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.