Travel Plans Update - Dec 2020

Extending the trip!

If you've been reading our blog for a while you'd realise our travel plans have changed a fair bit since we left! Covid of course has had an impact, particularly with border closures, and we've come up with various solutions. This doesn't overly bother us as one of the pleasures of being on the road without a fixed schedule is that we've been able to adjust our plans to suit our circumstances, rather than having to stick to a preset plan which may no longer be ideal.

Back in August we toyed with the idea of extending our trip by an extra six months in order to give us time to get back up to the north west of WA, which was one of our favourite places from our last trip. Due to the wet season, the top end is an unpleasant place to be in the wet season so it's not the sort of place we could go at our current time of year (December). At the time we discounted this option, but since we arrived in Perth we've reviewed it again, and after much consideration have decided to go with this option. This means that God willing we will now return to Adelaide in June 2021.

Dec 19-30 - Around Perth, End of Year Studies

Just a few highlights of the past week and a half.

On a couple of days we've gone down to the local park. There have often been other local kids there. Jude took the whip down the first time, and wow they were stunned when they heard it crack out! They all lined up and wanted a go, and on the three occasions I think we've been down there the same kids have all had a go at cracking the whip! They demonstrated what we had learned ourselves, that it's a lot harder than it looks!

 

Our three (centre, rear), with Josh and Lynette's kids Laila (far left)
and Luc (far right), and Johannes (front centre). Oh, and the whip far left!

Readings at Chris and Kathryn's.

On Friday Dec 21 we went around to Chris and Kathryn C's house to do the readings. Chris has been reading the blog in detail since he found out about it a week or two ago, which led to the curious circumstance where most things we went to mention about our trip he'd already read! He knew our car, he recognised the damage on the front of the car from the kangaroo incident at Coen in July, he'd read about the caravan leaf springs breaking (both times) and our quarantine dramas when we entered WA! There really didn't seem to be much news to tell him!

Dec 16 - 18 - (Day 320-322) - Billabong to Perth

538km. 176km (16th), 128km (17th), 234km (18th).
Lines are marked different colours for different days.

Wednesday 16 December

This was the collection of cans the kids came back with last night!

Flat battery - started thanks to solar blankets!

Mim's parents headed off fairly promptly as they needed to get back to Perth before us. After they left we found we'd left the Cel-Fi Go (mobile phone signal booster) in the car turned on overnight and we had a flat battery. Fortunately with both solar blankets out we got enough charge into the battery after about 10 minutes to restart the engine.

 

While I was working that out the kids wandered over to where a Great Dane was tied up near a tree while its owner went into the roadhouse. Pretty enormous dog!

Dec 13 -15 (Day 317-319) - Billabong to Carnarvon to Billabong

Sunday 13 December

We set off promptly next morning and drove most of the day before reaching Carnarvon about 3pm.

Before heading to the caravan park, we decided to go past the market gardens we'd been to last time. This one's accessed by a dirt driveway to one side of the Caltex service station on the main road which leads to the farm direclty behind.

 It's such a lovely place! Tall trees, banana plantations, orchards with lush green grass and chickens and turkeys grazing amongst the trees. It's exactly the type of place I'd like! This time we bought some bananas, pumpkin, paw paw and a couple of dozen eggs.

The driveway into the plantation

 

Dec 10-12 (Day 314-316) - Kalbarri to Billabong

 Thursday 10 December

Today we drove from the free camp into Kalbarri where we found a caravan park that accepted TAWK (Travelling Australia with Kids), which allows us to stay for 2 nights with the kids staying free. It's only a once of fee - when we bought it a couple of years ago it was $25, it's up to $40 now but definitely worth it. Their website has lots of other useful info for travelling Australia with kids.

Some caravan park around the country are quite supportive of this and it's very handy to help us decide where to go with this option as it does get quite expensive if you go to caravan parks a lot. We have tried to free camp around the place as much as possible and then just spend a little in the town we are staying in to save on the cost a little.

Also along the road we saw quite a few wild goats just galloping across the road and in the nearby bushes.

