Déjà vu!

Our new rig! All set to start part 2 of our Aussie Adventure!

 

We were ready to get back on the road again!!!!We were really torn about heading back North, or spending time travelling Victoria with our friends who were just setting out on their trip around Australia. We had inspired our close friends Rasmus and Julie to follow our lead, and pack up their house and take off to explore the country.  So Rasmus quit his job, they rented out their house and purchased a caravan the same as ours, packed up their three children and headed off on their own adventure.

 

We have decided to take our dog with us travelling this year. Marvel is a beautiful yellow lab who is 4 years old. Last year we left him with my brother and his wife while we travelled. It is a big commitment to take a dog travelling and we thought we would only be gone for 6 months. I missed him so much while we were gone and when we decided to travel on a more permanent basis, I told Dan we couldn't leave Marvel behind again. We all love having him with us and he loves this life too!

 

 Marvel was the guinea pig for one of Will's science projects: are dogs colour blind?

 

Queensland has been unseasonably wet this summer and is having an extended wet season so we decided to hang around Victoria for a little while longer and spend some time travelling with Rasmus and Julie. This also meant that we could accept the invitation to our friends wedding in Gippsland in March.

So after a week at Badgers’ Weir caravan park, we packed up, had another small farewell party and headed west to catch up with Rasmus and Julie in Colac. It was very exciting to be on the road again and even more exciting to be in our new car. The Navara was towing the van beautifully and the van was sitting really well behind the car.... until we hit a really strong head wind as we crossed the West Gate Bridge. The car started to struggle but we thought it was due to the strong wind we were driving in to.

We were about 60km out of Colac when the clutch completely died! “This feels very familiar!” It was the same weekend one year before that we had set off on our trip and only driven about 150ks from home when the clutch went on our new Patrol. We couldn’t believe our luck (or lack thereof). We had just spent so much time (and money) researching and upgrading the car so that this exact thing wouldn’t happen! It felt like déjà vu.

A phone call to Roadside assist and a few minutes later the car (with Marvel in the boot) and the van were hooked up to the tow truck and we were all in the cab with the driver.  We had planned on staying at a free camp on the North side of Lake Colac with Julie and Rasmus but instead we got towed into a caravan park in town.

This feels familiar!

 

Dropping us off at the Colac Lake Caravan Park

Will and Zac laughing at the car coming off the tow truck

 

The following day Dan managed to ‘limp’ the car into town to a mechanic that had been recommended to us by friends. RACV arranged a hire car for us to use until our car was repaired.

We spent the next few days catching up with Julie and Rasmus and their three kids. The kids all get along really well so they were more than happy to spend hours playing together. That left us plenty of time to sit down, swap stories and share advice over some cold drinks.

We only spent one day out sightseeing. We drove to the other side of Lake Colac to Red Rocks Lookout.  The Red Rock Volcanic Complex was the site of many violent volcanic eruptions which resulted in the craters and lakes found in the area. I wasn’t well so stayed in the car, but I did get a chance to have a look at the spectacular views!

 

On the way back from the lookout we called into the Red Rocks Winery. After tasting a few different wines (and pretending we knew what we were doing – which we didn’t!), we bought a couple of bottles.

 

By the end of the week our car was ready to pick up. The mechanic was fantastic. They rang us at every step of the repair, gave us all the options, prices and explained it all to us really well. They also did a complete safety check on the car and found a few other things that the Road Worthy Check hadn’t found.  A few thousand dollars later and we left the mechanic with a brand new heavy duty clutch on our new car.

I had been worried about the weight of our van since we first set off on our trip last year. I had spoken to so many people, some telling me how dangerous it is to be overweight, and others telling me “every caravan on the road is overweight. They (the officials) don’t even worry about the caravans; it’s the big trucks they are concerned with.”

