Inskip......

Inskip Point - Friday 16th - Tuesday 20th May

We left on a lovely Friday afternoon to cruise up to the customary first point of call for those leaving the coast to travel around Australia, Inskip Point. We camped with Darryn & Lorie, my Aunty Deb, Uncle Steve and their family and Nellie and Trent and their girls came up too. We had a lovely spot right on the water and the most perfect spot for a campfire, the nearly full moon lit up the water nicely and we had a great time hanging out at the beach. Another hard goodbye when everyone left. We stayed until Tuesday morning and resisted the magnetism of Inskip Point that has held others there for months and years.......

Another perfect beachside campsite.....

Hutchy described leaving Inskip Point as 'Passing Go' as it felt like this was the last piece of familiar territory for us.

Back on the Sushine Coast...

Home - Sunday 10th - Friday 16th May

We arrived back on the Sunshine Coast on Sunday afternoon, our good friends Nellie and Trent let us park under their big shed (thanks guys). We tried to catch up with a few people but Jesse and I came down with a very nasty bug which made things a little hard, so for those we did not get to see, hopefully we will be back in December (for Woodford) and see you then. It was good to see both our lovely home and Darcy Dog being well looked after by Snake and Wazza. Besides being sick we were flat doing maintenance on the car and house, repacking the van so we could leave some stuff behind etc....... While it was nice to be in familar territory and see friends we were both very keen to get on the road again.

Bonfire....

Canungra - Nette, Steve, Sienna and Kims house - Thursday 8th - Sunday 11th May

We left Brooms Head and took the back road through Casino, Kyogle, Woodenbong and Rathdowney to Canungra where Nette, Steve, Sienna and Kim live. It was great to see our good friends again and camp at their lovely house at the base of Mount Tambourine. We had planned to leave on Saturday AM to get up to the Sunshine Coast but a big bonfire was planned on Saturday night to celebrate some friends birthdays so we stayed for that, needless to say a good night had by all and I think a testament to a good party is the fact that many of us who are what I would call 'seasoned' drinkers ran out of alcohol early in the proceedings.

View of Mount Lindsay from the NSW / QLD border

Sienna and Jesse

Glenno and Hutchy

Steve, Nette and Sienna, Mothers Day Breakfast

So it was that on Sunday (Mothers Day) we left our good friends all of us with sore heads and heavy hearts to head home to the Sunshine Coast.

The best camping spot......

Brooms Head - Wednesday 7th May

WOW! Brooms Head is the most amazingly beautiful camping spot. It is just west of Maclean in the Yuraygir National Park. We stayed at Lake Arragan / Red Cliffs camping area which is just off the main road to Brooms Head. The camping area only has toilets but you can camp right on the beach, there were kangaroos everywhere, and the most beautiful beach with rockpools. Jess and I went for a walk on the beach while Hutchy setup the van and we paddled in a great rockpool that was very similar to one I used to play in as a child at Station Creek, which is in the same National Park just a bit further south. We took off our shoes and pants and were having a lovely time paddling around and looking for fish when out of the corner of my eye I saw a creature moving on the sand, it was a little Octopus and it was trying to sneak up on us by moving a little bit at a time and camouflaging itself to look like a rock, freaked me right out! I grabbed Jesse and hightailed it out of that pool. The octopus still chased us over to where we were standing on a rock out of the water, and once it was sure we weren't coming back in to the water swam off to it's little hiding place. I wish I had my camera as it was quite amazing and it would be good to have proof as I don't think Hutchy believes me.

We had a nice little fire up on the headland and the sky was so clear that you could see the milky way almost all the way across.

In the morning we all went for a walk on the beach to the entrance of the Lake and we were virtually the only ones on the beach! Magic.....




Yes, that's our caravan on the left, what a spot!



Lake Arragan

Kangaroo and Joey at our campsite

Nana Glen

Saturday 3rd May - Tuesday 6th May

Well, we had a Jesse free afternoon and night. We went to watch my brother Ace play footy for North Coffs, and then made it home to watch the last quarter of Hawthorn v's Collingwood, happy Hutchy as the Hawks won by over 60 points. We had a lovely dinner at the Kookaburra Kafe which is a restaurant near my Dad's place and highly recommended for anyone down Nana Glen / Coffs Harbour way, and then picked up Jesse the next day from Mum and Roger's, he had a great time according to Mum.

