Day 4

4 February 2013

Good news, we both slept really well last night, wind wasn't too bad and maybe we are starting to get used to sleeping under canvas!

Morning breakfast of bacon, eggs, mushrooms & tomatoes was a good start to the day! Again the Weber hasn't let us down yet...

We had decided yesterday that we were not going to go into town today as we have for the last couple of days, we would just hang around camp. We had a bit of a clean up, and rearranged a few things. When you pack you think "Oh I won't need that for ages so I will shove that in the smallest pokiest spot so it is out of the way!" (a jumper for example) turns out you need those things a lot sooner than you expected so a little rearranging will be required regularly I would say! Joel decided to be handy and fix the tap in the camper trailer, I read a few of the millions of stories we have cut out and bought with us from Joel's camper trailer & 4wd magazines to try and work out good places to visit on our next stay.

If we could go back, we would have only booked Ballina for 3 nights as we were pretty much ready to leave this morning and move on to the next place; however we have paid for six nights and we are not going to waste that. So back in the pool for a midday swim, water was freezing as it has been very windy here today! To keep warm I decided to do some laps, ended up swimming 50 laps with a few well earned breaks in between but I was absolutely buggered after it! Might try and top this tomorrow....

This afternoon we decided to test the Weber Q by trying to cook a cake. When we were at Aldi the other day we bought just a cheap packet mix to test the cake cooking theory out in the Weber. Another interesting thing about Aldi that I forgot to mention in the first blogs is that Aldi here has a Aldi Liquor shop in it also, sells weird and interesting wines and beers and also the odd staple drink like Jim Beam.... Moscato bottles were only $4.99, I am wondering now why I didn't buy one to try?! I have been to a few Aldi's in QLD and have never seen a liquor part of it...correct me if I am wrong....

Anyway back to the cake, mixed it all up, put in cake tin, on top of trivet with alfoil under the trivet (in the hope that this would stop it from burning on the bottom), timer set for 40 mins, temperature in Weber sitting on 160-180C, perfect. Smelling good, didn't want to open the lid to much as the heat would escape but at the 30 min mark thought we would just double check.... Cake everywhere!!! Pan may have been a little small for the amount of cake mixture... aside from that cake looks perfectly cooked on one side but still runny on the other side. Cut off excess cake overflowing from tin, rotated cake and left for another 10 mins. Pulled cake out with high hopes....looked good......

Cut around the edges, turned the tin upside down onto a waiting plate and.......NOTHING, cake was burnt nicely to the bottom of the pan and wasn't shifting. On the bright side the cake was cooked beautifully in the middle and on top but just burnt the bum out of it. I still feel like it was a good effort for the first time.

After the cake episode I decided to take a few photos of camp and again try out the time delay on my camera. You can see the results below, it was quite funny actually....

NOPE

NOPE

FINALLY! Need some practice!

We then went for a walk along the beach which would normally be quite relaxing but the tide was in quite high, there was no beach to walk on and we had to crawl along the dunes to get anywhere, which Joel thought was great and was trying to make the dunes collapse underneath him! The 4wd track to the beach that we mentioned in the earlier posts is now even more washed out and a bigger drop onto the beach so don't see us being able to drive along the beach anytime soon. You can actually drive from here right down to Evans Head which would have been nice, assess it again tomorrow and see if there is any chance!

We then caught up on some news in the camp kitchen and have now resided back to our camper for dinner. Chicken and Cashew Stirfry is on the menu tonight....

Anyway a fairly uneventful day today, which I'm sure you can tell after reading this, as the highlight was cooking a burnt cake! Stay tuned things will get more exciting.... haha

Oh hang on there was another exciting moment in today, we were outside the camper relaxing on our camping chairs and next minute Joel is running after something.... WHAT THE....Yea boy, found $5!

Carly & Joel

 

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Day 3

3 February 2013

 

Well our day started really early this morning, about midnight! We experienced extremely high winds here over night and the whole camper felt like it may just lift off the ground and tip over! We had to get up numerous times to readjust poles and take stuff down and the door kept coming open in the wind! It was hectic and if we weren't fixing something up, we were lying in bed wondering what the next thing would be that would collapse! So no sleep for us for most of the night, the wind did die down at around 4am so we slept from then to 8ish. High winds are expected again tonight so this could be another interesting night...

As mentioned in last post, we headed off to the Byron Bay Markets which are on the first Sunday of every month. On the way to Byron we made a detour to the Macadamia Castle to see what they had to offer... inside is a nice cafe and gift shop and obviously macadamias for sale. To get into the actual activity side of the castle it was a $17 admission fee and inside you can play mini golf, visit the animal farm etc however we didn't really think this was something we needed to waste money on (however if you have kids, this could be a good day out) so after having a look around we got back in the truck and kept going.