The manufactures of larger caravans try to keep the Gross weight of their caravans down to a minimum, so that some of the smaller cars can tow their vans. This means that you can normally only take an extra 400kg of you own belongings. That weight allowance has to include everything that you take, plus the gas in your bottles, plus the water in your tanks. In our van we can carry 190ltrs of water (190kg) and 18kg of gas. We have also added two solar panels and replaced the one small battery with two bigger (and heavier) ones. This means without putting any of our belongings into the van we are already almost at our weight limit. Then you add clothes, bedding, food, toys, etc etc etc. I was sure we were overweight but I just needed to convince Dan to get it weighed.

By wrecking the clutch on our new car (and for the second time) I managed to convince him that we may have a weight problem. So on the Saturday morning we packed up everything and towed the van down to the local weigh bridge. We couldn’t believe it when we weighed in at over 1 tonne overweight!!! I thought we were over, but didn’t think it would be that much! However, it was very hard not to say “I told you so!” to Dan.

We went back to the caravan park and started he huge job of unpacking everything that wasn’t essential. We decided that we couldn’t risk doing more damage to the Navara so we were leaving the van in Colac and taking as much as we could back home in the car.

Meanwhile our friends, Kat and Terry were down visiting family in Colac and called in for a visit. They, along with Julie and Rasmus got to witness my bad mood as I had to reluctantly sort through everything we had and decide what we could do without. I was grumpy with Dan because I had just had a big sort out back home and was having to do it all over again!

At the weighbridge!!

We loaded up our car and Kat and Terry’s car and by the time we were finished we thought that we must have lightened our caravan by at least a few hundred kilos.

We spent a day driving to mum and dad’s, filled up their garage (again) and drove back to Colac. We stopped on the way back and bought Sam and Will e-book readers because we had taken all of their books away.

By the next day I felt good about our weight and it was really good to have such a big clean out. My cupboards were nearly empty and everything was clean and sorted. We decided that we would no longer travel with water in the tanks, and we would shop when we had arrived at our destination and only buy what we needed for our time there. This meant that our pantry and fridge would be almost empty whenever we travelled.

Monday morning we packed up and once again headed to the weigh bridge. We were absolutely shattered when we realised that we had only dropped 200 kilos! We had no choice but to leave it as it was and try to figure out what to do next.

 

 

  A spectacular lightning storm over the Otway Ranges

On the way home...

As we got to the intersection on the Capricorn Hwy where the sign to turn south to Melbourne is, we all felt a strong sense of disappointment. We have made the decision to go home for my brother’s wedding and to meet my new baby nephew, but we all felt like we weren’t ready to leave Queensland yet. We will definatly be back here soon as Queensland still has so much to offer us. We have all fallen in love with this state. And so with regret, we turned right and headed south along the Landsborough Hwy.

This was the landscape for most of the way through central QLD and NSW

We stopped off at a campground in Blackall for the night. Once we had set up, Dan and I sat down with a cold beer and watched the kids burn some built up energy. They were running around kicking a ball when a couple came riding up in a carriage. The carriage was being pulled by a gorgeous little pony.

Will's fascination with horses encouraged him to go over and say hello. The man was very freindly and asked WIll if he would like to have a ride. Will jumped at the chance and hopped right on. After a while, he remembered his brothers and asked if they could hop in too. The man gently kicked his wife out and Sam and Zaccy joined them in the carriage! Not something the kids get to do everyday!

Will having a ride

Soon, all the kids were on board

Cowboy Will with his home-made lassoo

We had planned to stay at Charleville for a few days, but when we arrived there I changed our plans. We arrived there just as the sun was setting and we had a bit of trouble finding the campground. As we pulled into the carpark there was already another car there. It was a typical country ute - complete with loads of huge arials, covered in stickers and three big pig-hunting dogs tied up in the tray. I got a bit freaked out, especially when I saw all the empty beer bottles and fire pits all over the place. In truth, I think the guys had just come down here for a bit of fishing and were nice enough to leave with their dogs when we arrived. However, I thought the worst and decided that it wasn't a nice place to stay.

So we left the caravan hitched up (so we could make a quick getaway!) and left early the next morning. However, as we drove away we saw another bigger camp ground further down the street. It was filled with travellers and looked like a beautiful place to stay. We had obvioulsy mistaken the local drinking hole for the campground we were supposed to be staying at!!

