While I was talking about going to Sydney, my best friend and I also talked about exploring more of New South Wales. I have absolutely seen more of the world than I have of Australia so we decided to go camping around NSW for 10 days.
To anyone unaware, NSW is about the same size as France, only there's not so many people and villages. Where you can drive 5 minutes down the road in France and come to another quaint little village, in NSW you can drive for a few hours and see nothing but kangaroos, cows and the occasional emu... and lots and lots of dirt and boring scrub. We decided to tackle the top bit in the 10 days - it was a bit of a push but doable.
Day 1 started out early - loading the Landrover with gear, organising food and snacks, and (for me) generally prepping to be sleeping outdoors for over a week. I have never enjoyed camping before (my campervan adventure in 2016 wasn't strictly camping) so I was definitely a bit nervous about it. Once we finished, we set off to meet some friends at a petrol station outside of Stockton Beach, about 1.5 hours drive from Sydney, where we bought a beach-driving permit. Then it was off to Stockton.
None of us had ever been to Stockton Beach before. I'd seen it on my Instagram feed and instantly wanted to go there. It is a huge expanse of sand and dunes which you can drive on. And when I say huge, well, if it wasn't for the ocean on one side, at some points you'd think you were in a desert. Anyway, I have loads of photos of sand, so buckle in...
While we were there, my best friend was telling me all about these people who live here, in shacks. Then all of a sudden we came up on them and it looked like a scene out of Mad Max*
*I've never seen Mad Max, this is what people tell me it looks like...
We went to leave at the Anna Bay end of the beach, passing this mostly buried traffic sign
We spent our first night in Myall Lakes National Park at the Banksia Green campsite. I was supposed to sleep in the 4wd, and started off that way. But I was so unprepared for how cold it got in the night, and woke up about an hour later shivering and thought I was going to die. So we ended up sharing the little tent for the rest of the adventure. Beats freezing to death!