Byron was absolutely packed with people and it really is a unique part of Aus, there was a lot of bare footed, hairy arm pitted, carefree, tie-dyed, hugging people around which was interesting people watching but I would have to say that everyone there just looked healthy, fit, happy and slightly out of it.. so they must be doing something right!! We were hoping that the markets may have fresh fruit and vegies but out of the 100 stalls that were there, there was one fruit shop. It was mainly clothes, food and therapies etc.

After the markets we thought we would take the tourist drive back to Ballina past Lennox Head. Lennox Head is so much quieter than Byron and nicer, less touristy... we stopped at Lake Ainsworth where we sat on the edge of the lake, enjoyed a mango we had purchased at the markets and watched the sail boats ride up and down. I also experimented with the self timer on my camera (see third photo below) which I think went surprisingly well considering we are both in the shot, our heads aren't cut off and we don't have some weird look on our faces like "When is this camera going to go off?!" haha

 

By this time we were hungry and ready for lunch, and as we were not very organised this morning we hadn't bought anything to have on the road so we continued back in the direction of Ballina. A little up the road was the Lennox Head Lookout which had some spectacular views but was very windy!

Back at camp we had lunch, went for a swim, sunbaked and rested. Dinner was T Bone we bought from the butcher at Ballina Central and it was delicious. Yes I may just become one of these people that posts a photo of everything they eat... I am only doing this as I think it is quite impressive what you can make from only a Weber Baby Q!

 

After dinner we headed to the camp kitchen to see if there was anything worth watching on tv (as we haven't quite worked out our TV set up yet!) and of course there was nothing on tv! We then decided we should try and get an early night to catch up on some sleep.

We also trialled what happens if you follow our blog by becoming a "follower" at the bottom of the page. If you do choose to follow it, it is good as it sends you an email with each post I upload, rather than you having to log on to the website each time. Only downfall is that you need to have a google, twitter or yahoo account or set one up to follow. The follow by email doesn't actually seem to do anything...

Anyway totally up to you guys.

Carly & Joel

 

 

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Day 2

2 February 2013

A little bit of rain last night, but everything held up ok and no leaks which is a win!

Got up and grocery shopping was our first point of call today. We headed in to town and luckily the barge opened this morning and we were able to cut 30 mins off our trip! The barge is $4.60 each trip and is only about a 5 min journey across the river. This pretty much brings you straight into the Ballina Town Centre.

As you are probably aware there is a BIG thing in Ballina. So of course we had to go and see this. Well this BIG prawn was one BIG disappointment! It is faded, F$&cked and far from being any sort of tourist attraction. I read on an internet site that they were actually going to demolish it; however Bunnings bought the site and they decided they would restore it and include as part of their building so at the moment it looks like a demolition site with a BIG prawn in the middle of it.



There are two major shopping centres here, Ballina Fair & Ballina Central. We decided to head to Ballina Central as there was a Big W. In the Ballina Central shopping centre, there is also a cafe called Coastal Cafe which we would highly recommend as it was $5 for a "budget breakfast" which was pretty much the correct amount of food that we should be eating not the HUGE meals you get everywhere else for $15! So head here if you need a cheap breakfast!

We then grocery shopped at Aldi and picked up a few odds and ends. Back on the ferry and straight into the pool! Loving this life! haha

Lunch, walk along the beach, drinks and now dinner. Joel is now making us a pizza on our Weber Baby Q... Thanks Babe!

Tomorrow we are going to head to Byron Bay for markets and look around.

Hope everyone is well.

 

Carly & Joel

 

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Day 1

1 February 2013


So while we are a couple of days late in starting our adventure, the rain, wind and storms that happened in the days leading up to our original departure date (30 January 2013) not only put us back in packing and preparing the camper, they also hammered the NSW coast, and we were unsure whether we would even be able to make it to our first destination.

On the morning of 30 January 2013 we rang the holiday village at Ballina where we were booked in, believing that they would tell us that either the ferry to the park or the roads would be closed. However the lady on the front desk assured us that all roads were open and the ferry was operating and the park was not flooded and was ready for visitors. Unfortunately we didn't think that this would be the case so we had stalled our packing in the days leading up to Wednesday and there was no way we were going to be ready to leave straight away! We decided to delay for 2 days to ensure we were totally packed and ready and to give the floods a little more time to recede.

