Day 77

18 April 2013

Joel's mum has put a request in for a blog about how we live each day in the van and where we camp etc, rather than just showing you all the great places we visit! Now I thought this would just bore everyone but apparently it's interesting so here goes...like sands through an hourglass, so are the days of our caravan lives..

Currently we are bush camping so the only facilities here are pit toilets (my personal fav) and bore water (which you can't drink). This site is right next to the beach just over a big dune so the camp sites are sandy and a bit of low bush around. Not real private you can pretty much hear and see everything everyone is doing but we have been to worse. This is a shot of the campground...

And this is how we normally set up... Our van has a rear door (unlike most that have a side door) so we try and pick spots where there is bush behind us and not people! We park the ute next to the van so we can roll out the awning between the ute and van to sit under if we want to.

There is also an awning on the back of the van but its time consuming to put up and it's purple (which Joel doesn't like) so unless its raining and we need the shelter for the bbq etc we don't set it up.

A typical morning starts with tea and coffee (like most people)! Obviously when we are bush we have no electricity so it's gas all the way here (fridge runs on gas when bush). Boil our kettle on the stove in the van for tea and dishes etc.

With no electricity we still need to charge electrical items like phones and iPads so this is where cigarette sockets that Joel has installed in the van come in handy.

These were connected to the dual battery on the car, we just plugged the car into the van via an Anderson plug. Now we have solar panels and a third battery so the cig plugs run directly off that now. Joel installed the new battery under the seat at the table and a volt meter to make sure we do not run the battery too low. It's also good to know what things really chew the power etc and you can see what volts the solar panel is creating.

Now you might be asking yourself (probably not but just run with it) how do you charge stuff that doesn't have a 12v charger? The answer.... An inverter which you can plug 240v chargers into and it converts to 12v.

This is also why we purchased a new tv...it is a normal tv but came with 12 v adapter so can be run on either. Saves power because we don't have to have the inverter running as well. Oh and it has a DVD player so Joel can now watch his 4wd DVDs!

We still have a little table where we sit to eat....yummy!

I still have to do dishes, washing and clean the van! So nothing changed there. At the moment we just don't have much room when we pack up, we put everything into the van on the floor which makes it difficult to stop anywhere for lunch cuz you can't get into van without pulling it all out. So once we pull up to camp we pull everything out from the floor as it is the stuff that sits at the rear door, eg table, bbq, etc. and whola we are set up. Oh there are 4 clips on the outside of the van that have to be undone and then the roof pops up... And now we are done.

On the flip side, we explored Jurien Bay today which is a pretty little town, did some fishing, tried to catch a blue swimmer crab with a rod, and managed to catch the sunset!

Anything else you want to know....just ask!

Carly & Joel

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Day 76

17 April 2013

Decided to head off this morning in a northerly direction and that's about all we know.

We don't know what we are doing, so undecided about working and money sucks when you aren't working. School holidays is going to stuff us right up with busyness of places and finding good locations to camp.

Anyway good news on our way to "somewhere" north we ran into the pinnacles. Which we had forgotten about but glad there was some signage to remind us. As we had bought a national park pass back in Esperance it was free to see the pinnacles (normally $11) so winning, have definitely made our money back on that pass. Once here you can either drive around the pinnacles or you can do a walk to the pinnacles. As we had the van on we were not allowed to drive through so walk it was. It's a 1.2km track and it is only about 200m and you are at the pinnacles and you can keep walking or just soak in the surrounds. This is a cool place but really hot! About 10 degrees hotter I reckon and just surrounded by these pinnacles everywhere. All different shapes and sizes, ones with holes, one that resemble things and then just orange coloured sand everywhere under your feet.

Back on the road we found a camp site for $15 a night so headed in there. Now there were two access roads and we had to pick one, we drove past the ones with the signs everywhere (in hind sight probably not the best idea) and headed to what looked like a shorter route. Big mistake, the road was corrugated and then all of a sudden we were on a tiny sand road with branches and sticks hanging out everywhere onto the road which proceeded to scratch the shit out of the dmax as we headed through. Problem was once we were in there we only had the option to go forward not backward! The caravan also received some new pin striping today and we got about half way down this road and found a small turn around so went back, we decided we were better off going back then going into more stuff we didn't know! As you may understand by the time all this happened we were not in the best of moods and were ready to kill each other. Remember people who caravan together stay together! haha Drove back to correct entry and settled into our spot for the night.