My cousin Darryn and his wife Lorie and two girls, Meisham and Billie (from Melbourne) are travelling around in a caravan too, on their way to Perth. They stopped in at Dads for a couple of nights also, so we have re-named Dads property Robbo's Retreat Camping Ground and plan to enter it in the Camps Australia book and we nailed a (bottomless) 'Honesty Box' to one of the fenceposts down at the creek before we left.



Mowing the lawn with Grandpa








Meisham, Billie and Jesse toasting Marshmallows on the campfire at Dad's (Robbo's) place.

Slideshow

I have added a slideshow of our photos on the right hand side nav bar. If you click in the middle of the photos it will take you to another website 'flickr'. You can then click on the little projector screen icon on the right hand side of the little photos and it will go to a slideshow. Once this is running if you click on 'Options' you should be able to check a box to show title and that will add text to the photo to tell you what it is. Tan xx

Homeward bound

Saturday 3 May 2008 - Nana Glen
We arrived at Dads place yesterday and are camped by the creek on his property at Nana Glen (25km NW of Coffs Harbour and made famous by Russell Crowe...). It is a lovely spot and last night we enjoyed a campfire by the creek with Joke and Cheryl (two Woodford friends) and Dad and Ben. We are gearing up for the Hawthorn vs Collingwood match this afternoon as my Dad and brothers are Collingwood supporters and of course Hutchy is Hawthorn. Nanny Carly (my Mum) and Roger are looking after Jess this afternoon and a sleepover. The first night he has spent away from us - mixed feelings on that score but it will be nice to spend a bit of time getting things organised and watching a WHOLE football game in the afternoon, maybe a nice dinner......

The past few days have been quite adventurous.

Thursday 1st May 2008 - Coopernook State Forest

We made it to Taree today, we could have probably pushed to get to Coffs but it would have made for a long day and we just wanted to get somewhere, set up early and have a relaxing afternoon. We camped at Coopernook State Forest, a free camp 4km in off the highway just north of Taree. A nice little camp ground and my Dad and his friend Joke (pron. yolk) joined us as the had been doing a bit of touring around ACT and Sydney as well. We used the camp oven for the first time, cooked a lovely butter chicken and settled down for a nice chat around the campfire. At about 9:30 our peaceful campsite was quite rudely interrupted by some joy riders who drove at high speed through the middle of the camping ground, narrowly missing the caravan where Jesse was sleeping and I was in making a cup of tea, they swung around, then facing the caravan took off again and swerved back on to the road, I really didn't know what to do, there were other campers whose cars were only missed by 5-6 metres as well, they took off down the road in the other direction, we had just settled down and 10 minutes later they came roaring past again, this time not into the campsite but close enough to freak us all out again, thankfully they didn't come back a third time and the rest of the night was fine, we were quite stunned in the morning however, when three or four cows came wandering through the campsite eating their breakfast.

Wednesday 30 April 2008 - Moonee Moonee - Hawkesbury River

We decided to leave the van in the free camping area while we visited the Jenolan Caves, as we have a special hitch on the van, you can't tow it with a normal towbar so we thought it would be safe, the road going in was quite narrow and steep so I was happy we didn't take it. Jenolan Caves is just spectacular and out of all the places I have ever been I would like to go back there and spend more time exploring. The colour of the water coming out of the limestone underwater springs is amazing, and the entrance to the villiage is just incredible. We didn't do any tours as they were quite expensive and didn't know how Jess would go for the hour or so it takes, also there was a car rally going through on the road and it was closed to outgoing traffic from 11.45am to 1.45pm, we didn't want to get stuck in there and leave our caravan/home by itself for that long!

