We're on a Northbound road trip today! We had initially planned to go all the way north to Newcastle, but as it turned out that was a bit too ambitious. So instead we did five hours in total of driving covering 300km to the Canoelands for fruit picking followed by a drive northwards to The Entrance, before turning back and heading over to Watson's Bay to catch the sunset before dinner.
The first checkbox on today's agenda was to find an orchard and do some fruit picking. There are dozens of farms all within an hours' drive (or two) from Sydney, many of them with different crop types. Unfortunately as we only visited one orchard we aren't really in a position to give recommendations on which ones are better - you'll have to do your own research on that. We can, however, give you a quick guide as to when each particular crop comes into picking season - so tough luck if you're here in the cold winter months of July-September when nothing is in season.
Anyway we settled for Tangerines at Canoelands Orchard, about a one-and-a-half hours' drive from Coogee. There's a $5 basket rental fee (i.e. entrance fee) and then you're set loose among the fruit trees in the Orchard, free to pluck as many Tangerines as you like. It isn't a fruit buffet, though - after you're done you still need to pay per-kilogram rates for whatever you'd like to take home with you.
While it was quite fun wandering around the orchard hunting for big and ripe fruit - sort of in a go-back-to-your-ancestors'-time-and-forage-for-your-own-food kind of way, to be absolutely honest the actual fruit wasn't that great. Most of what we picked out was either under-ripe or just "meh, okay lah" on the sweetness scale. Probably better to leave it to the experts next time, and just buy our fruit in the markets.
After that's done we head back into the car and continue our road trip North. If you're hoping for grand sweeping vistas and majestic cliffs, you won't quite get it on these roads. Yes there's lots of foliage and the roads have an occasional interesting twist and turn, but by and large the drive is rather uninspiring. Check out the fast-forwarded video below for what we mean (and do disregard the cheesy royalty-free music):
After about an hour-and-a-half we stop to stretch our legs at Terrigal, a quaint little seaside town with a nice, almost-deserted beach, and a row of shops selling food, ice cream and other curios ...
... and a further half hour after that we stop at The Entrance to check out the daily 3.30pm Pelican Feeding!
Taken from the town's Official Website:
"Just over twenty years ago, the pelican feeding started by accident when staff from a local fish and chip shop would throw out scraps. It became such a ritual that whenever the staff were late in throwing their scraps out, the pelicans would cross the road and come up to the shop to be fed.
One of the main objectives of the pelican feed is to keep an eye on the pelican's medical conditions as many have hooks and lines tangles up in their gullets, wings and other parts of their body. The feed is a chance for the co-ordinator to assess their well being. It's certainly an amusing show to come and see."
By the time we're back on the road it's already well after 4pm, so we abandon our original target of Newcastle and turn around to head back to Watson's Bay, making it in time to catch the sun setting majestically over the Sydney CBD skyline:
Sunset means dinnertime, and Watson's Bay has a well known seafood joint called Doyle's on the Beach. It's really expensive though so we settle for salt & pepper shrimp and pork belly sliders at Watson Bay Hotel's Beach Club instead. Sipping coffee and eating sweet sticky sliders while watching the sun set - an awesome end to the day.
After dinner we head back to Coogee for an early night as five hours of driving does get a bit tiring. Plus we hadn't fully recovered from the lack of sleep on the overnight flight from Singapore.
Stay tuned for the next post in this series coming up soon!
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