Travellin’ Kyds

We woke in our free camp at New Norcia to a magnificent morning,sunny no wind just beautiful.

After breaky we did a walk around the beautiful remains of the Benedictine Monastery that was established in 1847 by Don Rosendo Salvado.

Mavis went for a walk around the River walk while I got the van and car ready to head off to Cervantes on the coast to have a look at the Pinnacles.

We headed off at about 11am for the leisurely run to the coast, It would appear that the whole of WA has had lots of rain. It is their wet season but everything is so green that it almost hurts the eyes, absolutely spectacular. The wild flower season this year should be superb. Our last trip to WA was in 2006. The drought had severely curtailed the displays of flowers.

We pulled up for lunch at Moora a thriving country community. After leaving Moora we hit the mud again for 20kms on the way to a arriving at Cervantes mid afternoon. We booked into the caravan park for two days then took a walk along the water front to the seafood shop. We struggled back to the van with a couple of bags of scallops, crayfish and prawns. “Life wasn’t meant to be easy”

Tomorrow we are off to the Pinnacles. More ravings to follow

Greetings friends.

We learn as we go and we have just found out that when you edit or add to a posted blog there are no notifications go out to tell all of those that wish to see it. As a consequence this part of this post is to let you all know that we got to Perth and the Post“Our Perth Trip July 2011 has been completed, still with no pics attached due to technical problems on my part.

We left Shoalwater today 2nd August for a week away just relaxing.

Since we got to Shoalwater we have/Mavis has been visiting her Sister in Fremantle Hospital daily, which is about a 30 minute run North from where we are staying.

The van was parked with the tug attached in the Nephews driveway. We should have washer both tug and van before parking. After moving both out on the road today Rod spent 40 minutes cleaning the estimated 100kg’s of red mud off the drive way. The van was cleaned through the week but poor tug is putrid. Hopefully todays rain soaked rum may loosen the brickwork that has formed under her.

Did I mention rain. Since docking at Shoalwater not a day has passed without gale force winds and driving rain. It did make sleeping a little worry some as the van rocked and rolled most nights actually had to put the jacks down.

Tonight (first night away) we are camped at New Norcia and hoping the wood fired bakery is doing its job in the morning. Still unsure as to where we are going but have to be back down South on the 9th as the rello’s are off on a cruise for two weeks and we are charged with Hospital visits house sitting and dog feeding while they are away.

There are a two of couples that want to have a look at our van as they have them on order for delivery this year. We will be in touch with them again when we get back down South and arrange for them to come over for perhaps a cleansing ale and a look around. One other mob is up North but unfortunately we do not thing we can hook up with them. Its a shame as they are just in the planning stages for the design of their new Spinifex van and it would be nice to let them have a look at ours for some ideas.

We will sign off for now surrounded by hundreds of Galahs feeding on the footy oval beside our van, but will keep you all posted and try and fix the bl..dy picture problem as we have some pearlers to show.

What can you say about a son that peddles a pushbike about 35 minutes to and from work daily (pretty green thinking grin).

What can you say about that son that drops his bag off unknowingly from the rack on the back of the pushbike and only discovers the loss when he gets home. So sad.

Does he go to pieces noooooooo he fires up his computer brings up a Google program that pinpoints the exact position of his phone (in the bag), hops in the small low emission, green minded lowish carbon foot print Getz and drives economically to said position and retrieves the intact bag.

Awesome ain’t it how good is that.

Sunday 13th February.

Today we headed for Eildon, have to say wow this place is now on the list of absolutely must go back to.

Great kayaking and fishing. It reminded us of Khancoban in NSW but on a much but not too much larger scale but still friendly.

Marysville was next on the agenda, this place was completely destroyed by bushfires two years ago and has been completely rebuilt. People are still living in Government supplied accommodation.

It was here that we actually found a toilet dump in Victoria. This state is not too RV friendly for toilet or garbage disposal.

On to Healesville, Woori Yallock Burleigh Monbulk and on to Berwick and staying with friends that we met in Singapore while working there. Margie and Brian,what legends grin. We had a ball for two days seeing the local sites and again depleting the wine cellar in the van , bugger but can not be helped .