We had planned to go to Katoomba after the caves and have a look at the three sisters and go on the scenic railway, but then we met a lady who told us about the Zig-Zag Railway, just out of Lithgow which operates a steam train on Wednesday's. This is an incredible piece of engineering really, to get down the steep mountain the track forms a 'Z' and the train actually stops at the junctions and the engine shunts from the front of the train to the back, and then goes down the next bit of track, and does the same again, have a look at the website http://www.zigzagrailway.com.au/

From here, we had planned to go to Rylstone (near Mudgee) for the night, but as it was so cold the night before, we decided to head back into the coast, it would be less kms to get to Coffs and much warmer...

We camped at the Moonee Moonee rest area which is just north of the Hawkesbury River bridge, Highway 1 from Sydney to Newcastle, it is actually only a day rest area but there are not many free camps around that area so we didn't have much choice. The Hawkesbury River is stunning, however, the six lanes of semi-trailers coming over the bridge all night was a bit noisy, but the 132,000 volt power line that we camped underneath meant that we didn't have to use batteries for anything all night, the water rats going through the rubbish bins didn't really make me feel all that comfortable either.

Tuesday 29 April 2008 - Jenolan Caves

We left Kiama early on Tuesday morning, having showered and laundered and recharged and decided to head up into the Blue Mountains (and we thought Kiama was cold!!!). We went over the Macquarie Pass which is a winding narrow road, I don't recall ever seeing 15km speed limit sign for a hairpin bend and I have definately never seen a sign that indicates semi-trailers have to reverse back to get around the corners. Luckily we did not pass any semi-trailers on the corners.

We stopped at Moss Vale to do some shopping and then on to Mittagong. We had decided to go past the Wombeyan Caves on the way to Jenolan, in the map books it showed about 30kms of unsealed road but that other option was to backtrack to Goulburn (about 60kms longer trip) up to Oberon and miss out on the Wombeyan Caves, we didn't buy an offroad camper for nothing so decided to bite the bullet. We stopped to get directions at a servo and the girl there told me it was a pretty rough track, lots of potholes and with recent rain would be ordinary, but we decided to forge ahead, until we got to the turn off to the road and we were faced with a rather large sign 'No Caravans, Trucks or Buses'. Back to Goulburn.

We went through Taralaga, and faced another 'No Caravans' sign, this time we knew it was about 20kms of unsealed road with steep climbs, and we decided to keep going, the road ended up being sealed even though all of our map books indicated unsealed road, so that was a bonus and made it much easier going. We stopped for lunch at Abercrombie River which is at the edge of Abercrombie and Blue Mountains National Parks. After lunch we headed for Oberon and the Jenolan Caves. We were quite surprised to see SNOW on the side of the road as we went through Porters Retreat and Back Springs, as we hadn't heard any news for a few days we didn't know about the massive cold front hanging around mid-NSW. We got to a free camp spot about 15kms out of Jenolan Caves, another 'No Caravans' sign..... So parked for the night in a lovely spot with lots of nice big pine trees, lit our first campfire since Easter and settled in for the night, by the time the sun went down it was around 5 degrees outside (and not much warmer in our van).... Hutchy took a photo of the temperature guage at 7.00am when we got out of bed the next morning and it was -1 inside the van.

Finally a post!!!!!

Kiama - 28 April 2008

Everyone had given Kiama a big wrap so we decided to drive by for a look, and ended up camping here the night as we needed to do washing and shower. Kiama is about 20kms south of Wooloongong, beatiful coastline but very cold tonight. So we have been holed up in the van by 5.30pm and it is 16 degrees in the van after cooking dinner. The gas hotplate might get a bit of a workout tonight. There is a natural blowhole in Kiama that is quite amazing, I took some video of it and will try to get it onto the blog for you all to look at.

Hutchy is getting into the swing of caravanning, he is quite happy with the caravanning wave (everyone who is towing a van waves to you) but keeps waving to people with vans when ours is not hitched up. He also says he is getting used to cruising around at 80-90kms.


Bawley Point - 27 April 2008

Our free camps book had a campsite just near this spot on the edge of a National Park but we couldn't find it and ended up asking a couple (and thier SIX kids) that were leaving one of the caravan parks if they knew were it was, he directed us to a spot right on the beach that is not actually a camping area but just amazing, we went down a dirt road and came to a large clearing, there were tracks down to a river mouth and this gorgeous little beach virtually deserted. We were both a little nervous at our first time 'illegally' camping, but it was getting really late and the next free site was about 70kms away and we just can't afford caravan parks every night. It was a very dark night with clouds covering the moon, pitch black, and I was too scared to even go to the car
(that was still hitched to the van) to get a beer, I remembered the nearby Bangalow State Forest and that was it!

