5 March 2024 Wollongong to Sydney

 We loaded up the rental car and headed for Sydney. We were not looking forward to the traffic! Along the way, we decided to go explore the second national park designated in the world (Behind Yellowstone), Royal National Park. We knew we did not have time for a hike, but thought we would stop at the visitor center and see what we could drive too. It took us a couple of tries to find the visitor center since it is not well marked but we eventually stumbled into it. There really was not much information available and the ranger on duty did not help us much. We had noticed a sign near where we parked for the Grand Pacific Drive. This is apparently a relatively new scenic drive completed in 2005. But we had seen no information about it in any of our research before the trip. We decided to drive as much of it as we could. The drive starts in Royal National Park and ends at Wollongong, near where we had stayed last night. Once again, the signage in the park was terrible and after a couple of false starts, we got on the right path through the national park. As we headed down the twisting narrow road, David noticed flashing lights of an ambulance three or four cars back and looked for a place to pull over. Apparently, they don’t do that in Australia. When he pulled over, the cars behind us all passed us and did not let the ambulance pass until the driver hit the siren and then they all scrambled to pull over. A bit further down the road we came up on a line of cars stopped. We could see the ambulance that we had let pass further up blocking the road. After sitting for a few minutes, it became clear that this was a serious situation that was not going to clear quickly. With no other route to get to the Grand Pacific Drive, we made a U turn and headed away from the accident.  As we headed back, we saw four police cars, a fire truck and another ambulance headed in. It was a good thing we left when we did or we could have been blocked in for hours. We drove into Sydney and went straight to the Marriott to drop off our bags and check in. After getting everything in the room, we had an adventure getting turned around in the cities one way streets and tunnels to drop the car off at the Hertz Return. But we eventually made it back to the hotel. Tired after a long stressful day, we just ate dinner in the hotel bar. 

View from our hotel room