We stayed two days in this paradise.

Tuesday 15th February.

Struck out again today for Romsey to again deplete our wine cellar and beer supplies and visit good friends that Rod grew up with in his early apprenticeship days with Qantas.

Van and Jerry had appointments in the City so we set up camp on their front lawn. 4:30pm was “D” day, they arrived and the BBQ was fired up the corks were removed and much reminiscences recounted. What a great night!!

Wednesday 16th February.

Off again to Woodend to stay with some friends that we met for the first time in Singapore. Greg and Judy fellow Motor bike riders greeted us on to their property, that was great for parking the van on their front lawn. Unfortunately or fortunately for the liver, we had an appointment in the city to have a new flat floor in the back of the tug at ARB, so we said hi and disconnected the van and raced into the City for the fit out.

Upon our return we were forced to partake of a BBQ and copious quantities of alcoholic beverage. These ex Singaporeans are absolutely hopeless when it comes to the finer points of living. Honest we were forced into this most embarrassing situation.

Next morning

Thursday 17th February

Rod took control of this despicable situation and cooked breakfast although he was a little fuzzy at the time.

8 am was the appointed time for brekkie but it was postponed until about 10am due to lack of interest grin. The rest of the day was pretty quiet with us heading off to sight see and Greg and Judy staying home for a little gardening therapy.

Friday 18th February.

Our apologies to those that may find our ramblings a tad boring but with the onset of our senior years we need to have something to refer to as a reminder of what we have done grin.

Our departure was early to give us heaps of time to get to the ferry to Tassie. We actually stopped before we got to the port to wash the van, it was putrid with diesel grime from the smoke blowing Toyota tug. It did look much better after the scrub but not perfect.

We got an SMS from the ferry mob saying that the departure was delayed for an hour due to late departure from Devonport.

Arriving at Port Melbourne many hours early we took a walk along the water front and enjoyed an ice cream as we waited to hit the pond.

Finally the call was made to line up for the security checks before boarding.

Lining up we joined about 400 plus other vehicles and excited individuals including bicyclists motor bikers and sports car drivers waiting for the order to board.

Finally we drove on to the ship and fortunately were the second van on and hoping to be the second off.

Rod had booked a Deluxe cabin for the run to Devonport and it was superb. Mavis was absolutely beside herself with glee when we got into the room. Talk about excited kids grin. A bottle of bubbly and two bottles of tassie pure water were in the bar fridge when we shut the door.

Our outlook was at the absolute front of the vessel with two windows overlooking the bow of the Spirit of Tasmania. The forecast was for gale force winds and 15 meter seas,how good grin.

Rod was worried about Mavis but had no need. We had dinner an a bottle of wine and retired to the cabin and enjoyed the whole night even though not much sleep was had. Cast the thoughts from your minds oh ye with fowl minds grin. The passage was very rough with the ship at times almost stopping when it hit the in coming seas. Sleep came to us about 30 times through the night hahaha every time the ship crashed into a wave we were awake and looking out the front windows for the splash.

From our room we could watch the seas hitting the port side of the ship and completely washing over her. It was superb. Had brekkie on the ship before docking,then lined up when the doors were opened to meet our most glorious island Tasmania.

Saturday 19th February.

After breakfast we gathered our gear and dropped down to the vehicle deck to join our transport and accommodation.  The rig was totally covered in salt from the crossing so it was a welcome site as we left the ship into a drenching of rain that we encountered as we drove off her and confronted Tassie Quarantine.

Confrontation was not the right word. A lovely lady met us under the cover of a huge covered shed in the pi.sing rain and asked if we had any fruit veg or fish. No was the friendly reply. She asked to look in the van (no problem) door unlocked “have you any potatoes or onions????” welllllllll they were the only things that we forgot. Quarantine lady grinned and said that these were the most forgotten items of fruit and veg from the mainland and dropped them in the bin.

Off we went on our Tassie adventure.

Monday 7th February.