We arrived in Kalbarri around 1pm and needed some bread for lunch so went straight for the IGA and then the information centre for some other 'must see's' while in Kalbarri. We also needed to purchase a pass to go into the National Park to visit so did that while we were there.

We went to the park across the road briefly before heading to the caravan park to set up.

Dec 9 (Day 313) - Geraldton to Galena Bridge

 Wednesday 9 December

We were woken quite early this morning by numerous fishing enthusiast coming to the boat ramp to drop off the boat and park at around 4.30am and continued even while we were leaving around 6.30am.  So we decided to pack up and move closer into Geraldton to have breakfast and where we needed to get a few bits and pieces for the van.

Because we had been woken quite early no shops were open so we found a lovely spot on Marine terrace at a park near the beach where we had some bbq's, playground & amenities. Perfect spot for a nice cooked breakfast. Unfortunately none of the bbq's worked so we got out our own equipment and it worked a treat.

Dec 8 (Day 312) - Jurien Bay to Geraldton

We woke to a hot, windy morning with a forecast top of 42 degrees C! The site we were staying in was on the top of a hill so was always going to be a bit windy.

Our campsite near Jurien Bay

Morning tea at Jurien Bay with Mim's parents

After breakfast we did our two morning readings, then discussed our plans. On such a hot day we decided to try to get a good leg of driving done, and to stop and enjoy the surroundings on cooler days. So we packed up and headed down to Jurien Bay to take a quick look at the water. By this time it was about 10:30 at the time which is the traditional hour the stomach yearneth for a bakery! So we pulled into the Bay Bakery in Jurien Bay and enjoyed a delicious morning tea.

 

 

Dec 7 (Day 311) - Cervantes to Jurien Bay

We celebrated our first combined morning on the road with pancakes for breakfast, which Bek cooked for us (thanks Beks!)

 

Breakfast together

We spent a bit of time looking at the manual water pump tap in their caravan which didn't seem to be working, but after disassembling it and finding nothing of concern it turned out the water tank was empty! Apparently it had overflowed when they'd gone to fill it before leaving so they thought it was full but something else must have caused that.

By about 11am we'd finished everything and headed down to Cervantes for a swim.

The ocean at Cervantes was simply gorgeous! Beautiful white sand and clear light green water blending into darker blue further out.

Dec 6 (Day 310) - Lancelin to Cervantes

100km

We had a pretty quiet morning as Mim's parents were intending to head off reasonably early and join us here in Lancelin, so we were just waiting around for them to arrive. We had breakfast, did our two morning readings, then had another cuppa and I did some work on the blog from yesterday and the day before (particularly those videos which always take so much longer to prepare and produce than they do to watch - a bit like preparing meals I guess!) 

About lunch time Mim's parents advised they were waiting in the gravel patch just out by the main road, so we finished packing up the van and headed out to join them. It was lovely to finally both of us be on the road together!

 

Dec 5 (Day 309) - Guilderton to Lancelin

150km today

After carefully heading back to the main road we drove about 6km down to Guilderton. After finding the main carpark was now a paid ticket carpark, we drove up to a public carpark on the cliffs overlooking the ocean and Moore River.

Guilderton / Moore River

The town of Guilderton is about 90km north of Perth, and sits at the mouth of Moore River. Moore River is unusual in that it normally doesn't flow through out to the Indian Ocean! There's a sandbar between the end of the river and the ocean, and over time the river fills up more and more until a combination of its rising level and the ocean crashing over the sand bar causes the river to break through the bar and all flow out to sea. The bar then closes back over and the process starts again.

Looking east from the cliffs to the broad swimming area in Moore River

Looking south to the mouth of Moore River (left) -
nearly joined up with the Indian Ocean (right)

Dec 4 (Day 308) - Perth to Guilderton - back on the road!

170km

Today we're on our way again! Our plan over the next couple of weeks is to head up north and then back to Perth with Mim's Mum and Dad. We're not sure how far we'll get in that two weeks but that's the broad plan. Beyond that we don't know exactly where we'll go. But we do want to go at least as far as Geraldton, because last year Mim and Jude had to fly with the Royal Flying Doctor Service from Geraldton to Perth when Jude broke his leg, so they've not travelled that bit of road before. We expect to get at least as far as Shark Bay, possibly Carnarvon. But we'll see.

