Chill drives to some lookouts

In my earlier days I driving some friends and I used to drive up to Windy Gully to check out the view of the region on clear nights and sometimes to freak ourselves out with ghost stories. Many years have passed since then and in that time quite a number of news articles had caught my attention regarding continuous road closures, particularly to Harry Graham Drive and Clive Bissel Drive, which deterred me from attempting to revisit the lookouts.

With all the roadwork taking place in the Mount Kembla and Mount Keira region coming to an end I finally decided to treat my curiosity and take a drive up there to confirm what the road conditions are like these days and catch sight of some views I had not seen for about five years. I did a little bit of research online first, looking at the Wollongong council website and some online newspaper articles, to confirm that this would be plausible and safe journey to take.  Clear skies and a moon that set at about 8PM meant it would be a perfect chance for some stargazing.

 

The Barina was my car of choice for this drive as it is currently in a suitable operational condition, and Justin decided to join me in this venture with his Focus. The route we took involved heading up Cordeaux Road to what I only know by name as "Windy Gully", but essentially the Mount Kembla lookout for people who do not wish to talk the summit track. There are quite a number of very large potholes on the later section of Cordeaux Road that drivers should be cautious of while making their way up. After a short stay here we made our way over to the Mount Keira lookout, which we had previously established was only accessible via the northern end of the road due to instability.

Harry Graham Drive was previously closed for roadwork in 2012. While the surface is a little uneven due to the slippage it was a pretty reasonable and interesting drive that even the 1.4L Barina could manage. Drivers with very low cars should take this road with caution as there are sunken segments of road that are similar to speed humps that your undercarriage may not agree with. Keep an eye out for deer with no road-sense at night.

We explored quickly down the very recently cleared and reopened Clive Bissel Drive. This is not a bad piece of road to use if you want to bypass Mount Ousley Road. It shows how rarely used it is with the number of fallen branches on the road.

Our next stop was the Mount Keira lookout. This is a fantastic place to get a view over the northern Illawarra region. We soaked up what we could of the views until security came along to close the gates at 11PM.

As we started to track back down Harry Graham drive our attention was captured by an R34 parked at Robertson's Knoll. This is a small lookout but provides a different angle to what you could see from Mount Keira lookout. We got talking to the people associated with Skyline and ended up spending quite a few hours at this location watching various shooting stars go by, talking about our cars, and listening to some live music. As it got to around 1:30AM we all decided it was a bit too cold to stay up there any longer and said our goodbyes.

In conclusion, this was a splendid experience where I was able to visit some nostalgic locations and explore a couple of new and interesting sections of road. The southern end of Mount Keira Road is supposedly due to reopen in the near future. I may make another trip to these lookouts while driving the reborn road.