Morning of the 1st Feb 2013, we both were wide eyed and bushy tailed at 4.30am! We decided that we were ready and although we couldn't technically check into Ballina until 2pm we were going to get on the road because we couldn't wait a minute longer to start this trip!

Car is packed, Cheryl has had the rundown on the house, camper is hooked up ready to go, last thing to do..... leave our little snapper! : ( A lady at work asked me how i was going to say goodbye to snapper, and i said well it will go something like this... CYA SNAP! haha. That is not actually how it went at all, i started to get quite stupidly emotional and felt like i was leaving my only child at home! We took him up to the granny flat so Cheryl could keep him entertained while we left, Cheryl suggested that she bring him down to wave goodbye; however Joel said NO MUM i don't want to see him as we drive away, (which is exactly what i was thinking but didnt want to say it!)

Anyway, I may have already told some friends and family but if you don't already know I am obsessed with the "BIG things" in Australia and would like to visit as many of them as I can. So where better to start then the BIG pineapple!

Big thing photo taken...now on the road for some serious driving. Of course leaving early has it's advantages; however it also has disadvantages like peak hour traffic by the time you hit Brisbane/Gold Coast area. Now while we were well aware of this when we left we were desperate to just get on the road and start this trip so were willing to sit in traffic where required. For future reference though we need to learn to sleep in and mosey about (like real retired people do) and wait until everyone is already at work and then head off.

While on the road I remembered that I had left my Etoll tag in my Toyota Echo which we sold to a lovely lady in Caloundra. I decided to message her and just ask if she would be able to post the toll tag back to us etc. She replied and said that was no worries... and proceeded to thank us for the little notes we left in the car. I looked and Joel and thought "What Notes??" and then i realised that my last day of work, my fellow workmates thought it would be funny to toilet paper the whole inside of my car and leave little paper notes saying goodbye, good luck and thank you! While I obviously removed all the toilet paper and thought I had removed all the notes...the buyer of my echo thought we had put the notes in there for her to say thanks for buying the car!!! Well after I picked myself up off the floor of the car from laughing so hard I decided I better break the bad news to her and tell her the notes actually weren't for her! She took it well and it was a little bit of amusement on the road!

We experienced our first rolling blockade today also, with 4 "safety" cars holding up the whole four lanes of the M1 highway so that further up the road a truck driver could remove the remnants of his tyres from the highway. That was interesting and slow but didn't take long and we were on our way.

We stopped once on our way to Ballina and it was at the Sleepy Hollows Rest Area as we both needed to use the bathroom. I would highly urge you not to stop at this rest area! There was an attractive line of portable loos which looked quite innocent from the outside but the smell from the truckers that had stopped to drop off their load earlier was dry reaching material! And I did not breathe the whole time I was in there! After I resurfaced the only question I had was "does anyone have any hand sanitizer" (note to self put this on the shopping list) YUCK!

We came to the road that leads to the ferry to take us across to our holiday park destination and look at what we see.....

While this is not the end of the world it adds another 30 mins onto the trip so we were a bit disappointed! (thanks front office desk at the holiday park for the heads up! not!)

30 mins later we arrived at Ballina Holiday Village at 11am and set up camp, beautiful day but quite hot setting up in the middle of the day. We then relaxed on the deck and ordered a beef burger (one of the best beef burgers I have had).

After lunch we checked out the camp kitchen, amenities and pool area. Being so hot we couldn't resist the look of the pool and spent a good hour swimming around. I would have to say my pool skills are not what they used to be... I couldn't swim more than a couple of laps, my eyes got sore, my ears were blocked, my dives were belly flops and let's face it I must be getting older! haha.

Camp Kitchen

Sign for Snapper

Tipi Huts - Form of Accommodation

We then headed for a little drive to see what was around us. Unfortunately the water is not as pristine as it would normally be from the floods, actually the best way to describe it would be poo water! It looks awful which is a shame. There is also beach 4wd access here so we headed to the track only to find that the ramp had been washed out and a big drop from the sand dune was required to even get on the beach. We decided to hang around the camper for the rest of the afternoon and research some things to do and see in this area and where we are going to head to next!....... Any suggestions???

Go Out & Make A Difference

Carly & Joel

 

 

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Welcome

Welcome to our GO-MAD Oz Adventure!

Our trip begins on the 30th January 2013 and our first stay will be at Ballina!

 

Please feel free to look through our blogs and post any comments. You can also follow our blog by scrolling to the bottom of this blog and entering your details. We also have pages showing you our story, our vehicle, our equipment, where we have been and as the trip progresses there will also be a budget.

"Go Out - Make A Difference"

 

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