The best laid plans of mice and men stated we were going to be heading off together first thing in the morning, after having gotten everything packed the night before. Oh how promising that always sounds. Our intentions to leave Adelaide at the start of our trip in mid-January sounded just as promising (we ended up leaving on 1 Feb!). If you've ever tried to head off at a particular time you'll know there are so many 'last minute' things that the last minute tends to take several hours or more! And so it was this time. Given the pace things were moving, I went back to the doctor for a face-to-face appointment rather than the intended phone appointment given I expected we'd have been on the road by then.

Nov 14 - Dec 3 (Day 288-307) - Border Village to Perth (including quarantine)

Saturday 14 November

What a whirlwind of a first few days! What started off a bit exciting but calm turned into quite an ordeal!

So continuing on from last entry... we were lined up waiting along with another couple who had been waiting a bit before us, and we agreed they'd cross the border first even though that was our hope. No matter. There was quite a line of cars but we were next to the other people at the front. The cars were all sitting there with their engines idling waiting for the signal from the police and not wanting to be the one who moved a second too late and got overtaken!

 

Quarantine check at WA border

At about 11:55pm last night the police waved a light to wave us over, so we let the other guys go first and took our place behind them.

 We'd already spoken to the police and the quarantine officers to work out what they'd need to look at and what they'd care about, in particular a bag of red sand we got from Big Red in Birdsville. Despite being told it would be fine, they decided at the time to take it :(. Not to worry.

 

 

 

Nov 9-13 (Day 283-287) - Pt Augusta to Border Village

Monday 9 November

Our plans to make a prompt departure from Pt Augusta were thwarted by a range of shopping activities and last-minute 'need to get this' which resulted in us driving up and back the same 2km of highway three times!

We headed north from our campsite towards Pt Augusta. We got fuel first. I then needed some pop-rivets to reinstall the exhaust fan and two gas bottle refills, but had to go to two hardware stores to get the right rivets. We'd also found the break-safe cable on the caravan (which automatically applies the caravan electric brakes if the van uncouples from the car when in transit) needed replacing, and we figured Pt Augusta would be the place to get it done, but the hardware store didn't have what we needed. So after driving north into town to do a bit of food shopping, we then had to double back and head south out of town along the highway again to a caravan shop past the hardware store to get a break-safe cable. By this time it was lunch time so we went further back to the same fuel station we were at that morning where there was also a Hungry Jack's and got lunch. This done, we turned north AGAIN and retraced our route through town and finally got out the other side!

Woo hoo! The junction across to WA!

Quick status update

 Hi all,

Sorry for the tardy updating of the blog, there really is no excuse as I'll come to! In brief, we drove from Pt Augusta to Ceduna, then Border Village for a couple of days where we waited for the WA border to open. We crossed about 12:05am to make sure we got across, just on the madly unlikely offchance there was an outbreak in SA. Oh what did we know! 

ABC interviewed us at the border, and as a result of this contact when the outbreak happened in SA and WA were trying to work out what to do with everyone they got back in touch with us and for a day or so we had phones running hot passing info onto a few reporters who'd been in touch with us. WA decided everyone who'd been in SA would need to quarantine for 14 days, so we drove to Esperance where we were supposed to be able to stay for the quarantine period and had our first covid test. Unfortunately they then decided we all needed to leave, but thankfully Mim's parents moved out of their house so we could move in. The next day which would have been Tuesday 17th we drove about 700km from Esperance to Perth where we've been ever since, sitting out our quarantine period. Had time to get some work and school work done, which is why there's no excuse for not having the blog more up to date as we had a good week and a half sitting around doing not a whole lot of anything (well catching up on sleep was a big one!).

We came out of quarantine this morning so were able to go out to do a bit of shopping. Mim's parents have moved back in now and tonight we're going to Gosnells Ecclesia's Sunday School Prizegiving, which will be the first time we will have been to an ecclesial hall and in a big group since March!

We intend to start travelling up north mid next week for a couple of weeks.

