Alix says:

Heading south of Sydney an hour on train to Royal National Park near the town of Crunella for a quench of nature we didn’t get in NZ!  A pleasant train ride south of Sydney along the coast is Crunella where we hopped a quick ferry across the harbor to Dunnedin and the National Park.  It’s nice to be in this new boating community!  I love looking at all the sailboats in the harbor, even if I am not on one, although that would be nice.  Colin is getting all hyped up on wanting to help crew a ship, learn knots and talk about shanty towns!!  Maybe we’ll sail back to the States!

The first night we camped out on the beach, the crescent moon was beautiful and across the harbor there were twinkling lights of the cool houses dotting the cliffside into the water.  We made spaghetti, drank New Zealand shitty whiskey that is growing on us, listened to the waves and talked war and politics on the beach before heading to our strung hammocks and tarp roof thing we made (not photographed).  In the middle of the night I awoke to hear Colin cursing and turns out his hammock busted and dropped him to the ground!!  Hahahaha!!!!  A scene I still chuckle about, Colin, not so much!  So he slept on his mat on the ground.

Tea and poridge and then onto the Coastal Trail walking south.  It was crazy windy!  I mean Cra-zyyyyyyyy!  We walked on the top ridge of these killer cliffs dropping straight into the crashing blue waves of the ocean!  The cliffs are all sandstone and the splochy colors on the rock looks like dip-dye wavy sand frozen in time…hmmmm, look at the pics, hard to explain, but wicked cool.  This one rock cliff was soooo smooth and white it looked like a slice of yummy cake jutting into the sea – really!  We walked a couple hours then out at sea it started to look kinda ominous, the wind whipped even more as we were hiking down the rocks and onto Marley beach.  The waves we HUGE, like 3 meters and just crashing the sand, the beach was stunning in the last rays of sun and behind it was dark clouds AND a rainbow!!!  So far on this trip, I have forgotten to mention, we have seen a TON of rainbows!  New Zealand and now Australia.  I am pleased.  Anyway, yeah so we put on our pack covers and rain coats, grin and bear it!  Well, I was grinning, Colin, eh, not as much!  It only rained for a bit thankfully, we got to where we had planned to camp and set up shop.  We built an A-frame tent outta our 2 tarps since Colin had no hammock and we would have to sleep on the ground.  It was cool, I dug it, very MacGyver-ish ya know.  Nature put it right to the test and soon it was pouring, so we had to hang out in the tent, made minestrone soup and went to bed super early cuz there wasn’t much to do!!

The next day we were hiking out, it was Saturday, we wanted to get back to Sydney to party with Andrew at the Bank Hotel!  It seriously rained the whole hike out!!  HAHAHA!  Our legs were sopping cuz we left the rain pants in Sydney – smart thinking.  Awww man, it was cool though I think, I mean normally you go hiking planned when it’s lovely, it’s a very slim chance you get downpour, so may as well enjoy those times too   In town we got some flat whites (coffees) and homemade carrot cake and changed into dry clothes.

Then back to take on Sydney!