Day 56 (March 27) - Lake Wivenhoe to Brisbane

Today was a pretty uneventful day. We left our free camp near Lake Wivenhoe around lunchtime. We headed south as we were hoping to pick up a light bar for the Pajero from the 4WD Supacentre in Brendale, but when we phoned them from Fernvale we found they were out of stock.

While we were there we had noticed a 4WD track off to the side of the main road, so figured as we had a bit of time to kill (we weren't due to arrive in Kallangur until after 5) we may as well unhitch the van and VERY GENTLY give it a go!

Here's a quick video of some of what we did. We took it pretty easy, but it was challenging enough for us to enjoy it as first-timers!

From there it was a pretty seamless drive into Brisbane and to stay with family for the next couple of weeks until we get a clearer picture of how the Coronavirus restrictions are developing.

-- Greg and Mim

Day 54-55 (March 25-26) - St George to Lake Wivenhoe via Toowoomba

These two days were basically just driving east towards Brisbane, so I've combined them into a single entry as there's nothing overly remarkable about either day.

I went for a run around St George in the morning. The caravan park backed onto a school and I was pleasantly surprised to see kids still going to school on my run. It's amazing how quickly things have changed and closed down.

We didn't leave St George until about 11:30am and the rest of the day was just driving. Mim and I were both feeling a bit tired so we stopped for lunch on the side of the road and put the bed end of the van out and had a 20 minute nap. After that we pushed on to a roadside rest stop about 100km west of Toowoomba. Again, this one was set back from the road a bit which was good. Throughout the drive we'd seen a few long lizards on or near the road and hadn't been able to see them up close. To my eye they looked like a small goanna, but if you remember the David Attenborough Planet Earth 2 trailer, these lizards ran just like those little iguanas which were running away from the snakes!

If you've not seen it, check it out here, it's very good!

Day 53 (March 24) - Lightning Ridge to St George (Qld)

We know from our noodling times in Coober Pedy that morning and afternoon light are best for catching glimpses of colour amidst the mullock heaps, so we got up about 6:30am.

The lighting at this time of morning was magnificent! The gorgeous sunrises and sunsets, added to the new arrival of red earth, was a reminder how far north we'd come in the past couple of days.

Unfortunately the flies were as bad as ever here! This is
before sunrise!

We shovelled down some breakfast, broke camp and headed to the Grawin opal fields. These are located some distance from Lightning Ridge, but we had learned there were two very large mullock heaps which are probably the best places to find opal, whereas the small heaps in the town of Lightning Ridge itself are very well dug over by tourists.

Day 52 (March 23) - Abercrombie River to Lightning Ridge

Our campsite at Abercrombie River was a lovely one! As mentioned yesterday, the road seemed to become a minor road, and the campsite was set back a little way from the road. This meant there was minimal interruptions from road noise.

We found on exploring our surrounds that the Abercrombie River was flowing slowly and was lovely and clear. The river itself is quite a long one, so saying we camped at the 'Abercrombie River' is a bit like trying to pinpoint a campsite by saying it's on the banks of the Murray! Our site was about 1/3 of the way between Curraweela and Gurnang.

The surrounds were lovely and peaceful and the water was definitely clean enough to drink.

March 22-23 - Coronavirus lockdown travel plan update

While coronavirus has been known of for approaching three months now, the situation in Australia really only started to escalate around when we were in Melbourne around 8-12 March. There were vague, even fanciful, suggestions at the time about Australia closing its national border, and I considered whether state borders might also be considered for closure. In the back of my mind I was considering where we would want to be if this happened, and the answer was Queensland, for a few reasons. In no particular order:

1. it’s further from Adelaide and harder to explore at a later date than Victoria or NSW
2. it’s a very large state and if we had to be marooned somewhere we may as well be somewhere with plenty of spots to explore 
3. while we've been through parts of Qld on our first trip, there were many areas we missed, and others we'd love to revisit
4. the weather is much nicer, especially in winter, and we really did our packing with warm weather in mind

Day 51 (March 22) - Cobargo to Abercrombie River via Batemans Bay and Goulburn

We got up a bit early to get ready for the meeting. As mentioned in yesterday's entry, I’d phoned Sister Jenny McDonagh from the Bodalla ecclesia last night and they welcomed us to join them for the meeting, which started at 10:30am (Bro David Archer’s CALS diary to the rescue again!).
We left Cobargo around 9:30 and stopped briefly at a Woolies to get some things for lunch. Mim managed to score a couple of rolls of toilet paper from a friendly person who had a large packet – this store ACTUALLY had stock, but ran out before Mim could get any, so thanks to this lady whoever she was!