We were a little late to watch the sunset! : ( always tomorrow... I missed it cuz I was too busy watching Edward on DVD on our new tv! Haha

Carly & Joel

 

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Day 62

3 April 2013

Woke up from a very restful sleep, I even had a dream which I haven't had in ages so must of been sleep. I did however dream that I robbed Target with Heath from Home & Away! Haha it didn't work out so I just went back to work (at target) haha. This is what happens when you can't watch h&a all the time, you start to make shit up! Haha

This morning was fishing time. With everyone telling us we can't leave until we have fished, we took there advice and were out there early! Seems it paid off, this area is known for black bream and black bream we did get! Would have caught about 10 undersized (25cm is legal) but among them were some whoppers! 30cm fat fillety freshness was the biggest bream. We then scored a King George Whiting 40cm, it was a goer and other fisherman were trying to steal it from us, apparently pretty hard to catch here?!

Now I say we in all of this, however I didn't fish as yesterday I managed to snap my rod in half....now this would be a cool story....except I didn't snap it while I was fishing! It's a long story and I don't want to go into it however I am down a rod which means I watched Joel fish all day! BCF here I come!

Filleted the fish up while chatting to some locals. We keep seeing some of the same couples over and over again in every place we stop, bit funny, may as well just travel with them!

We have made some fish cakes for dinner from our catch today for something different.

We needed bread crumbs for the fish cakes, didn't have any bought ones so was going to crumb bread but we don't have power and inverter wouldn't run my magic bullet so Joel came up with another way......

We ditched happy hour today for a nice hot bush shower! Nothing like it when you stink of fish! We have the hot water system down to a bit of a fine art now, heating the bucket of water first then running it through the shower head. This guarantees there are no screams when the Coleman cuts out and shoots freezing water from the shower head!

Big happy birthday to my good friend Sez! Hope you had a great day yummy mummy!

Carly & Joel

 

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Day 50

22 March 2013

Today we decided to go on a touristy drive to see what was around here. One of the first things I normally do is google "things to do in......(wherever we are). So I googled things to do in Streaky Bay and 41 things came up, which normally when I do this only 5-10 things come up, so what I am really trying to say is that there are lots of things to do in this area if you are keen!

We started the day off with the Westall Loop Tourist Drive which is only about 10km out of Streaky Bay. This loop is 30 km long and encompasses a few attractions. First the Yarnebie Sand Hills which were not as big as Port Stephens but still big enough to sand board down if you have a spare carton with you!

Then smooth pools which is a lot of small and big rock pools that you can walk down to and search for little things living in the pools. Again we saw nothing but still nice area!

Continue the drive to The Granites, High Cliffs and Tractor Beach (you can camp here too). There is also the Cape Bauer Loop, Murphy's Haystacks and Point Labatt which you can see colonies of sea lions from a viewing platform!

So endless things to do if you have endless time....we however didn't as it was lunch time and we were hungry, so headed back to camp for lunch.

We then decided to take the boat out, even though it was a bit windy we thought it might be better on the water. Let me tell you if it's windy on land it's bloody windier in the water! This area also is breeding grounds for white pointer sharks so as we are heading out from the bay, Joel says "I just saw a big black fin come out of the water," and I thought yea whatever you are just trying to scare me...but he was serious so I turned around to look too.....luckily though it was a beautiful pod of dolphins! About 6 of them just hanging around the boat, pretty cool! Unfortunately the wind just made for a very unpleasant fishing trip so we headed back in.

Had an early dinner and decided to head back out on the boat cuz it looked a little less rough....it wasn't! So fishing trip no 2 was also a fail, give up and get some shut eye instead!

Carly & Joel

 

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Day 48

20 March 2013

OMG Joel had way too many beers last night....you know how I know this?! He snores and breathes like a freight train! So I got no sleep and he slept like a baby. I actually got up and put earplugs in in the middle of the night! Bad!

Today we were off to Port Augusta for one reason and that was to transfer the new caravan into our name. Head off (after our 5 min pack up hehe), happily driving along the highway and hear a bit of a thud.... We both looked at each other....Joel thought maybe a flat tyre so we slowed down. Joel looks at the reversing camera and notices something doesn't look right.... we are missing the spare wheel!!! Quick radio check to the truck behind us and yep, we lost the spare wheel! Turned around to go look for it and was lying in the merge lane so were able to stop and quickly chuck it in the back.

Strap broke and really we were careless and should've checked before we left to secure it better but too late now! Even better valve busted so leaking air = tyre stuffed! Sort it out in Whyalla when we get there!

In Port Augusta, found the registration place and headed in....now you know a place must be a little rough if there are signs where you queue saying "We will not tolerate abusive or aggressive behaviour, our staff deserve to feel safe at work!" Lined up and was told to fill in a form to get a SA customer number. Ok done, line up again, you can not have a QLD address, you must reside in SA to get a customer number (which I think is totally reasonable; however the caravan centre did tell us this would be a simple process). Further investigation said we could use the caravan park we stayed in as the SA address, great! However the receipt for the caravan park was in my name and all the transfer papers had been done in Joel's name! Argh! Lady was really good and said we could just white it out and redo in my name. Then she needed a stat dec to say that Joel was happy to have it in my name. Off to find JP, back in line and $31 transfer fee later we are away! This took most of the morning and am mainly telling this story in case anyone is thinking of buying a caravan while in a different state you will know what to expect!