Took off heading South on the coast road into uncharted territory (for us at least) and stopped in for a look at Mallacoota over the Victorian border. What a great little resort town. One of the caravan parks is right on the water and you camp close to same. There are also boat moorings in front of your camp that you can leave your boat tied safely to, how good is that? We did not stay in Mallacoota instead opting for a free camp off the highway at site #3 camps 5 Genoa rest area tight a.se buggers aren’t we. This is a nice spot with good toilets and heaps of room. The Webber was flashed up and a chicken rolled roast expertly cooked accompanied by some charcoal potatoes sweet potato squash fresh beans and corn yummy.

Rod’s back is more than a little unwell so things are going a little slow for a few days.

Tuesday 8th February.

Up at the crack of noon again had to have a cooked brekkie cause the Barbie was still set up (tough aint it grin).

Our next look at the coast was at Bemm River. This is a nice quiet fishing village with good access for the Kayak and its got a pub. All of this area is so beautiful,as a matter of fact we have not seen anything that we haven’t liked yet. Headed to Lakes Entrance on to Barnsdale, Sale and out to Sea Spray on Ninety Mile Beach. We headed North and camped at a site near Golden Beach,nice quiet spot again.

Wednesday 9th February.

Late start again headed for Longford and then on through Yarram to Port Albert. This is one beautiful little port town with heaps of history. This place has a free camp in a bitumen car park for self contained vehicles only and is the first of many that we found requiring no water discharge at all. This justified our decision to have a grey water tank fitted in the new van. The next town/city was Port Welshpool then we headed towards Wilsons Promontory and camped in the Yanakie caravan park. With heaps of daylight left we left the van and went out to the National park. Spectacular scenery and a great National park camping area here.

Thursday 10th February.

Woke to a bit of an overcast and very strong winds coming from all directions, packed up and headed for Wonthaggi where we re supplied the larder and wine cellar. Another great city has got everything. The next destination was Phillip Island, for our overseas friends this is the site famous for motor cycle racing in Aus.

Sadly we found a chocolate factory on the Island so we just had to indulge the local product (not that the waist lines needed it grin). This night we camped at Kurth Kiln camps 5 # 58. This spot was totally misrepresented by camps. Lovely forestry camp but not much chop if you can’t back your rig out of the camp spots.

Friday 11th February.

The day was spent travelling through country that seems to get more beautiful as you travel on. We camped up at Bass Valley Camp Ground # 99 in camps 5. Nice quiet spot with badly maintained toilets and lotsa huge gums to camp under. This camp is closed down for the winter months for some reason.

Saturday 12th February.

Today saw us travelling through Launching Place,Healsville,King Lake and Whittlsea where we had lunch. This whole area has to be the best Motor bike riding country that we have seen. Extremely hilly and winding through beautiful forest areas. Having said that, lots of these areas suffered badly in the infamous Victorian bush fires a few year ago and lots of forest areas have not recovered at all. Seymour was the next area that we passed through and on to our next camp at King Parrot Creek rest area. The creek was in full flow after the heavy rains and the black berries were everywhere. We managed to pick a bucket full of the sweet little berries and Mavis stewed some and made 3 bottles of jam from the rest, yummo. A haul of new reading material was also acquired after a swap with one of our fellow campers Nobby from no fixed address but a nice little motor home.

Greetings and salutations to all our friends.
We would like to post our best wishes for 2011 to all our friends.
May all your travels be big ones grin.
Mavis and I were at the Jondaryan wool shed http://www.jondaryanwoolshed.com/ for their New Years Eve bush dance.
After ringing Jondaryan to make sure that the place had not been washed away in the big wet that we have been experiencing and them saying that the bush dance was still on and the camping was dry we headed up there.

We had booked for this some months before. (Not often in the last few years that we have managed to stay up to see the new year in grin Bugg.er this aging stuff).
What a magic event. We would thoroughly recommend this night out to anyone young or old.
The night is geared around all ages and many three generation family groups were here and all had a ball.

A meal was available for $8.50 which was not only yummy but a good variety available. Alcoholic and non beverages were available at very reasonable prices.
Camping is cheap and we are camped overlooking the (fast flowing) Oakey creek.

The creek was moving pretty fast but was about 30 meters away down a hill. The pretty scary thing happened as we were sitting enjoying a cleansing ale/wine before dinner. I happened to look up in the trees towering above our caravan and saw the remains of the debris from the flood a few days before.

Needless to say the next morning the clouds came over and we shifted camp further up the hill to be on the safe side.

As we said before this would be the ultimate family/group New Years Eve.
An added bonus was meeting some new friends Mark and Maxine that were here with their friends Anita and Daryl (also caravaners) a great mob to spend the night with.

We  took our new found friends for a drive  to show them some of the attractions in the area including the winery that we babysit occasionally. Muntapa Tunnel http://www.railtrails.org.au/states/trails.php3?action=trail&trail=86 was also visited. It was very wet around the tunnel and pretty boggy. Surprisingly we managed to make it through the tunnel without slipping in the bat poo. A great attraction to visit and full points to the council that developed the site.

The suggestion was made to head off to Cooyar for lunch at the great little general store,where the hamburgers are too big to jump over. We set off on the short run into Cooyar and were met by a black soil bog hole. We managed to negotiate this bog but alas our friends did not. Their car managed to slip right into the bog and settled down with mud right up to the top  of their wheels. With a lot of shovelling the sloppy mass and our drag chain attached to our snatch strap they were extricated from the mess. On we went only to come to an even bigger bog, so we decided to turn around. We did successfully negotiate the dreaded bog hole this time with some advice being passed back over the CB radio to our friends.

We did manage to get a feed at Maclagan instead of Cooyar after all.

We all had a great day that ended back at camp enjoying a few and re living the day.

Jondaryan Woolshed is now on our map what a great place and a New Years Eve not to be missed here.

Wow Wow Wow what a great concert

These old timers performed flawlessly from 8pm for one hour. After a 15 minute break they returned to light up the stage and the audience non stop until 11pm.

All the old Eagles songs and a lot of new ones were beautifully performed to the delight of the audience.

Long live the Eagles.

Well we did it.

Finally back on the old faithful motorbike after a year of trouble and strife.

A bike riding neighbour of ours dropped in a pamphlet telling of a charity motorbike ride starting at Beerwah on the Sunshine Coast last Saturday 28^th August.

“Ride For Chappy” is an annual event to raise funds for the Chaplin of the Beerwah State High school. Have a look @ the write up in the Sunshine Coast Daily news paper

http://www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/story/2010/08/29/cruising-down-highway-at-82-ride-for-chappy/

Mavis was keen so the mothballs were blown off the bike and the riding clothing, bike washed, tyres and oils checked on Friday ready for the run the next day.

We awoke to a gorgeous morning albeit a little early for normal human beings.

6am is not an hour to be up on a crisp winters morn grin.

We met three other riders at the Shell service centre at Nudgee on the North bound Motorway before heading off for the meeting point at Beerwah about 30kms away.

9am was the kickoff time for the ride which was to take us from Beerwah through Kilcoy to our first stop for morning tea at Somerset Dam, on to Esk, back through Kilcoy with a wee stop at Woodford straight to the motorway and back to Beerwah.

80 odd bikes set out for the trip with the oldest rider at 82 years old riding a 250cc scooter that she had previously ridden to Sydney from Brisbane.

One of the highlights (not the only one of course) of the run was the ride through the church after our return to Beerwah.

The record for the number of bikes riding through the church was not broken but we managed 62, not a bad effort.

There were a lot of riders that did not go to the church to finish the ride.

What a great day although our Gluteus maximus ‘s were a little tender after 330kms in the saddle grin.

If we are in the region next year we might saddle up again for this run.

Being our first group run it has definitely made us think about participating in other charity runs.

“Now I wonder how can I get that bike on the drawbar of the caravan hmmmm”

YUSUF formally Cat Stevens was born Stephen Demetre Georgiou in 1948 to a Greek Cypriot father and  Swedish mother and grew up in England.