From left: Sis Peggy, Bro Dan, Bro Michael, Mim, Bek,
(Front): Judah, Matt, Sis Jenny, Sis Faith, me

At the meeting we sung a couple of songs from the Praise The Lord book and listened to a talk by a Brother Art Kursk from California. The meeting was only five local members – Bro Michael and Sis Jenny, her sisters Peggy and Faith, and her son Bro Daniel, but it was a nice group to spend the morning with.

Day 50 (March 21) - Mallacoota to Cobargo via Eden and Bega

Saturday 21 March

We had to head off by about 11am so there was time for waffles for breakfast. After we moved out from the caravan park we stopped in the town to do some shopping.


Mallacoota was the first town we'd come to which had been visibly affected by the bushfires. It was also highly publicised in the media as it was the town where people gathered on the beach during the fires and were evacuated by the Navy.

Remember this? This was Mallacoota three months ago.

So we were keen to do some shopping in town.

Day 49 (March 20) - Waddy Point (Bairnsdale) to Mallacoota

Friday 20 March

Today was an early start at 6.30 🥱 to get back into Bairnsdale to have our caravan brakes looked at by 8am. While we have rarely gotten up this early, it was certainly worth it - it was such a beautiful sunrise.

Waddy point

As we drove Bek read a bit of Tower of Ho Ho wood. She did such a good job of using all the different voices.

Day 48 (March 19) - Reeves Beach to Waddy Point via Sale and Bairnsdale

Thursday 19 March

Today we left Reeves beach to hopefully get to somewhere near Lakes Entrance. We had a lovely morning drive and read Nehemiah 8 in the car.

We stopped in Sale for some bits and pieces. 

Day 47 (March 18) - Reeves Beach

Wednesday 18 March 

We woke up late again today as we'd had a bit of a disturbed night. Bek was a bit unwell during the middle of the night but she's ok now. We all got and went for a walk/run along the beach which was a beautiful way to start the day. There was no-one to be seen. We had the beach all to ourselves.

Day 46 (March 17) - Wilsons Promentary to Reeves Beach

Tuesday 17 March

We got up this morning around 8.30am and enjoyed a slowish morning having a coffee and then scrambled eggs and bacon. Yummo!

Well while we were packing up Greg decided to give me a surprise. He's now shaved off his beard. Arghh!!! I actually like him with a beard so it's more of a shock to me than a surprise but I'll get used to it quick enough.
 

Day 45 (March 16) - Boolara to Wilson's Promentary

We had a relatively good sleep at Boolara with just one wake up from our nearby neighbours who were having a bit of a loud disagreement at 4.30am so consequently we slept in the next morning.


Today we are headed for Wilson's Promontory, which is the little spit of land poking out from the bottom of Victoria. Fun fact: This peninsula is host to the southern-most tip of mainland Australia!

Day 44 (March 15) - Darnum to Boolarra via Warragul

We slept reasonably well last night, although being close to the highway meant there was some disturbance from traffic. Also, a hotel carpark on a Saturday night perhaps wasn't the best environment; all in all it wasn't bad at all, but there was a bit of noise from some patrons who farewelled each other at length not far from us at about 1am.

This Granola was delicious!

We devoured a box of this Dorset Cereals Granola we'd bought from NQR last night. We'd gotten one of these at the NQR in Ballarat and it was a winner so we got some more last night. It's odd that delicious (if not entirely healthy!) breakfasts like this evidently don't sell - Woolworths used to carry this and no longer do so presumably they sold the stock to NQR who are clearing it out. At the time of writing, Coles are selling another flavour of the same brand for about $8.30 for a 500g box. I guess at that price it's not likely to be a big seller, I think we paid $2 at NQR!

Day 43 (March 14) - Gembrook to Darnum

One novelty about this entry is that I'm actually writing it on the day it happened! I've been writing for the past couple of hours, and it's now 11:15pm and I've finally caught up! Sorry, we will try to keep up, but we don't always have a lot of free time in the evening.


Aaaaanyway... back to the morning. We hadn't really been able to see much of our camp site when we arrived last night, so it was delightful to look outside this morning and see the sun filtering clearly through tall native forests!

Day 42 (March 13) - Melbourne to Gembrook

Wow! We'd stayed in Melbourne for a lot longer than we'd intended, but it was a lovely time! It was great to have a bit more space around us, and to have a really good catch-up with Aunty Pam. She still leads a surprisingly busy life for someone of 86 as she now is, with multiple events in her diary for most days of the week.