Back on road and heading for Whyalla. Quite a nice drive to here because of all the ranges you can see in the backdrop but still so dry and flat and now red red dirt! Every street sign was just covered in red dust! Tyre fixed for $3 (new valve) = happy! The council here mustn't have anything to do cuz we saw a guy mowing the red dirt where grass would normally be growing, guess they have to keep busy somehow!

Found a nice free camp right on the water and we are testing out our new oven! That's right people shutz has an oven!

Joel has been cooking dinner while I have been lying down and enjoying the view from our caravan door....bliss!

Carly & Joel

 

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Day 47

19 March 2013

Stayed at Port Wakefield last night at the sleepy little caravan park there. It was right on the river so nice spot!

Pack up was a breeze, so easy we were standing around saying that we must of forgotten to do something! It was too easy! Joel is of course already talking about all the things he can modify....here we go again! Hehe.

We decided to head down into the Yorke Peninsula for a little bit and have a sticky beak around. We went down to Ardrossan, over to Maitland, then up to Moonta, Port Pirie and our final destination was to be Port Augusta but we only made it to Port Germein as had heard some great reviews off Wikicamps that this is crab heaven!

Nice town, nothing to it, pub, general store and bait, that's about it. Oh and the longest wooden jetty in Australia, 1.6km! Headed to bait shop to load ourselves with gear and information ...you can hire the pots from here (which we did cuz our crab pots are illegal in SA) $3 a day to hire, some bait and the locals telling us don't take more than 40 and take a big esky! We were like whatever we will be stoked if we get 1 and really we were doubtful that we would even get that.

You guessed it, to get the crab you have to walk the 1.6km jetty! Off we went, took the rods as well in case crabbing did not turn out well. Dropped the pots over the side of the jetty in about metre of water and no word of a joke you can actually watch the crabs circling the pot and then they get in and you pull em up! Easy as that, we couldn't believe it! In less than an hour we had caught 20 or more crabs and it was a struggle to keep up with the 3 pots we had going at once! We actually stopped after our bucket was full but we could've kept hauling them in! It was crazy, so fun though. After our crabbing arvo we couldn't be bothered fishing and headed back to cook them up!

The park has a crab cooking facility which you can pay $2 to cook up your catch. Some great guys we met on the jetty helped us cook and clean them, and we took over from here and ate them!

There is nothing better than catching and cooking your own meal!

The only question now is....do we stay here longer to get more crabs?!

Carly & Joel

 

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Day 43

15 March 2013

Great sleep last night, very peaceful here. We are getting a bit naughty with sleeping in after 6 weeks on the road, getting up at 7-8am instead of our normal work wake up at 5-6am! This will not serve us well when we start working again!!

Bacon and eggs for breakfast and we were off to have a look around town. First to the jetty and boat ramp here, we were surprised to see that to launch your boat at this ramp you have to pay a yearly fee of $50 or $4 each time you launch. Is anything safe from a $ amount these days??

Next to Shelley beach lookout where we can imagine this to be a really nice spot however the weather of late has made the beaches quite dirty with debris and rough waters. The caretaker told us we could dive for some rock lobster here so Joel was on the lookout for any just walking over the rocks that he might be able to grab, surprisingly we did not see any!

Cape Northumberland is further the road and to the left of the parking area is where fairy penguins can be seen and to the right is where the old lighthouse used to stand and where a famous ship was wrecked. First to the penguin side, and while I had high hopes a penguin (who never normally comes out in the day) might pop it's head out to say hello for the sake of the blog. Haha no luck here either. This area is also the most southerly point in SA.

Over to the old lighthouse site where you can see remnants of it and read stories of when it was in operation. There is also a map showing all the shipwrecks that have happened in this coast. Some ridiculous amount had be wrecked right at this spot compared to other places on the coast. I did wonder whether this is why they got rid of the lighthouse here, obviously it was not helping the boats!?

There are lots of little lookouts you can view from along this scenic road. We came across on that had this sign.....

Joel read it and immediately wanted to check the sign was correct! Result...

Bogged in powder consistency sand! We just sunk and even better the tide was coming up and we didn't have much beach to work with. First let down the tyre pressure, second put her in 4L and third....reverse the hell out of there!

Sign is correct - check!

After exploring we headed back to camp for a relaxing afternoon.

