The magic rock

Three weeks ago, we left behind southeast Asia and landed in Sydney, for what I’ve been calling ‘Phase 2’ of our trip. After taking only 49 days to get around Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Singapore, you might think that we would be taking it easy for while.

But not so. The reason we had been zipping around Asia so fast is that we had to be in Sydney for a particular date – September 13^th. It was the day when we would meet Steve and Bekha – some friends of mine who had been travelling around Asia and Australia for around a year before us. Before going home to the UK, they had masterminded a two-week long road trip from Sydney to Brisbane and back again, with myself, Alice and two of their other friends who were flying in for a 2-week holiday – one of whom was my long-time friend Paul.

You can drive from Sydney to Brisbane in around 11 hours without stops – it’s around 937km. But we had a long list of things to do on the way. Body boarding on Valla beach. Mini-golfing at the Big Banana. Kayaking with dolphins and whales in Byron Bay. Visiting Australia zoo, where Alice cuddled a koala. Dipping our feet in a public swimming pool right in the centre of Brisbane. A wine, beer, cider and spirits tasting tour in Hunter Valley. And three nights at a villa on Bondi beach.

Those two weeks were so intense they left my head spinning. One day we’d visit the beach in the morning, drive five hours, book a hotel for the next day, go out for dinner and then drink just enough that I’d feel it in the morning. Far from contributing to the organisation, I found myself barrelling along in a dreamworld of sun-bathed highways, night-time beach excursions, hipster junk food, Air BnBs with balconies, coastal walks and more bottles of wine than I care to remember. And all the while Steve and Bekha, using their well-practised organisation skills and seemingly infinite energy, conducted the whole journey like the Duffer Brothers directing the season finale of Stranger Things.

It was awesome. Steve and Bekha aren’t travel agents, but they may as well have been. Steve even drove us around the distilleries of Hunter Valley so we could drink, even though it meant he couldn’t. It was so fast-paced I could barely keep up. More than once a day I found myself asking where we’d be tomorrow, as I struggled to remember whether Nambucca Heads was south of Byron Bay, or the other way round. But they looked after everything, from the walking routes to the restaurants to the grocery shopping trips.

And then, suddenly, it all ended. Steve and Bekha’s year long adventure came to an end. We said our goodbyes. Steve and Bekha took the long flight halfway around the world back to England and back to reality.

For us, it was time to take a train instead. After one connection and two pleasant hours later, we found ourselves, as planned, at my Uncle and Aunt’s house, in the sleepy town of Mittagong in New South Wales. It was time for Part B of Phase 2. Time to relax.

For the first three days, we were exhausted. 60+ days of jetsetting had taken their toll. We slept through our alarms, made ourselves brunch and cuddled my cousin’s beautiful dog (a King Charles Cavalier called Lucky). The most responsible thing we managed to do was our washing. My Uncle and Aunt fed us like royalty, and even gave us a whole downstairs flat to ourselves. It was idyllic. It was like taking a hot bath after being at a week-long festival.

After a week, we had ramped up our daily routine to include the mundane suburban activities we had actually started to miss – cooking, gardening, hoovering. We walked the dog, went shopping, and filled in our scrapbook. I even applied for a tax rebate. We went from being wandering nomads to house-proud home-makers in a span of a few days. It was like pushing the reset button.

But after a week of being in the same house for 23 hours a day, boredom set in. The kind of itch at the back of your skull that tells you that whilst you’ve thoroughly enjoyed being a well-fed, sleepy little animal for a while, it’s probably best for you not to carry on. The idea that you should probably get out of the house before you start losing key life skills like the ability to talk to strangers or shower before noon.

And so we googled some local attractions, and set off to see a local waterfall aptly named the ‘sixty-foot fall.’ Being in Mittagong, it was only 45 minutes’ walk away from where we lived. Australia – at least outside of the cities – is great like that. Wherever you drive, there are signs saying things like ‘Crystal Mountain 50km’ or ‘The Big Potato 8km’.

The walk was along a track named the ‘Fire Trail.’ An easy walk through the dried out Australian forest towards Mount Alexandra, made slightly harder by our worn-out, tread-less trainers. As we walked further away from our comfy home, slipping down pebbled paths and catching our legwear in the brush – we were once again out of our comfort zone. Not too long into our walk, we even saw a wild echidna burying its head in the sand as it waited for me to stop taking photos of it.

The only annoying thing was, we couldn’t find the waterfall. But given that this was our first proper adventure in seven days, we didn’t let that stop us from having a good time. In fact, we managed to find something better.

Along the fire trail, we came across this.

We had brought picnic food, and we needed somewhere to eat it. Unfortunately the fire trail didn’t yield any picnic tables, so the large flat top face of this boulder was the closest thing to a table we could find. So I scrambled up, hauled up Alice, and set our bags down. Nestled our bums into comfortable sitting positions.

And then the real adventure began.

We unpacked our food. Crunched into an apple each. Cut vintage English cheese on plastic plates. Spread chilli jam and homemade piccalilli on crackers. We popped open the crisps. For dessert – profiteroles. For second dessert – two slices of the Victoria sponge cake I had baked the day before. And then we popped open the prosecco, and cheers’d them in coloured cups.

We lazed around, stretching our backs, swapping seats. Took it in turns to take photos of each other. Played word games on our phones. Took a quiz of capital cities, which we had been talking about doing for weeks without getting round to it.

We talked. About travelling, about our relationship, about life. Watched the sun descend slowly through the trees. We cuddled. Cuddled sitting down, cuddled side by side, cuddled lying down. We listened to cockatoos squawk loudly; caught them flying overhead.

We finished the prosecco. We scratched our names into the rockface, in a big cheesy loveheart. We wondered if we could stay there forever.

And in a way, we did. There will always be a part of us sitting on that rock, hoping that the sun would never fall.

And that was it. We ambled towards home, got picked up by my Aunt, and went to bed after a freshly cooked dinner.

Sometimes the littlest adventures turn out to be the best. If you’re ready for one, then even a flat-topped rock can become an adventure playground.