With all the packing up, we didn't end up leaving until about 1pm, which was just as well as Aunty Pam had to be off for a meeting, so she zipped past in her Honda Civic with a toot and a wave while we were still out the front sorting out towing ride heights and so on!

Day 40-41 - Car and Caravan Jobs in Melbourne

Wednesday and Thursday - Car and Caravan Jobs

This was originally part of the week's diary. Both these days were mainly taken up on the car and caravan. This was originally part of the week's diary, but it ended up so long and detailed I figured I'd split it out so those who are utterly disinterested in this type of thing can just skip the story rather than having to scroll through screens of dull mechanical and electrical nonsense! :)

Day 36 - 41 (March 7-12) - Melbourne

We only intended to be in Melbourne for a couple of days, in fact originally we thought we'd leave Sunday afternoon. However a number of events transpired, most of them good, which meant we didn't end up leaving until about lunchtime on Friday 13th.

On Saturday we dropped into Aunty Pam's church. She was doing some setting up for their service on Sunday and she was keen for us to see where she went. One of the parishoners there gave us some tips on things to do in and around Melbourne. The rest of the day was a quiet recovery day at home, catching up with Aunty Pam and catching our breath. We found out it was Aunty Pam's birthday on the coming Tuesday, so we felt staying around for that was a must!

Day 35 (March 6) - Inverleigh to Melbourne

Friday 6 March

After breakfast, a new neighbour pulled into the area near where we'd camped. We told them we were leaving soon so they were welcome to rearrange things into our spot once we'd gone. They told us they were waiting for someone else to join them, so when another van turned up a minute later and pull up near our neighbours we thought nothing of it. After hearing a bit of chatter outside however, we took a look and quickly deduced these newcomers were not, in fact, the anticipated visitors, but (in the eyes of the original neighbours at least) some interlopers who had parked their rig uninvited into a spot they (the originals) had carefully prepared for their friends. The newcomers, on the other hand, felt campsites should be filled on a first-come first-served basis and that the others had no right in reserving this spot when they (the newcomers) wanted to use it. We decided this would be the perfect time to all go for a morning walk and let them sort out their differences! Well... the situation wasn't perhaps as heated as this account may make it sound, they were still relatively civil, but there was certainly an element of crank on the part of both parties!

Day 34 (March 5) - Daylesford to Inverleigh via Geelong

Thursday 5 March

Today we woke to continuous rain which is such a lovely sound when you are all snuggled up and warm. :) But not such a great sound when you're hoping to pack up in the dry!

Today we plan to meet up with one of Greg's cousins and his family in Geelong in the afternoon (this is Greg's Mum's sister's son). She has two boys who are now in the late 40's with 3 children each. We last saw them several years ago at her husband's funeral, and the time before that our kids would have been too young to remember any of them. It will be lovely to catch up with them again.

Ooh... fog and light rain!

Day 33 - Mount Franklin; visiting Bendigo and Daylesford area

Wednesday 4 March

Last night we had a bit of light rain that continued until close to the morning. A few times during the night there were some unusual noises from some bird or animal quite close to the van but I didn't want to unzip the end to look out because when everything is quiet unzipping is do loud do I just laid there & waited for the noise to pass. I must have fallen back to sleep because next thing I knew the rain had stopped but it sounded like a swarm or either bees or flies were around our caravan. They seemed to pass on & we eventually got out & started our day.

We looked at the things we wanted to do & planned a route up to Bendigo via Turpin Falls to have a look around then returning to Daylesford to do food shopping & laundry.

Day 32 - Mt Franklin

Tuesday 3 March

Today has been another quiet day of getting school and business work done. The kids have enjoyed doing their Maths, English, Science and a few other subjects. Once it got to 10.30 it was time for some morning tea so we enjoyed some of the snacks we had bought from the NQR store (this time it was some Red Rock Garlic and Lemon mixed nuts (never knew they made those!) and a muesli bar with a cuppa).

One thing we've noticed since being in Victoria has been the number of Crimson Rosellas! I remember these being in Adelaide when I was younger but I've not seen them for years. But we've seen plenty in the past two weeks!

Gorgeous Crimson Rosellas

Day 30-31 - Enfield State Forest to Mount Franklin Reserve

Sunday 1 March

Phew! After all the walking around Friday and Saturday we definitely needed today to be a day of rest! We finally had time to do a nice hot breakfast of bacon and eggs on muffins.

We then had our own meeting. We've been reading through Ezra and Nehemiah so looked at Nehemiah 2. Quite a chapter on prayer and reliance on God. Jude played the recorder to help us get the tune for the first hymn (Hymn 1), then Bek played her flute for the following hymns. She has been our 'accompaniest' on our other trips!