Cobargo and Tilba Tilba
We drove up the coast from Merimbula to Bermagui and then back out to Cobargo which is a town known for its arts and crafts and traditional workings, I couldn't believe it when I saw beanies almost the same as mine for $45 in the local craft shop. We stopped in at the cheese factory at Tilba Tilba and stocked up on Applebox Smoked Cheese, but didn't visit the Foxglove Gardens which was $7.50 each, we had thought we might get good ideas for our garden but weren't prepared to spend that much for them.

Merimbula 25 - 26 April 2008

Anzac Day so we have no food as we didn't think that all shops would be closed. Listened to the Collingwood / Essendon match on the radio on the way there. We stayed at the Big4 caravan park at the top of town, a luxury we can't afford but it has a jumping pillow so who could resist? We wanted to stay in town a couple of days and you can't really leave your van in free camping spots to go cruisig around so we decided to fork out the cash for a nice spot. We had water views (glimpses) from the van, but can definately hear the ocean which was a welcome sound for us Queenslanders. Last night we got into the true caravanning spirit by having dinner at the RSL and then sitting under the annex listening to the footy on the radio with Hutchy reading while I knitted.

Paynesville

Hutchy's Dad and partner Jill have just moved to their 'retirement' home in Paynesville so we stopped in for a week to vist them. Paynesville is really lovely, it is just near Lakes Entrance, a quiet little spot on the water but only 10 minutes from shops in Bairnsdale. Hutchy and his Dad had a couple of fishes. Jesse really enjoyed spending some time with Poppy Hutch and Nanny Jill. We were lucky enough to drop by a 'junkyard' on the first day and the very generous owner lent us a bike for Jesse to use for the week, needless to say we spent most of our time walking up and down the foothpath taking it for 'test drives' and delivering 'mail' to all of the residents in King Street, Paynesville. We went for a 'drive' to Metung and Lakes Entrance. It quickly became obvious that Hutchy and I have very different ideas on what it means to take a 'drive' somewhere. I think you should drive there, drive around for a little bit, get out and maybe have a coffee or look at something interesting, go for a walk on a jetty, check out some local attractions. Hutchy's idea is to just drive there, drive around, drive around a bit more and then drive back. We are working on understanding each others needs in
regard to this.

Wilsons Prom
We broke one of the commandments of caravanning today and arrived at our destination after dark. It turned out okay though, we actually picked quite a good spot near the entrance to the path down to the Tidal River.Wilsons Promintory is just breathtaking. Beautiful granite peaks coming out of the ocean, that apparently go all the way to Tasmania under the ocean through Bass Strait. Loads of wildlife with wombats, possums, kangaroos and colourful rosellas. I had, in one morning, one of the most beautiful moments and the most shocking since Jesse has started talking. In the morning the first thing he said when he woke was 'I can hear the beach' which was just lovely to hear, and then when we went to the ladies toilets to brush our teeth there was an older lady with short grey hair at the sink and Jesse said at the top of his voice 'What that man doing Mummy?' I was speechless for once in my life.

Melbourne

After leaving Cobram we headed to Melbourne, first stop Newtown, Chook and Lenny's house. We had a great few days there, with some great food at Williamstown and Yum Cha in the city, Chooks famous fig and mushroom duck and a visit to Scienceworks and the Melbourne Zoo. After Chook and Lennys we moved down to Seaford (near Frankston) to my Aunty Diane and Uncle Bobs house to spend some time with them and my Nan. Hutchy went to his first footy match at the Telstra Dome with Chook, Hawthorn v's North Melbourne and Chook is a Roos supporter, they had good day and night apparently. Hutchy didn't have a beer until very late the next day so it must have been a reasonably big night. We went to watch my cousin Travis play a practice footy match against St Kilda City and then on to visit with Vonnie and Mitchell in Oakleigh. Very busy! We stayed with Sue and Anthony (my Aunty and Uncle) at St Andrews for a week. St Andrews is a beautiful little spot, outer Melbourne suburbs and we had a great time catching up with everyone over there again. St Andrews is famous for its pub, renowned blues venue and Sunday arvo sessions and also for its Saturday morning markets. We also spent a night at Jodi and Karls new mansion and caught up with some more mates, Donna and Trudy. Thanks everyone in Melbourne for putting up with us and looking after us and making us feel so welcome! Most of all thanks for the free campsites, power, water, showers, toilets, washing machines..........

