green surroundings and I had a sandwich at a picnic table while Lucy slept in the van.

Back on the road, we followed the Pacific Highway once again as it veered inland before heading out generally towards the coast. Once we reached the town of Ballina we left the highway and drove up a more minor coastal road which took us along beside the beautiful beaches and clear waters of the region before we finally arrived in Byron Bay.