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 11

11 February 2013




Nothing much to report today, we found a place to fill up the Weber gas bottle, so for all of you that were panicking out there, the Weber is now back to it's trustworthy self! So we were able to cook the pizza that we couldn't cook the other night for lunch.

 

We then just stayed around camp, went for a walk to watch some water-skiers, there is a Japanese camp here at the moment on a six week stint, learning to waterski so we watched them practicing for a while.

 

The highlight of our day was after the water-skiers are finished they provide canoes you can use to paddle around the lake. So we decided to test them out, it was really nice paddling around the lake and the water was so warm it was weird really so Joel jumped in for a swim nearly upending our canoe!! Good news too, I forgot to take the camera with us so the blog gets even more boring as there will be no photos today!

 

Tomorrow will be an improvement.

 

Carly & Joel

 

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Day 10

10 February 2013

Woke up this morning to a calm river and boiling hot morning!

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha I am lying in bed typing this blog and Joel has already dosed off. He just woke up suddenly and said "Nah, you can't do that" and I said "What?" And he said "Play the didgereedoo for an hour!" Hahaha made me laugh!! I tried to continue the conversation but he just said "Oh, I don't know" and now he's back asleep!

Anyway where was I, so we got up and mosied around and packed up the camper, by this time it was 9 o'clock and the ranger still hasn't come for his money so we left happy... First night free camping!

Headed down the highway towards Port Macquarie to a place I had found only last night called Stony Park at Telegraph Point, it is also a water ski park so sounded right up Joel's alley.

We pulled in and it was very well maintained and everything looked new (I think it is fairly new). $22 a night so a little more expensive than our free camping! But that includes use of all their facilities, BBQ area etc and you can go to either of the lakes and watch people ski. We set up, checked out the amenities (brand new, look good) and then walked down to the lakes to check out some waterskiing.... Obviously there is not always people on the water but this weekend there is a man camp so there are plenty of pretty good skiers to watch. You can waterski here yourself but it is quite costly, $160 to hire lake for 1 hour; however this does include all your gear and they will teach you how to etc.... would be good if you had some friends that wanted to ski as well.

We had some lunch and headed into Port Macquarie. It is about a 20km drive from here. Stopped in to get some supplies, one of which was a new shower tent! (More on this later) and drove out along all of the beaches. The coast is beautiful really wherever you go, but Port's rocks in the water and surrounding the beaches add a point of difference. The water was also so clear you could see straight through it, would be good snorkeling etc here I would assume. We then drove to the Tackings Point Lighthouse and did a little walk around the lighthouse and down to a viewing platform. Great views from up here!! All along the coast were little spots to stop to get great views so you won't miss them!

We then headed to Lake Cathie which was about 20 km down the road. It is home to the big bowl (lawn bowl that is) so thought it was worth a look. The big bowl is on the way into town and while it's big compared to a normal lawn bowl, it's not that BIG! Joel actually didn't believe me that this was one of the big things.... I also wonder whether it made the list as it weighs two tonnes... Anyway another big thing ticked off the list! Haha. The lake here is nice for a picnic, swimming or canoeing.



We then headed back to camp for something to eat and to get ready to catch some big fish!

Out on the boat in a little river just down the road from camp called Maria River, it is fresh water which is not really our forte (if we even have one) but felt a little glimmer of hope when saw a couple scaling some fish at the boat ramp. Well that glimmer of hope faded over the next couple of hours as barely a bite was too be had the whole time! I think we really need some fishing lessons! Joel did however catch something.........Introducing the new turtle man!

After our catch we decided to head back to camp, make dinner and relax. Happy to report shower was awesome as well and hot. Joel then decided he might test out the new shower tent, from our last story we threw our old one out, it was one of the pop up ones, which are great on the pop up, not so good on the pop down! So this time we bought one with poles.... Well I have never seen so many different components to one little shower tent, small poles, big poles, three different material components and pegs. It was quite funny watching us opening it and going WTF are all these poles for! Haha oh and of course our instructions were missing from the box! Anyway we did manage to work it out, we think... I'm not sure this will be a faster solution however we can feel good about the fact that it will go back into the bag eventually!

Joel whipped us up another awesome pizza for dinner only to find that the Weber was out of gas! Found a fault in the Weber, after you use it every night, lunch, breakfast the gas will eventually run out! Plan B, spaghetti.

Carly & Joel

 

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Day 9

9 February 2013

Another chilly morning in Dorrigo, hard to get up! We started early to pack up the camper and we were on the road by 10am. We decided to ditch our shower tent today as we spent about half an hour trying to fold it up to fit back in the bag! We have had many issues with this tent so decided we were better off without it. Of course Joel wanted to throw it after his first failed attempt so I said I can do it, give it to me.... I tried for nearly 20 mins and I was ready to hurl it half way across Dorrigo! Decided to bin it, looked down at my nice top I had put on for the day and it was covered in mud and shit from trying to put the stupid shower tent away! Better yet we had already packed up the camper so I couldn't get to my clothes to change, the only thing I could get to was the shirt I wore yesterday so had to wear that! (Just thought I would let everyone know the story so you don't just think I am some homeless person who wears the same thing everyday!) haha.

Anyway on the road heading to Coffs Harbour for the big banana, Aldi and JB Hi Fi. Was a nice winding road again to get out of Dorrigo but not the same craziness that we came in on! The road is called waterfall way and that's because there is actually waterfalls that run down the side of the mountain and under the road and back out the other side of the road! Bloody amazing! Where's the photo you may ask?... Well I saw the first waterfall and thought wow that's cool, oh well missed the photo op, there would only be one of those cool waterfalls... round the next corner..... Another one! Dive for camera but too late! Wait for the next one.....but no more : (. Haha.

Coffs Harbour, first stop big banana! I'm not really sure what I was expecting but I felt slightly disappointed when I saw the banana... Anyway since I raved about how interested I was in the big things we stopped for a photo op! (I feel my big thing fascination dwindling, better be something good soon!)

Then off to Aldi as they had some caravan items in catalogue and needed some groceries. Of course none of the caravan stuff we wanted was in stock so bit disappointing! I also purchased a new gadget for the iPad which has been awesome so far....a connection so I can plug the camera straight into iPad and get photos rather than laptop, emailing, uploading crap I was doing before so win there. After our shopping trip we headed south again for our destination at Smoky Cape Campground @ South West Rocks; however on the way found a nice town on a river - Nambucca Heads so decided to head to info centre (practicing what we preach) and get some info which has led us to Gumma Reserve which is just near the town of Macksville. It is right on the river, fire, toilets and nice location (nothing like Dorrigo tho!). We are only going to stop here for one night so left trailer hooked up to head off in morning. Site is $12 a night and that's if the ranger turns up to collect the money.

We did a bit of fishing off the bank this arvo and caught a couple of very small whiting and bream, didn't take any pictures tho so you will have to take our word for it! (However if we knew they were going to be the only fish we caught we probably would have taken a photo!)

Lamb chops for dinner tonight, fire with marshmallows and sleep.

Carly & Joel

 

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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 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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