We'll work on getting the real blog up to date before then.

Take care,

Love Greg and Mim and Kids

Nov 5 - 8 (Day 279-282) - Marree to Pt Augusta

Thursday 6 November

We packed up the site and were going to head off when we remembered we hadn't checked out the Tom Kruse Museum in the Marree Hotel. So we stopped out the front and popped in, allegedly for a few minutes, but ended up staying a couple of hours! The museum was interesting enough, and catalogued a pretty amazing life. This guy operated the mail truck up and down the Birdsville track from about the 1950's when the track was hardly even a track - dusty sandhills, scrub, often having to take circuitous bypasses and detours and still get back to the stations. He had breakdowns and simply had to use his ingenuity to get things going again, even going as far as having repaired a broken fuel line with bullet casings! He is a real example of the Aussie spirit of just getting on with the job without making a fuss.

Nov 2-4 (Day 276-278) - Birdsville Track and Oodnadatta Track (Birdsville to Marree)

Monday November 2

I went for a morning run, after which we packed up and headed into town for our last provisions - empty the toilet, refill the water tanks, then Mim did some shopping and the Roadhouse and we got some fuel from the $1.72/L shop around the corner (rather than $1.75/L at the Roadhouse). The chap running this fuel station seems to take Covid very seriously - both times I've been in there for fuel the first thing I've seen on opening the door is this stern 70 year old chap behind the counter holding out a bottle of hand sanitiser, complete with hand on top of the pump ready to fire a spurt of 70% Alcohol at anyone who dares walk past him without nuking their hands! Hand Sanitiser Stuart (we'll call him) sent Matt out of the shop because he was eating an icypole! Birdsville can be confident that, if Covid manages to make it in, it won't have been via Stuart's shop!

With everything set, we headed south out of Birdsville and stopped briefly at the Burke and Wills Tree, which is just down and on the other side of the Diamantina River from where we'd been camped. Burke and Wills both stopped by this tree on their ill-fated exploration journey and carved their initials and the year 1860 into the trunk of the tree. Unfortunately the carving appears to have been removed, possibly to prevent vandalism, but it was still amazing to think those two famous chaps stopped here so long ago.

How do you do online shopping when you're on the road full-time?

Bit of a diversion from the regular diary, but I thought this might be helpful if you're considering travelling, or even if you're not you may have wondered about this.

Online shopping's great, but how do you manage it if you don't have a house to have your stuff shipped to? I touched on this some months ago but since then we've used it a lot more so can offer some more insight.

We've used two systems mainly:

1. Australia Post Parcel Collect or Parcel Lockers
2. Click 'n' Collect (eBay)

1. Australia Post Parcel Collect or Parcel Lockers 

Inside our MyPost account, showing some of the
addresses we've used on our trip and the
options for creating new ones

This is our most common method. You simply set up a MyPost account with Australia Post (https://auspost.com.au/mypost/address/alternatives) and you then have the option to create any number of 'Parcel Collect' or 'Parcel Locker' addresses.

Oct 30 - Nov 1 (Day 273-275) - Birdsville

 

Friday October 30

Wow what a windy day! We had to get up about 11pm last night to pull the awning right in as the wind had picked up, and it kept up all night and all day today! At times the van shook back and forth with the buffeting from the wind! Every time you opened the van door the wind would whine and shriek until you let the door slam shut again. During the day I worked on getting the blog up to date and did a bit of business work, while the kids did some school work.

In the evening we went to the Birdsville Hotel for tea. Between us we had a Chicken Parmigiana, Flathead and chips, and Spaghetti Bolognese.

Oct 29 (Day 272) - Bedourie to Birdsville

 

We packed up our site and topped up the tanks ($1.75/L). The drive from Boulia was sealed all the way, but we were told the road to Birdsville turned into dirt a little way along, although a good dirt road it sounds. We had noticed on the Plenty Highway the sounds of rocks hitting the back windscreen, getting kicked up from the tyres, onto the van, and then back onto the car rear window, so we stuck a sheet of cardboard from the solar blanket box over the window to protect it from any further stone chips.