Carly & Joel

Facebook page set up, if you haven't liked, please do, so we come up in your news feed. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Go-Mad-Oz-Adventure/

 

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Day 42

14 March 2013

Last night we finally had a decent sleep, besides some drunk girls screaming their tits off, pretty good.

 

Packed up and headed on our new destination.....South Australia!

 

We drove from Warrnambool to Port Fairy, Portland, stopped in at Nelson (last town before border) and then crossed the border into South Australia! We are now settled for a couple of nights at Port MacDonnell. On the way into this town is a couple of little seaside towns which are actually like rural properties but right on the ocean! I mean cows eating hay with a backdrop of the ocean.... Guess I was wrong about seaspray....this is the real area where country meets coast!

 

Other thing I have noticed about SA is the sand is really white and like a powder consistency, very fine! So diverse to Vic that is quite course and a real terracotta colour.

 

There is not a lot to do here, few walks and fairy penguins which I am very interested in hunting down (hunting is probably not the right word!) Caretaker here informed us that whiting is getting caught on the beach at the moment with someone bringing in a 60cm one! That's huge! Whiting on steroids!

 

We have been a little lazy today and have watched TV for most of the arvo, I feel this is fair considering the last time we were able to watch it was almost week ago!

 

Have been throwing around ideas about where we are heading, we are interested in going to Coober Pedy but it is in the middle of nowhere really so if we did maybe we would cut straight up the middle first?! We need help, suggestions! Also working, where is the best place for us to go to source it?! We still think Perth at this stage but maybe you know someone or know something we don't know, help us out....contact us.

 

Carly & Joel

 

 

 

 

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Day 39

11 March 2013

 

This morning we got up before the sun to start packing up the camper for our ferry ride. While we did try and be as quiet as possible the neighbours probably weren't too happy being woken up before sunrise! Joel wound the camper down and it was about half way down when I realized that the front was going down but the back was still in full upright position! The roof was on a total 45 degree angle! Shiiiiittttt! We thought the winch in the camper had finally given way or something had broken, turns out a few wiggles and a few bangs later the back part fell to the fronts level. Haha classic Jayco. We were on a time limit being booked on the barge for 8am so luckily it did not turn into a big problem.

Headed to Sorrento and we were running early and made it to the barge at 7am and just in the nick of time to catch the earlier one so we didn't have to wait another hour! And we were on the ferry for sunrise which was nice....

Ferry is very comfortable, nice cafe where we grabbed coffee and nice lounges to rest in while the ferry does the rest.

Only took about 30 mins to arrive at Queenscliff, headed off the ferry on our way to the Great Ocean Road!!

Drove on the Great Ocean Road through Torquay, Stopped at the Memorial Arch for a photo, Angelsea, Lorne, Apollo Bay. What a great road, really, why aren't they all built like this! It should be called Great Scenery Road though I think as some bits do cut inland and you wonder where the ocean went but still spectacular!

Past Apollo Bay and then we started to run out of Diesel....hmmm in the middle of two towns we decided to press on to Lavers Hill as google indicated there was a petrol station there. On way to Lavers Hill we checked out a campsite at Aire River (probably not the best choice when running out of fuel) was nice here but was absolutely packed with people for the long weekend so headed back out on highway to continue to Lavers Hill.

Diesel getting low, but come up the hill and see petrol pumps....thank you....but wait diesel pump has a sign saying "no I don't work" and unleaded has sign saying "yes I work"! Not helpful, apparently pub down road might have diesel left......head to the pub.....doesn't look open, picked up diesel nozzle and there is a padlock on it! Panic stations, we are nowhere close to another town and we are on the red line! While we were sitting contemplating how we got ourselves into this mess, a guy comes out and says "you guys aren't from around here are ya?" He also had a key in his hand that opened the diesel pump!!! Saviour!!! He told us he rations the fuel as there is limited supply so depending on whether he likes people or not he will give them $20 of diesel or a full tank! Haha he filled our tank up! That was soooo lucky!

On the way up the hill we found another free campsite on the beach so headed back here to check it out with a full tank of fuel. Great spot, in Johanna, right on the beach, big open grassy areas, lots of friendly people around and it's free! Winning!

Spent the arvo setting up, resting, beach fishing and eating!

Tomorrow day trip without camper!

Big Happy Birthday to Rachael!! Hope you had a great day!! We did buy you a card but forgot to send it! So made you a card in the sand at Johanna, Vic....you can't buy this!

Carly & Joel

Tip we learnt today - instead of buying the chemicals for your porta loo, use napisan, it doesn't smell as much and you can then tip it into toilets as it is biodegradable! Great tip as chemicals are expensive! Thanks to two men emptying their porta loos or "dumping" (as it is commonly referred) while we were at the toilet block. You just never know when you might find out useful info!

 

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