So, we flew to Sydney on April 12, and after the 14 hour flight failed to find our daughter, Disa (who lives in Sydney), there to meet us. After a few minutes of panic I found myself coming in the main entrance behind her - but recognised her because she had her dog, Snuva, with her! By this time, I had found a wheelchair for my wife, Mary, and even a nice young lady to push it. Not the most auspicious start; Mary's knees didn't respond well to all that cramped time in the plane.
Well, Disa had rented a car for the occasion, and off we went to her place in the Sydney suburb of Annandale. Her house is smaller than the one she lived in before, but built on the same plan - front door to the left giving into the living room, and a narrow hall on the left past the bedrooms to the kitchen in the rear. Past the kitchen, a back "dining room" which has been added fairly recently (ie in the last 30 years). The main house is ALL masonry, even the interior walls, so it is very soundproof except for the neighbor with the really sensetive car alarm. Australian lightswitches flip down for 'on' and up for 'off'. They are typically mounted directly on the door trim about 4 1/2 feet up. The doorknobs are also at that height. Sydney tends to be humid, so the exterior walls have built-in vents. The house is quite old, over 100 years, and the back stoop is well worn sandstone dished like the steps in an old cathedral.
We set out after breakfast at a local cafe and a rest to look for a car, mostly along Parramatta Road - the main road west from Sydney CBD towards the Blue Mountains. Fortunatly there are lots of car dealers on that one road. It took a bit longer than we had hoped, but we finally settled on a Mitsubishi Express van with sliding doors on both sides, 4-speed automatic transmission, and air conditioning. A '95 model with 110,000 KM on it (about 70,000 miles). Mitsubishi, Ford, and Toyota all build vans like this in Australia, very much like our Volkswagen Vanagon in size, which we consider the ideal size.
While Disa signed the papers, I took a few measurements, to start the design process for our camper conversion. Many things which need to be done are done to the car after the sale, so we waited a couple of days for the registration process and these other things, such as repainting some rust spots inside.
Finally, we picked it up and got busy buying wood and such and building the camping stuff. It's fun to go to lumberyards and hardware stores in a different country: there are subtle differences which is a cool part of travel. Grocery stores, too.
Finally, I got the camp stuff finished, and Disa drove me around while we located everything, such as a vital item: a porta-potti, which we found at an RV store at Botany Bay. Disa and Mary made curtains and found some really wonderful curtain rods, exactly the right size, and perfect for the purpose. Disa's encyclopedic knowledge of Sydney made the shopping so much easier.
We took a shakedown cruise to the Hunter Valley, north of Sydney, accompanied by Snuva - who provided a lot of backgroung noise (WHINGE whinge whinge). It's wine country, so we were off for the weekend. Got the WHOLE way to the end of the block where our first right turn sent the potti skidding across the floor. A quick stop, and we were on our way again. This was my baptism of fire on driving on the left - I'd driven a bit locally, but real traffic and freeways were quite traumatic. So much of driving is reflex that one has to learn all over again.
After a couple of days in the Hunter, where 
we camped one night in the
same place we camped on the first night of my trip in '97, it was back
to Sydney where I built a solid bar to keep the potti under control and
got some special foam cushions made at "The Foam Booth" to shield Mary
from the harsh ride and harsh roads. Then we were stuck a bit longer in
Sydney while the National Bank of Ausralia fooled around, taking their
sweet time getting our bankcards to us.
When we finally got underway, the packing and last-minute things took so long that we left just at dark, heading southwest on the Hume Highway in rushhour traffic. Driver Trauma! When we finally got clear of the city, we camped in a rest area, and awoke in the morning to a scene which might as well have been in Virginia: a grove of pine trees (NOT native to Australia) and only one eucalyptus in sight.
We continued down the Hume, turning off for Canberra, Australia's capitol, to visit the exibit "Monet and Japan" in a museum there since Mary is a big Monet fan and visited Giverney when we were in France last summer. After Canberra, we went back north to continue our way west on the Hume, buying groceries in Yass where a man who has a plumbing buisness stopped me to discuss how he could build such a camping setup in a van he has for his buisness. He loves Mitsubishis - a nice affirmation. Next morning we took off on a less busy road at Wagga Wagga, and the real trip could be said to begin.
Part 2, Wagga Wagga to Pt Augusta