We left the Australian capital, Canberra early in the morning in order to get into Sydney to visit the Britz office. On the way in we added one more item to our to-do list. An indicator on the instrument panel indicated a light was out.

The roads from Canberra to Sydney are excellent roads. It is four lane interstate quality highway all the way. As we approached Sydney, we encountered the toll roads. These toll roads automatically bill each vehicle that doesn’t have an electronic pass. The rental campervans have no electronic pass so we would have to get on the internet and log in and pay our bill within three days or the bill would go to Britz and they would tack on a $35 administrative fee to the bill and we would be charged that. Given that, we avoided the toll road.

Leaving the highway we entered the city streets of Sydney. I had never planned to drive the campervan in Sydney. We planned to bypass Sydney and see the rest of the country. We have hotel reservations in Sydney the last week of our stay in Australia. Driving in Sydney was a real adventure. There are no north/south east/west roads in Sydney. Roads wander around and change names without changing direction. The GPS was no help initially as it simply wanted to route us back to the toll road. Louise took over as navigator, keeping me posted on how to best get to the Britz offices. Still, she was concerned that her map didn’t show the final few streets needed to get to the office. I told her to restart the GPS as our route departed from the toll road and sure enough, it picked us up and routed us right to their office.

Once at Britz, I gave them a list of repair items to be addressed including the headlight that had burned out on our trip. They directed us to the local restaurant area and said they would pay for our lunch. I told Louise I would stay here and she could go for take-out pizza. Some things were fixed and other minor things were simply going to take too long to resolve. We got the majors done and were on our way by 2:30 p.m. That put us on our way out of town just about the time traffic started to pick up for the afternoon rush hour. The GPS plotted our route and we followed it. We were on the streets for about 30 minutes before it put us on the Western Expressway out of town toward the Blue Mountains. Traffic on the expressway moved along quickly and we were well out of town by 4:30.

The first park we stopped at was full, a boating competition had a crowd in town. There was no other park here so we decided we’d go to the next town a way down the road. At this point we needed a grocery stop and we found a store in town. We wanted to stock up because the list was long and we were headed out to remote areas where the size of grocery stores and the prices for food would most likely be to our disadvantage. So we stopped at a grocery store and stocked up. When we got back underway, rain was starting. As evening came on the rain and fog began to make driving more difficult. As dark set in we were looking for the next campground.

We finally found the road we were looking for and it took us to the campground. The office was just closing but the man inside opened the door. He assigned us a spot, gave us a quick orientation to the park and said we should stop and pay for the site in the morning when the office was open. We were home for the night in Katoomba in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney.