Well we have stopped for the day. We thought we would clear Adelaide and have gone on another hour or so down the road to Port Wakefield. We have gone to a tiny caravan park on the river which is very lovely. Super quiet and full of old folks which is nice.
The weather has been good to us. No rain – about 23 the whole way.
The kids have been ace. Apart from tara’s stink eye photo ( this is what happens when you don’t get the breakfast you want) there haven’t been too many issues. They have slept, talked and watched movies. Zac even took out his maths homework and did that without prompting.
Better go and set up the van and get sorted… Tomorrow, port Augusta!

We have officially left Victoria.

Just stopped in Bordertown SA to take a photo, top off the tank and have an early lunch (that’s what happens when you leave so early!!!)

Think the kids are over traveling already….hahaha… they have no idea!!!!

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Photo of Tara this. owning was what happens when you get her raisin toast from Maccas instead of a bowl of Cherios!

Day 1 night 1 and we will spend our first night in Port Wakefield.

Nice little caravan park by a tidal river. Got here, setup and were just eating dinner (thanks Nana) when it started raining, so looks like we might get some bad weather after all. Weather today was fantastic, blue skies and sunny, would be happy to see more of that weather.

Tomorrow we aiming for Ceduna, which should be about 5 to 6 hours from here, then it is on to the Nullabour. We are well ahead of schedule, picking up almost 2 days today, so we should be able to take it easy for the rest of the trip over.

Had to buy a new towing mirror today as the one I had for the drivers side kept getting blown in by trucks going past. Made it difficult to see what was behind/beside us, so now I have a solid fitted one that won’t move.

As you would expect 3:30am came around all too fast.
Tara and Zac are like me in that when we woke them they wanted to go back to sleep and remained groggy for some time. Jess on the other hand continued her conversation she was having with me when I put her to bed a mere 8hrs earlier as if she hadn’t been asleep at all.
We haven’t been able to find “bunny” – jess’ prized comfort toy before leaving so fingers crossed this doesn’t cause too much anguish.
We left at 4:10 and had our first stop at the well known family restaurant McDs in Ararat at about 7am. Looks like it’s going to be an overcast crappy day good for traveling I guess.
For the record it took just short of 1hour to get, “when are we going to be there…”
Haha if they only knew!!

Well we are on the road.

Left at 4:12am and currently at our first stop…. McDonalds in Ararat!!! Hey I’m hungry!!

Will fill up then hit the road again. Not sure how far we will get today, but the plan is to get at least beyond Adelaide

Arrived in Bright at about 5:30pm today for our last test run before the big trip.

I am really enjoying the fact I can have this van setup in about 20 to 30 minutes, which is a big improvement on the 2 odd hours it used to take for the old Franklin.

Speaking of which, the old van hit our reserve today, so it will officially sell at auction!!! Nice to get a few extra dollars in the account before the trip… And to get my backyard back!!

Anyway, back to this trip. Even though we don’t real,y need it, I decided to put the annex up so we can find out how it works before we go. Surprisingly, it was very simple. I will have to make a few adjustments tomorrow as it got dark pretty quick and I couldn’t see what I was doing but I reckon I will have it down to about 10 minutes extra once I’ve done it a few times 🙂

Will have to get Fi to take a few pics while the van is setup this time, and we may even try to get some posted up here….

Kids were a little ratty getting to bed tonight, but I suppose this is still a new van and exciting, and 4 hours in the car probably didn’t help either! At the moment they are on separate beds at each end of the caravan. At this rate I can see this being a regular way for them to fall, asleep! At least with this van we can sit inside at the table with the privacy curtains closed (see they are good Kate!!). It is a little cold outside tonight, even in the annex. Much better in here with the heater going 🙂

Anyway, will post again tomorrow on what we got up to…

Ps – love that I can post up here on the go with my iPad 🙂

I will pick up where Craig left off…..

