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| Dave eating naughty white bread & marmite |
Well what a week it's been. We departed our house sit on the 18th of April after six weeks and lots of different experiences with our new friends and of course Lola and Rosie. Dave was definitely ready to get on the road. Our last weekend there we had to call the fire brigade one weekend - even though there was a fire ban (the only neighbour home didn't tell us he was burning scrub and with trees all around each property we were very concerned - so you can imagine as we were looking after 3 homes in the street we called the fire brigade - the neighbour was not happy! |
While we have been house sitting we visited our family friends each week who were great friends of Mum and Dads, Les and Norma are both 86 and still live in their large home with over an acre of garden, and a fantastic vegetable garden. We came away loaded up after each visit. We will get to visit them both again in Queensland where they head for the winter.
Since our departure from Rye, we have been making our way along the South East Coast (North) of Melbourne. Our first night on the road we stayed at beautiful Paradise Beach in our first free camp. It was fantastic, we arrived to reasonable weather and then a storm came through with thunder, lightning and heavy rain, and the waves crashing but we were nice and snug inside the van. The next morning was very cold though and wet most of the day. It was a good start to our travels and we stayed two nights - no fish were caught though!
The next part of our journey took us to Lake Tyers Beach Camp further North and as it is the off season we had just about the whole camp to ourselves. It is on the coast not far from Lakes Entrance a very popular fishing and tourist spot. We tried our luck at fishing there but had not luck – despite us both “almost” landing a flathead fish. The bird life here was amazing and of course the magpies were plentiful and Dave hand fed them each morning. After 4 days here we headed a further 400ks North to Mallacoota – which is a surf beach inlet with lakes, rivers and forests & warm in winter.We have been easily filling in our days, walking and fishing and exploring the local areas and with views like these it is easy. (Dave is also continuing a bit of NZ work in between), I keep the van in order – with the usual daily chores and am chief navigator – so start planning the next part of our journey checking which route we will take and what camps we will stay in. We have met some really lovely people already and most are happy to share their stories and tips.
You may be wondering what the leprechaun is doing in
some of our photo’s. Well Larry is the McCafferty family leprechaun (Gnome) that was won at an Irish Club picnic treasure hunt by the family in the late 1960’s. He has been part of our family all that time and we were not sure what to do with Larry after Mum and Dad died - so he is spending time with my sisters in Wellington and we thought it would be fun to have him along with us on our Journey – it’s a good laugh taking photos of him at various places we have visited so far.
We have started planning the next part of our trip, because in our Work About Australia email this week there was a job that Dave thought would suit him in Northern Queensland – so he applied and within 24 hours he had the job.Very unexpected but this will take us to the warm North. So…..we are on the road again and have travelled inland via the beautiful NSW Coastline and then into Canberra taking the quickest route as he starts there on or before May 13th. The job is looking after the 11 pivot irrigation units and doing routine maintenance on them, the farm manager is also going to provide training to operate their 200hp tractors so Dave can relieve their permanent tractor drivers. (I wonder if they will train me)? The work is on a large farm at Home hill– Ayr – about 70ks south of Townsville and we will be based there for 4 to 5 months and are looking forward to warmer weather.
We will keep you posted on the journey. Once again it’s been great getting texts and emails; unfortunately the network is unreliable to use the mobile and Internet sometimes so our updates may be somewhat intermittent.
So we
will keep you posted on the journey along the way. If we see a familiar name we have started taking a photo - so Murray's and Chapman's the photos below are for you!
Once
again it’s been great getting texts and emails; unfortunately the network is
unreliable to use the mobile and Internet sometimes so our updates may be
somewhat intermittent.
Celia, Dave and Leprechaun Larry
