Travel Plans - April 7

One is reluctant to plan too much as it seems to change so often! But here is the plan for the last leg of our trip as it stands on April 8.

• April we plan to drive up to Coral Bay, Exmouth and Karijini National Park - basically the Gascoyne and Pilbara regions.
• May we plan to go through the Kimberly across the Gibb River Road to Kununurra
• First week of June we'll be starting the trip down to Adelaide, either via the Stuart Highway via Daly Waters, or via the Tanami Rd which runs from Fitzroy Crossing in the Kimberly down to Alice Springs

Kids are due back at school on June 15 so we hope to be home a week or so before that.

All God willing! Who knows what could change! 

-- Greg

April 1-6 - Pinjarra Bible School, and at the Bundesen's

Our last week in Perth was pretty hectic getting stuff together, having final catch ups and making sure we had the necessary bits and pieces for our next leg of the trip up north all God willing and also making sure the kids had all their schooling stuff. They are going to still be connected to Perth Heritage until we return to Adelaide so that work can be sent until the end of Semester 1 which will be very useful.

As always there is always something that gets left behind so Greg took Jude back to school to pick up the final bits and pieces and made an outing out of it for morning tea.

Morning tea with Jude

 Along with our up north preparations we also had to make sure we were ready for Pinjarra Bible school (held at Fairbridge Village campsite) over the Easter long weekend as we are in a house with other families and a large number of teenagers.

Pinjarra Bible School

Fairbridge Village mud map

Pinjarra Bible School is hosted on a large historic property called 'Fairbridge'. It seems to be an old town with a number of old houses. Because these were full houses people once lived in, they each have their own amenities (kitchen, toilets etc) so you're fully self-contained in this house while at the camp. A number of families stay in each house, where you share meals and time together, in addition to the studies and some communal meals in other common areas of the campsite.

 

March 26-31 - end of stay in Perth

 Well our stay in Perth has almost come to an end! We came here expecting to stay for about six weeks and ended up staying for 20! Wow, that's four and a half months and we've had such a lovely time!

A few highlights of the last week:

Caravan:

We bought another spare set of springs for the caravan just in case we break another spring on our last leg of our journey. They're pretty heavy so I was trying to get rid of excess weight, and decided to install the two brand new suspension rockers instead of carrying them around as spares. The centre rocker has a grease nipple in the end to keep the rocker lubricated, but when I'd tried to the grease had gotten dried up and gone really hard which had probably contributed to the wear. I had to pull most of the suspension apart to get the rockers out so I could clean out the dried hardened grease so the rockers could be lubricated again. On the old rocker, I found the steel bush on the centre pivot point, and the two side nylon bushes which I'd replaced in Darwin, were all showing signs of wear.

The old centre rocker. Notice the wear at the top of the centre pivot point, and at the bottom of the side pivot points.

The centre pivot bolt. See that dark dot in the middle of the shiny patch? That's supposed to be a hole which grease comes out of! It had gone rock hard!

 

March 1-25, 2021

 March 1-25, 2021

I taught Jude how to make a house of cards

One highlight of March was our wedding anniversary! We had lunch in town, then stayed the night at the Duxton Hotel which is where we had the first few days of our honeymoon!

Feb, 2021

 February, 2021

I was supposed to be visiting Adelaide in the first week to get some things done on the house between our last tenants moving out and our next ones arriving, however the lockdown put an end to that idea. The kids had plenty of time at home! They were very disappointed to not be going to school as Monday was to be their first day at Heritage over here. They have been looking forward to it for weeks!

 

I had another late-night course for a new program I've joined to help improve the business' performance. I found this very helpful, and February was an extremely satisfying month on many fronts. Not only do I have a much better business plan, it's meant I'm using my time a lot more efficiently which has also meant less actual time working and time to get a number of other important things done, like spending more time with the kids and reading books.

Rest of January, 2021

 Mim's Dad, brother Ben and his son Johannes, and us three boys went away for the January long weekend to Yanchep, which is a couple of hours up the coast north of Perth. Had a lovely weekend!

Jan19-20 (Day 334-335) - Goldfields to Wave Rock to Perth

800km - Jan 19 in blue, Jan 20 in red

Tuesday Jan 19 - Goldfields to Wave Rock

 

The water pipeline from Perth to Kalgoorlie
runs alongside the main road

We headed from our campsite and drove along the highway heading west towards Southern Cross. As we drove we could see the pipeline running alongside the road, the same pipeline we were camped near overnight.  This is the pipeline which was run back in the early 1900's from Mundaring Dam in the Perth hills out to Kalgoorlie to provide a stable water supply for the goldmines. It was this pipeline which helped the goldfields expand and become more profitable, as a lack of water was one of the biggest challenges they faced in the early days.

This little guy had two ticks in his ear! :(

After turning off at Southern Cross and hitting the dirt roads again, we saw another lizard on the road, a blue-tongue this time. But when we picked it up to move it off, we noticed it had two ticks living in its left earhole! :( So with some restraint and with Bek on the tweezers, we managed to extract the little blighters and give them a quick burial under our heels, while Bluey was released to the wild sans-bloodsuckers!

 

Removing the ticks in its ear

Lizard Surgeons 'R' Us