Our "campsite" was very pretty but a bit too isolated for my liking!

The next day we went to the Cosmos Centre in Charleville. When Sam grows up he wants to become an astrophysicist , so he was really excited to visit the Cosmos Centre.

The Cosmos Centre has the only cinema in Charleville and we got to watch a short film called "Journey to Infinity", teaching us all about how our Solar System was created. Our guide told why Pluto has been taken out of the Planet Club and we got to hold space rock and meteorites in our hands! They have a wonderful Information Zone where the kids spent a long time playing games and watching films.

After our short visit to Charleville, we continued south to Mitchell where we stayed at the Neil Turner Weir. Named after an Austrailan politician, the weir has a free campground with plenty of open space. We only stayed for one night before continuing our journey towards home.

Sunset over the Neil Turner Wier

Crossing over the border into New South Wales we were excited to stay at Lightning Ridge. Lightning Ridge area is a world epicentre of the mining of black opals and other opal gemstones. Lightning Ridge has the largest known deposits of black opals in the world.

Our poor old Patrol was really stuggling with all the hard driving we were doing, and she kept overheating. We had to stop every hundred kilometers or so, to fill up with coolant, and we were going through a lot of fuel. We were putting most of our money into the fuel tank so we had to free camp all the way home.

My Dad had told me of a good free camp about 5km out town, and we planned to stay there after filling our tanks with water in town.

We usually go to the local Visitor Information Centre and ask them where we can fill up with water. Most of the time they let us fill up from the Info Centre. Unfortunatly, the taps at the Info Centre in Ligtning Ridge all had signs on them saying that the water in the whole shire had been affected by E. Coli.

It was getting dark, and we had no water so we had no choice but to check into a caravan park. We thought we could stay for one night, fill our tanks and free-camp out of town for the rest of the week. I was having a much needed cool shower when I realised that the water was leaving a slimy residue on my skin. We suspected that the town had treated the water with something to overcome the E. Coli problem. We didn't like the idea of putting slimy water into our tanks, so our visit to Lightning Ridge was cut short!

Before we went to bed we did pay a visit to the local artisian hot bath. The caravan park was walking distance to the hot baths so we all walked down there in our bathers with our towels and our torches. The mineral-rich water is naturally hot, forced up from a kilometer underground from the Great Artesian Basin.

We really loved Lightning Ridge and have made the decision to come back here next year.



One of the many huge road trains we passed.



This is how Zaccy passed the many hours in the car.

This little fellow was on the side of the road

He got a bit defensive and 'puffed up' to make himself bigger when we approached.

Our next stop was at Terramungamine Reserve, north of Dubbo. Terramungamine Reserve area was part of the traditional country of the Tubbagah People of the Wiradjuri Nation and an important gathering area for tribes throughout the region. The reserve is now open to the public as a free campground.

While we were in Dubbo, there was a caravan and camping show on in town. We spent an afternoon at the show looking at a few things we are considering buying before we head off on our next trip. We are looking at getting a generator so we can still free camp and be able to re-charge our batteries when we dont get enough solar power. We want to get a drinks fridge for the back of the car. After the 'water issue' we had in Lightning Ridge, we want to get water filters for our caravan. We have also decided that our poor old Patrol can't tow our heavy caravan, so we spent a bit of time in Dubbo visiting car dealerships.

Zaccy 'helping' Will with a school project

Terramungamine Campground

So from Dubbo, we are now heading back home to Melbourne. I have a new nephew to meet, a wonderful sister-in-law to welcome into the family, and lots of friends to catch up with.

We have also decided to start our own business, buy a new car and make some changes to our caravan. My sister-in-law and her family are moving out of our house so we need to find new tennants too. I think the next few months with be very busy for us and I am already tired just thinking about it!

Our travelling days are definatly not over and we will be back on the road again soon. Until then - happy travelling and hope you have all enjoyed this blog so far!!