Australia: The Blue Mountains to Melbourne

Our next stop was the Blue Mountains just outside of Sydney. We walked around Wentworth Falls to several viewpoints, drove to Leura Falls and did another walk before heading over to Echo Point Lookout and saw the Three Sisters. There was a controlled burn happening in the area which made for an incredible photo. Our final couple of lookouts in the Blue Mountains were at Evans Lookout and Valley View Lookout, before driving over Sea Cliff Bridge. Unfortunately by then it was fairly dark, so we couldn't see much!

The next morning, we visited Illawarra Fly Treetop Walk and Illawarra Lookout, then drove to Kiama to see the blowhole. We also went to Jamberoo Lookout and saw huge kangaroos!

Our last destination for the day was Hyams Beach in Jervis Bay. In 2005, it was decided that Hyams Beach had not only the whitest sand in Australia, but the world, which was backed by Guinness World Records. It has since been demoted to only 9th in Australia, but it's still pretty stunning!

We were planning to hike up Pigeon House Mountain in the morning, and the nearest campsite was down a long gravel road. After about an hour of crawling down the road, we arrived in complete darkness to an empty forest area. As if this wasn't creepy enough, our van chose that night to make strange creaking noises! At one point, we got out to see if we could see what was making the rustling noises nearby and saw a wombat, quite a rare feat apparently (We called him Dwayne).

We eventually got to sleep and did the challenging but rewarding 3 hour hike up and back the mountain.

We drove down through Bateman's Bay towards Eden. Unfortunately, the weather took a turn for the worst around this point so we decided to drive straight across to the farm we would be staying at on the outskirts of Melbourne. We arrived about 7pm on a Friday evening and met the family we would be working with. They were originally from Scotland and had a gorgeous 3 year old girl and a 5 month old baby boy. Over dinner, we chatted more about the kind of work we would be doing with them; Will would be helping to landscape their huge garden while Julie would be helping with the children and basic household tasks. We walked down the garden to see the cottage we'd be staying in and began planning our next few months.