Arrived at Belmont on Lake Macquarie, Tuesday December 10th trying to escape the smoke. Not totally successful although had a respite yesterday. The temperatures have dipped from 35c on Tuesday to a very pleasant 23c on Wednesday with a forecast of similar temperatures for a few more days.
We have really enjoyed our first days of downing tools and being a tourist.
(more…)
No fires near us but the smoke is very thick. We changed our route to the Warrumbungles National Park (the dark sky NP) due to fires and free camped at Curlewis.
However, this morning we called the NP who informed us that the smoke is bad and they are expecting high temperatures. So not only will the night sky be obscured but walking not recommended either. We are currently in Muswellbrook on our way to the coast (Lake Macquarie and then Hawks Nest) for some respite.
Who says we can’t be spontaneous.
Glen Innes is a town on the Northern Tablelands, in the New England region of NSW. As it is situated on top of the Great Dividing Range it has a lovely climate. It is green, cool and dry.
(more…)After months of preparation we have departed the safety of Newmarket Gardens Caravan Park. We drove off this morning (5/12/2019) for a night of free camping at Nobby crossing the Great Dividing Range on the new Toowoomba bypass. Still steep but no hairpin bends or out of control trucks.
The map (Green Half moon: Free Camp / Pink Caravan: Caravan Park) shows our planned route for December 2019 and January 2020 to give an overview of our journey.
We leave Queensland tomorrow for New South Wales and the town of Glen Innes for a few days (must remember the hours time difference 🙂 ).
So the adventure begins… the plan had been to move into a local caravan park beginning of November but as our house did not rent, we delayed the move. The house is still not rented but we had to move into the caravan to allow for set-up time before we depart Brisbane on December 5th.
(more…)For some time we discussed taking time away from work to travel and visit some of the wonderful sights of this amazing country we are lucky to be citizens of, Australia.
We purchased a Nissan Patrol in August 2018 and a Legend Trackline 20’6 caravan in June 2019. We picked up the caravan from Melbourne and traveled back to Brisbane as a trial run. The rig and car are about 14 metres long, so no small feat to park.
This first run included as many types of caravan life as we could pack in i.e. bush tracks, highways, free camping, showgrounds, a friends driveway and caravan parks.
Some stuff fell off our “Off road” caravan and it went to the dealer for warranty work 3 times. We spent quite a while learning how to operate all the gadgets and finding a comfortable way to live. The caravan is now more sorted and the modifications for off grid life are well underway.
In Nov 2019 we started to live in the van full time and this triggered another wave of minor modifications to pack in all that we wanted to take.
Our home is now a combination of the caravan and car with the rear seats dedicated to Alison’s shoe collection and a pair of thongs for Paul.
The car modifications are now complete with the new towing mirrors. The car stands 2.2 metres tall (2.5 with roof rack loaded) and the caravan is 3.2 metres. Not what you would call a streamline operation, but with the V8 we can achieve ramming speed when necessary.
So on December 5th 2019 after many (many) hours of research, planning and preparation, we our starting our journey in a Legend 20ft 6in caravan towed by a Nissan Patrol wagon.
We have a basic plan in place (see 2019 map) and there are a few places where we have time constraints e.g. Pentacost river (Kimberly) at end of May 2020, but we hope we will be flexible and stay longer or shorter in places as we fancy.
We are planning a direction of travel as a figure of eight:
We know we can’t see everything in a year, that is not our aim, better to have an adventure and see some of this land.
As the date suggests, things did not go to plan. In 2019, there were terrible fires due to the drought. Firstly, we changed tack and went to Tasmania to escape. But the pandemic finally put paid to our adventure and we returned to Brisbane.
After a year in Brisbane, we set off again on March 24th 2021 with a revised plan (see 2021 map). The 2021 plan is another figure of eight but missing out on the south-west and the Nullabor Plain:
However, again the pandemic caused us to cut short the trip and we did not travel south.
Alison wrote a blog documenting our adventure from which these books are created..
Read on for the story….