Cobram / Barooga

We arrived in Barooga just after lunch on Wednesday --- March. There were already about 8 campers down the river, including Dad and Grandpa and Bruce, Cassie, Dale and Teagan from Caboolture making the trip for the first time. We had an excellent time as always. Friday Night Games was a new edition to the weekends activities and lets just say it ended with most of my family taking it in turns to skoll a bucket of mixed spirits.

Berrima

We hit the road on Tuesday and made it to Berrima, a little town 70kms north of Goulburn we found a free camping spot by the river just north of town. Our first experience with the accuracy of information in the Camps 4 book. Lovely spot, but the toilets and 'showers' were about 100 years old, maybe the fact that Berrima is a 'historic town' should have given us a clue. The toilets were chain pull and the showers were cold, concrete, open cubicle. Dirty travellers.

Moonee Beach Caravan Park

We arrived at Mum and Roger's at around 10:00pm, Mum had booked a site for us at the caravan park down the road from thier place but we didn't think the other residents would appreciate us setting up at that time so we left the caravan on site and slept at the house - not really a successful first night's caravanning? Moonee Beach is just lovely and highly recommended, there is tidal river from the surf beach, stunning scenery and good for walking, swimming, surfing, kayaking, fishing, its great for kids because of the large shallow puddles created by the outgoing tide. It's about 15 minutes north of Coffs Harbour. We had a great couple of days catching up with Mum and Roger, and my brothers Ace and Caine. Jesse had alot of fun with Nanny Carly at the beach and the swings.

15 Mar 08 D-Day

Well we did leave home on the scheduled day, about 4 hours later than planned and not exactly well organised, Snake and Wazza (the new residents of 6 Glenrowan Close) were moving in as we were taking the last loads down to the van and container. The container that we got to put all of our belongings in was loaded up completely, not a square to spare, as was the caravan and car but we were quite pleased with our packing efforts as we seem to have taken everything we need (and just a few things we don't) without much time to spare. We were seen off by Snake, Wazza and Darcy at about 2:00pm on a beautiful Sunshine Coast day.

22 sleeps to go......

Finally I have got the blog up and running again, blogs are now administered by Google and it was a marathon effort to change the login over getting past norton security, firewalls, cookies, blah, blah blah......

Well, 22 sleeps to go. We have 3 full weekends at home before we go, I have 8 more days of work and Hutchy has 10.

Our caravan is arriving some time tonight, my Dad (Robbo) went to Victoria to pick it up for us. He just phoned and is in Moree, ETA 7.00pm.

We have had two fine days of weather (halelluja!!!!) so we should be able to get ahead with fixing up the space where our container will go and also do some cleaning, packing and yard work. I was starting to get a little stressed about the inclement weather.....

Jesse's 1st Birthday

Jesse turned one on 26th October, we were very lucky to have his Nanny Carlene, Great Nanny June, Grandpa Robbo and Great Grandpa Clarry with us for his birthday. We had a bbq party at Cotton Tree with all of our friends and family. A lovely day aside from it being a bit windy. Unfortunately, Jesse wasn't all that well over his birthday, he had a nasty virus, but he still managed to play quite happily on the dirty concrete in the BBQ area.




With Great Nan June and Nanny Carlene (Mum's mum and Nan)



Jesse was definately happiest while crawling around on the dirty concrete in the BBQ area, what can a Mum do?



Nanny Carlene and Great Nanny June made two fantastic birthday cakes, this was my favorite, a lovely green grub, just like me.



Getting ready to sing happy birthday.