Gidday all,

After a long fifteen months spent at home, cleaning up, fixing up, decluttering, renewing and tying up loose ends, the time came when we could hit the road again. So, with Din cracking the whip and sitting in the truck urging me to start the F*#!;@!  thing up, we finally drove out the driveway and headed south.

Took us four days to get to Mackay, usually a four hour drive, but had to stop at a couple of favourite camps of ours on the way, just to get back into on the road life. After catching up with friends and family on our way down, we carried on, with an old familiar feeling of carefree freedom that had started to become a distant memory.

Called in to Notch Pt. and camped for a couple of days then visited a friend at Camila West up in the hills.

 

Went down the coast to Rocky then headed a little inland on the Leichhardt Hwy. Stopped at Banana for a lunch in the air-conditioned pub, then on to Theodore where we stopped by the river and gave each other a new no. 1 haircut. Was great to feel the breeze around our ears.  On through Miles and Moonie and hit the boarder at Goondiwindi. All the way the temps were nudging into the 40s .

 

 

 

 

 

Travelling from the furnace of far north Qld. We had reached the border of NSW and into the fan forced oven of that state. There seemed no escaping the heat. Following the Newell Hwy. we went through Moree then Narrabri and on to Coonabarabran, to Gilgandra then to Dubbo. Further south to Parks and Forbes, through West Wyalong and on to Narrandera, finally hitting the boarder of Vic at Tocumwel. Here we scouted for a track down to the river. Found one and set up camp on the Murray for a while to escape the heat by the water. This amount of travel would normally take us months to complete, but the stifling weather prevented us standing still for too long anywhere, so we had covered the distance in only a couple of weeks.

 

The camp on the Murray was a welcome change, a chance to stop and give the camper and ourselves a good clean-up. The temperature was bearable and the river was cooling. One morning Din spotted a koala and her baby sitting in a gumtree next to us. They stayed there for a couple of days, then moved on one night. What a special thing, to be neighbours for a couple of days. The forecast was for hotter and hotter days ahead and the smoke from NSW fires was closing in so we took the decision to move on. It seemed the only place to escape the relentless heat was going to be the far south coast of Victoria, so that’s where we headed.

 

 

Down to Shepparton and then on the Goulburn Valley Hwy. through Nagambie, on to Seymour and on the Hume Hwy. through Melbourne, we headed south east to a little National parks camp ground on the coast at Cape Liptrap, around the coast from Wilsons Promontory.

When you camp there you have to book on the internet, looked up the site and there were a couple of sites available for the next day and that was it till after Christmas and beyond. Found a site and camped up, no one came to claim the spot so we had two days there. The difference in temperature was amazing, we even had to dig out our doona from under the bed. You could sleep at night without tossing and turning in the heat.  It was still a week till Christmas and all the camps around the coast were packed out, so we headed to our friends in Wonthaggi who had invited us to stay as long as we liked.

 

Christmas was a quiet one, which we didn’t mind, the weather was so much cooler, you might even say cold at times. We spent the time camped up in our friends front yard and helped her with rejuvenating the garden beds around the house. They got a trailer full of mulch from the local tip and we used some existing pebbles for covering the front beds, it looked wonderful when finished. Ended it off with planting cucumbers and pumpkins up the side. Their eighteen months old daughter just loves chewing on cucumbers, so we said she can go and feast on them when they grow.

Two days before we were booked on to sail to Tassie, we headed into Melbourne. Found a servo come truck stop at the approach to the Westgate bridge, just down the road from Port Melbourne. Parked up the truck and settled in for the night. The ferry boarded at six the next morning, the cruise ship Queen Elizabeth was due to dock around seven and there was going to be some parking difficulties, so in the morning at about 3:30 we drove to the port and parked up ready to board, then climbed to the back and got some more sleep.

The crossing was smooth enough, no sick bags employed. We arrived in the early evening and headed to Forth sport grounds to camp up and enjoy the cool Tassie evening. Next we begin our summer Tassie adventure.