Hurtling out of Brisbane and across the border into NSW, we took to the motorway and what a difference to speed-of-travel it made. Apart from the Coffs Harbour choke point (I know, being fixed, but what will happen to the Big Banana – re-sited perhaps?), if you want to drive speedily from Brisbane to Sydney, there is only one route.  New England, Thunderbolt etc just don’t cut it.  Not that we were hurrying. We even stopped at Goodwood Island near Iluka, just to see the other side of the Clarence River.

We included a couple of off-highway excursions, seeking our off-grid preferred type of campsite.  A great spot called Windermere, right on Kinchela Creek, about 6km from Hat Head, gave us beautiful mown grass sloping down to the creek and a glorious sunset campfire.  Only open for about a year, it was obviously doing well and they were being careful about over-crowding.  At nearby and previously unvisited South West Rocks (have these people ever been anywhere?), we squeezed in a little hike in Arkoona NP beside Trial Bay Gaol and even spotted a well-hidden koala. Naturally, Lesley found her obligatory snake (only about 30cm this time).  The gaol was built in the late 1800s purely to house the inmates who were there to build a huge breakwater, which never did get built.  Some sort of heroic failure but it came back into use for interning local-ish Germans at the start of WWI.  Another poor idea as it turned out.

We also stopped at Myall’s Away near (go on, guess) Myall Lakes about 20km of very windy road off the highway.  This was near Seal Rocks which we’d also never seen before – well, how wonderful!  We sat on a grassy headland for half an hour, with an excellent coffee from across the road, overlooking the most gorgeous clear-watered beach while also watching maybe a dozen whales and their calves cavorting a few hundred metres off shore.  The whales were interested in a few (respectful) jet skiers who’d come out, but it was hard to tell if they were saying “get away from my baby” or “take a look at my baby”.  So good!

One last surprise took place at Hills Tankers truck wash near Newcastle.  A massive operation with a handful of huge auto-wash machines, we drove our rig in and sat in the car for half an hour while a swarm of people manually soaped and brushed and squirted both tug and van.  Then the auto-machine ran up and down, washing and rinsing and we drove away virtually spotless. ATGANI hadn’t been so clean for 3 years.  All for the pittance of $150 – I don’t know if you’ve been to a local carwash lately but you can spend that sort of money just on a car.  It would have taken us days.  Then, of course, it rained all the way to Sydney but we’re still a lot cleaner than we were.

And so the end of ATGANI draws near.  Unless something remarkable and unforeseen (by me at least) occurs, our fantastic big caravan will be sold, hopefully before Christmas, and our equally fantastic Landcruiser will follow it shortly thereafter – possibly even in lock-step.  Should you hear of anyone who might want to buy such a pleasure dome as ATGANI has proven to be, please put them in touch.  There’ll be some little time spent sprucing up the van and the truck, but they are indeed, for sale.

Should they actually sell, we (I) will have lived up to the intention from the very start:  It’s a project – not a lifestyle.  Certainly an excellent project, but a project nonetheless.
And, as far as caravanning goes, I will never ever ever ever again concern myself with, “What could possibly go wrong?”