St Albans

hoadie

Forum Member
Joined
Jul 14, 2008
Messages
144
Location
Sydney, Australia
This is a trip I did on APEC weekend last September. As I mentioned in my intro post, my other car is a BMW 635CSi, and despite the badge (and it's age) it gets driven.

...

I went up to Newcastle on Thursday afternoon to celebrate APEC day. On Friday I spent a bit of time around Pokolbin and managed to get the car a little dirty on some of the gravel roads there so though that as the car was already dirty, I may as well come back to Sydney via St Albans.

So the afternoon started off quite well. Perhaps a little overcast, with light showers but all in all good driving weather.

See the lush countryside after two months of solid rain.

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See the nice windy, rural road

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See more windy, rural roads with a drop or two of rain

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See 34km of gravel road

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See caution sign

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Bah, caution signs are for pussies

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How quaint

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Road narrows and starts getting a bit.... slippery....

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So what you might not at first make out here are the trees that have been washed away by the powerful floods back in June.

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Bit more obvious here...

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End of the gravel?

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Wash me!

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Perhaps not, a little more gravel still to come..

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Yep, GPS has car ferries on it.

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Photo time at a Christian Youth Camp just outside St Albans..

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.. where they have flooded basketball courts..

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And here..

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Welcome to St Albans Historic Common. Google St Albans if you're interested in a little history.

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Reason for the cattle grid will be a little more obvious soon...

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Mighty powerful these floods were!

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On the ferry

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And then the battery went flat

For the history buffs, this road forms a part of the Great North Road, ie the one that starts in Five Dock, and was to go all the way to Newcastle, but a more direct route was built before the Great North Road was completed, and thus never was used as a main road to Newcastle. And I'm sure the St Albans folk are more than happy with that.
 
Nice one Hoadie, thanks for sharing that with us.

I'm heading up to St Albans this weekend (now I know what to look out for :D) for a drive and then up, over and around to the lookout at Yengo NP.
 
You haven't been up to St Albans before?

When you get to Wisemans Ferry, you can take either the western or eastern ferries, as there's a road up on the west AND eastern side of the river north to St Albans. The western road is 99% sealed whereas, as a rough guess, the eastern road is 20%. I went through this weekend just gone and both roads are in pretty good nick.

Can you show me on Google Maps (or similar) roughly where you're headed?
 
I was up there about 2 weeks ago & had a ball.
Back in Feburary of this year though, the roads were flooded (about 3 or 4 km's shy of the punt) but were still open for some reason. :confused::confused::confused:
I for the life of me can't figure why though ? ? ?

[ame="https://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=2vL8nMjaGWw"]Subaru Forester XT flood crossing - YouTube[/ame]

[ame="https://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=fcbpJL0yfm4"]Subaru Forester goes snorkeling! - YouTube[/ame]

Regards
Mr Turbo
 
It was quite daunting at the time though, I must admit.
And I'm really glad that I had the snorkel. :iconwink::D

Regards
Mr Turbo
 
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