Saturday proved to be a great day at Bright. We all slept well overnight. Both girls on one bed, Zac and Granny on a bunk each and Craig and I in the other double bed. After breakfast we headed off on foot to explore town. In the middle of town is a great river and park with really cool play equiptment. The kids loved it there. You could tell it had been flooded a few weeks before as there was debris stuck on one of the support posts under the bridge that was as high as the bridge, now stacked up out of the water.

We found a cute little games shop in town and bought a card game called Beat the Parents – Zac thinks he will “whooop our butts” , Skipbo and travel scrabble. That night after dinner we settled in to play. The girls fell asleep quickly while the rest of us played games. Zac then went to bed and Craig, Granny and I played and enjoyed a few “quiet ones”. Ahhh Baileys – gotta love it.

Sunday came around all to quickly and we had a deadline to meet. Snow White was coming to Emmas party at 2:30pm so we had to get sorted and on the road no later than 10am. Craig is getting the hang of putting the van up and down but we still have some refining to do. Needless to say – we got on the road and headed home.

I think everyone enjoyed the weekend away and it was a reminder of what was to come with our Perth trip. I must say I am looking forward to the simplified lifestyle traveling provides especially in a van. Limited “stuff” available and the kids getting back to simple fun. They all loved the big tree at Bright in the caravan park. Its branches were nice and close together even the girls spent most of their time up the tree. Will post some photos soon…

Finally got a few spare hours this weekend to covert the wardrobe into a pantry with shelves. Will be much easier now to store our food.

Also, I thought I had better add a few photos from inside the van so people can get a feel for what it looks like.

Shelves

In October this year we are planning our biggest caravan trip yet, to WA for 6 weeks.

 As you might know, my Grandfather is turning 100 in October, and we knew we just had to be there for this amazing milestone. Our old 1977 Franklin van while still a good van that we have had a lot of fun in, just wouldn’t make it on what will probably be a 10,000 km round trip, so earlier this year we sold our investment property in Tasmania and purchased a brand new 2010 Jayco Expanda 17.56.2

This is going to be an amazing trip and all the family are looking forward to it, even though it will be a long time in the car. I expect that the kids will have an experiecnce that they will remember for the rest of their lives. We have started our trip planning on Google maps, and there is a link under Travel Links so you can see where we plan to go… happy for any comments or ideas…

We are only going to plan the first part of the trip, which is getting to Perth for the 100th party. We plan to stay about a week in Perth and catch up with all the family before heading off  up the coral coast and see where we end up.

It is true that I would like to make it all the way up to Exmouth and do some diving on the Ningaloo reef, (meant to be amazing) but to be honest, we might not make it up there given it is a family holiday and I am the only diver. Really I think we will point the van North, then just go where ever we want. I think the key to this holiday will be not to plan the trip, but to simply go by word of mouth from the people we meet and the places they recommend.

In the mean time, we really need to get the van ready for it’s first service (1000km) as I think we will quickly cover that once we head off and don’t want to have to worry about that on the road. I also want to put some shelves in the wardrobe, so we can convert it to a food cupboard. Was probably the only problem we had on our first trip away.

It is just under 2 months until we head off and as usual it seems like there is so much to do and so little time to do it!

Ok so it took a little longer than I thought to get the photos from our first expedition up here. Life seems to get so busy every time we get home, what with work, birthdays, my major surgery etc…

Anyhow, here are the pics from Wye River. Didn’t really get a lot of the new van which is a shame given that was the reason for going away!!! Maybe next time….

Well we picked up the brand spanking new van last week and couldn’t just leave it sitting out the back…. we had to go away.

First trip last weekend was to the Wye River Big4 with Mark, Kate and their kids. Was really just an excuse to tow the van somewhere and get aquainted with it. After coming from a 1977 Franklin to a 2010 Jayco Expanda we really didn’t know ourselves. What a change to have a shower, toilet, large fridge, microwave and air conditioner (worked overtime as a heater) all inside the van! Camping  is really going to be a great experience moving forward 🙂

We didn’t do much more than just sit around and relax and learn how the van works. Certainly notice the weight difference, but the pathy will handle it ok.

Was a great weekend and the first of many in the new van.

This is the only picture from the weekend I could find so far… will have to get Fi to post and include a few more photos.