Road trip: Sydney to Jervis Bay

One of the many great things about having visitors from the UK is that I get to explore new bits of Australia that I haven't been to before. Before my sister, Ruth, and her boyfriend arrived we had decided to do a road trip from Sydney to Melbourne along the coast. Time to get planning!

On our first day we drove from Sydney to Jervis Bay. We took in a few stops close to Sydney that I've already visited (Royal National Park, the Sea Bridge and the blow hole at Kiama), but it was also good to discover a few new places.

Just south of Wollongong we visited the Nan Tien Temple, the largest buddhist temple in the Southern Hemisphere. We started with lunch in the Tea House. Being a buddhist temple all of the food was vegetarian, although you wouldn't have believed it from the noodles I had to eat. They looked and tasted like BBQ pork noodles!

The temple was interesting to look round with a large central complex, nicely landscaped gardens, over 10,000 images of buddha and a tall pagoda in the grounds. A very peaceful and relaxing place to look around.

After leaving the temple we drove down to Huskisson in Jervis Bay (via Kiama). We arrived just before dusk, but still had time for a walk along the beach as the sun was setting. It was a little bit chilly, but good to have the sun and sand between my toes for the first time on our coastal road trip.

Before dinner I took Andrew into the Husky RSL for his 'Top Aussie' experience of the day. You don't have to sign-in or walk past quite so many pokkie machines to have a drink in the UK. We went into the 'main bar' to buy a beer and there was no where to sit unless you wanted to play a slot machine. I knew there would be a lot of pokkies but there were no tables or chairs to sit down out. We had to retreat to the 'sports bar' were there were some seats in front of the TVs showing the horse racing.