This concert was one the most memorable experience that Mavis or I have ever had. We attended with Margaret, Mavis’s sister and her husband Robert both of whom also raved about it.

YUSUF’S Son’s band opened the concert and played for a little less than 25 minutes then leaving us to an intermission of 30 minutes before YUSUF came on stage at 9pm

This 62 year old grey headed legend has lost absolutely nothing with the slow aging process that we are all experiencing. The first couple of songs were performed with himself and only two other guitarists,then the whole band filtered onto the stage to join them.

This dynamo performed non stop for one hour and ten minutes before leaving the stage while his superb back up group played and sang Waltzing Matilda to an audience that was thoroughly appreciative. When the group had finished Waltzing Matilda Yusuf returned after obviously having changed clothes and refreshed to continue performing without fault until the end of the concert at 11pm. That performance went non stop from 9pm to 11pm WOW. All of his well known songs as well as some great new stuff were played beautifully.

Having grown up with his great music I have to say that there were times during his performance that brought tears to my eyes, associating past memories both good and bad with the songs that he played.

What a legend and what a superb performance!

Our weekend started on the Thursday when we travelled north from Brissie to Tewantin near Noosa.

A $14 ferry ride took us across the Noosa River at about 10:30 am to be on the beach about one hour before low tide.

After dropping the tyre pressures on the car and van we took the first cutting onto the beach. Have to say the it was a waste of time letting the tyres down as the soft access to the hard sand was not too bad at all, but we are not ecological vandals and we do the right thing most of the time.

The 26km run to our pre booked National Park sand hill camp was a dream. The low tide provided a three-lane highway without much traffic.

Having found our favourite spot we set up our camp, to enjoy the two days of supposed solitude before our Daughter and family were to arrive with their new camp trailer on Saturday.

From the time of our arrival there were a never ending stream of vehicles running up the beach to camp. It was decided to park the car well to the side of the van to claim a spot for the family.

To say that there were a mass of campers by Saturday is an under statement. The whole National Park camping area past Teewah was packed, so much so that people were driving back and forwards looking for a spot to set up. We did get some nasty looks with the car where it was until the family arrived on Saturday.

The weather up until Saturday had been great, but Saturday evening brought in some strong winds and rain, which were to set the tone for the rest of the stay.

Our camp was pretty cosy. We had parked the van with the off side facing the breeze when we arrived and I had put up the two end curtains of the annex and the draught curtain along the bottom of the van.

Before we came away Mavis had sewn up a windscreen made of rip stop nylon.

We had first seen these screens at a double 60^th birthday party where some friends of ours had made one as a pressie for the birthday kids.

I had purchased 7x 10mm diameter 1.5meter long fibreglass electric fence poles from Wamuran farm produce Co Op and these were inserted into pockets that Mavis had sewn in at about 1.5meter spacing. There was about 100mm of exposed pole on the bottom of each and this is pushed into the ground leaving the screen standing. The poles are flexible enough to withstand any wind as we found out and the screen just bends with the wind and springs back. A great success and the whole lot fits into a tube about 90cm diameter.

It was great to have the Ozpig fired up with the flu just outside the awning and the screen around the fire pushing the warmth back into us yummo.

Monday saw us drive up the beach to Double Island Point followed by the family in their Forby. To our surprise the cutting through to Rainbow Beach was open, unlike our last trip when we found it closed.

An executive decision was made to go back to Freshwater where there was a toilet dump for the family’s porta potti, which was apparently making a sickening noise in the back of the Hilux.

A most entertaining site was the emptying circus, with Daughter forced to hold open the dump lid as she was gagging, trying not to breath and attempting to keep her breakfast where it belonged, while her hubby disposed of the body grin.

After that little entertaining interlude we did the 13 km sand track from Freshwater to Rainbow Beach for lunch.

After lunch we ran down to Inskip Point to have a look and from there back onto the beach to enjoy the site of the colored sands before returning to camp.

We stayed here until Tuesday to avoid the end of long weekend rush to leave. Fortunately the rain stopped long enough for us to pack up.

All In all another good relax.