This done, we headed out of Bedourie, with a great impression of a super tidy, clean town that we would love to stay at again if circumstances allowed. The kids had had some niggling arguments so a portion of the trip was dealing with that again. Irritating, but as always, it's helpful to get to the bottom of why it's happening and address the behaviours / attitudes involved. Travelling all together is so helpful for that even if it gets frustrating at times! We stopped for lunch at Carcory Homestead Ruins. If ever you wanted to see a desolate place, check this out.

 

Oct 27-28 (Day 270-271) - Boulia to Bedourie

We took our time in leaving as it wasn't a 10am checkout like most caravan parks are so enjoyed a yummy cooked breakfast by Matt. We did our morning Chronicles reading and discussed the different influences around the time of Joash and how he was only faithful while Jehoida was alive. Such a shame after the start to his life and faithfulness of Jehoshabeth. 

We stopped by these friendly horses on
the northern outskirts of Boulia

Oct 24 - 26 (Day 267-269) Alice Springs (Burt Plain) to Boulia, Qld

Saturday 24 October - Burt Plain to Gemtree

We finally left our bush campsite and made our way towards QLD via the Plenty Highway. We came this was back in 2017 and visited Gemtree for some gem fossicking which we really enjoyed. The road to start with is two lanes of bitumen, but a little way along it suddenly changes to a single lane. If someone’s coming the other way you both have to drive off onto the gravel shoulder to let each other pass, so you have to have your wits about you!

Attempting (unsuccessfully) to
fossick for Zircon

On our way out here we came across a fellow stopped on the side of the road and asked if there was anything he needed an hand with. He said he needed a lift into Alice to get 2 new tyres as he's shredded two and also has some pets with him. He'd been there for about 24 hours and numerous people had stopped but none had enough room for him and his pets. He thanked us but said we've got kids and that he'd be ok and someone would eventually stop with enough room. I really hope so for his sake as it can get quite hot out here. We made sure he had enough water and food and headed off in the hope that some other kind soul would be generous enough to give him a lift into Alice for this things he needed.

Oct 22-23 (Day 265-266) - Alice Springs to 'Hemmi's Camp' (Burt Plain)

Wow! What a long drive! :D

The kids were pretty disappointed to be leaving the Cole's as they really enjoyed the company of other kids, but we did want to keep moving with our travels.

 

As we headed out of town from the Cole's place we made our way to the shops to quickly pick up something for lunch then to the library as I still had some work to do, while Mim did some top-up food shopping. Matt came with his muscles to help carry it all back!

As we were leaving town there was an eerie red glow in the sky on the horizon which we initially thought was a bushfire! But after a bit we realised it was more the colour of the red dirt, and with the growing wind it was obviously a dust storm. As we drove we could feel the strong winds, and the poor Pajero was guzzling fuel as we headed uphill out of Alice Springs into a head wind! Thankfully it didn't last for long and then we were through it and on the other side where the sky was normal again. We thought it best to head back to our favourite spot in the bush so we could have some signal to keep an eye on business stuff, so off to find our tracks and head into the bush.

No not a bushfire - just a big dust storm plus some clouds!

Oct 18 - 21 (Day 261 -264) - Alice to Finke River, Kings Canyon and back to Alice

Sunday 18 October

We had a fairly late night last night for the boys birthday so we are all feeling a bit tired today. We had a slowish start and made plans for the next few days.  Originally we were going to be heading out to the West MacDonnells for a week, but we have spent quite a bit of time in and around Alice already so decided we would basically just zap out to Kings Canyon (which we've never seen before), come back into Alice and top-up whatever food we need, and then head out east towards the Birdsville track. You have to drive through the West MacDonnell Ranges anyway to get to Kings Canyon which is why we were originally going to do it all together.

Close to a hundred planes in storage at Alice Springs airport -
Cathay Pacific, Turkish, Scoot, Singapore and others

From the caravan park we headed briefly down to the airport and saw where some of the planes that aren't in use at the moment because of Covid, including Singapore Airlines' Airbus A380's. It was quite an amazing sight as they are normally all in the sky and only a few on the ground at a time.