You know in the Back to the Future movies, no matter what the situation, whenever someone calls Marty McFly "chicken" he replies with "nobody calls me chicken" and it sends him wild?
Jenny is exactly the same whenever someone says "sorry, that's our policy, there's nothing I can do". Red rag to a bull. She has zero tolerance for poor customer service, as demonstrated by her immediate scorching of the Lake Boga Caravan Park for not allowing us to leave a day early. She is ready and willing to use social media to keep companies honest.
She has used these powers for great good this week.
One the way to Adelaide, one of the vent covers flew off the side of the caravan and into the never never land of the central median strip of the freeway. By the time we pulled up we were 500m down the road, and at the time we only knew that something rectangular and black seemed to fly off. We couldn't see anything missing from the van so we assumed that we had just run something over and seen that in the rear view. It wasn't until later that day when we were picking up our stone protection mat that the guy installing it said, "did you know your upper fridge vent cover is missing?". And indeed it was - there was a large rectangular hole in the side wall of the van. When we had been examining the van by the side of the freeway, we hadn't looked up.
We called our dealer in Melbourne and they put us in touch with the Adelaide dealership. I won't bore you with the details but we ended up escalating to New Age themselves (not the dealer) only to be told by their Customer Service Manager that vents are like hub caps and they aren't covered by warranty as they should be checked every trip. I pointed out that a) the caravan is only in it's 4th week of real use b) the vent not being attached properly is an installation issue c) no-one told us to check it when they ran through the pre-trip checklist and d) we don't carry around a ladder with us to get up that high every time we drive.
That was when he foolishly replied "I'm sorry but that's the policy. My hands are tied and I can't do anything about it."
Jenny kicked into action with posts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter as well as a call to Consumer Affairs. Within 20 minutes the guy called back and told us that he'd pulled some strings and would 'just on this occasion' foot the bill for a new vent cover. Nice. He must have sensed that Jenny was also work-shopping the idea to picket the New Age display at the Adelaide Caravan Show that is currently running.
Unfortunately, upon getting up close to the vent, we discovered that the vent cover had not randomly blown off because we hadn't checked it. The clip on the wall mount had snapped and the entire vent bracket would need replacing. This certainly does qualify as a warranty issue and New Age have overnight shipped the part to the Adelaide dealership, who will replace it for us (they need to pull bits off the wall and reseal the new unit in place).
We were planning to leave Adelaide on Saturday morning but if the caravan guys can't do the repair on Saturday it looks like we might need to wait until Monday. We will be really bummed because we just want to get going; but where we are staying is awesome so if we have to be stuck somewhere for an extra few days, this is the place to be stuck.
<NOTE: We have removed "Playgrounds of Australia" due to the excessive overhead of keeping it up to date. We are visiting too many playgrounds and would spend half the trip blogging about them if we wanted to maintain that page. >
Thursday, February 18, 2016
Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Free camping at an old tennis court
Well, we have had a great first free camp!
There is an app called WikiCamps and it shows all the out of the way places that you can camp for free. The sites range from dusty patches of nothing next to a truck stop to beautiful, secluded river side open spaces with clean drop toilets and a running water supply (those are rare).
We needed a place to stop in between Lake Boga and our next destination in Adelaide so we consulted WikiCamps and found a recommended spot called the Ngallo Tennis Court Campsite, a disused tennis court that the locals turned into a camp spot.
We set off from Lake Boga, drove through Swan Hill and stopped off in Ouyen for a coffee/hot chocolate and playground visit. It took a while to actually find a playground and when we did it was pretty run down. Ben and Lou had to give each other imaginary swings on this equipment.
If the state of the playground wasn't a strong enough indication of the regard this town has for children, the sign below certainly made it clear that the Fun Police are in control.
We left Ouyen, afraid that someone might kidnap Ben and lock him in a dark cellar and headed for our overnight Tennis Court Campsite. I was looking forward to seeing what the beautifully named town called Boinka actually looked like and was sad to discover that it is nothing more than a 80kmph zone and a rail crossing. We continued on through the town of Carina and turned off the highway onto our first dirt road with the van, Ngallo South Road.
After a couple of kms we saw the camp area and pulled in. It was deserted and dusty with a falling down old wooden shed that used to be club rooms and a very old asphalt tennis court that was pocked like a moonscape and had 2 trees growing in it. There was a rusty, corrugated iron drop toilet that was gross, full of cobwebs and a bit stinky and an old empty water tank. There was a big open space and 2 fire places that were full of ashes, partially melted beer bottles and an old burnt out sardine tin. It was perfect!
As soon as we pulled up, Ben wanted to play some tennis so he and Jenny had a challenging match. Jenny played on the side with the two bushes. She called them George and Jeb.
She and Ben then got their bikes out and rode up and down the dirt road collecting fire wood while I dug out one of the fire places and found some good marshmallow roasting sticks (which Jenny then inadvertently threw in the fire). We got a great fire going and had a brilliant evening in the perfect quiet with no-one around for miles (aside from a couple of farmers passing by, one with 3 enormous truck tyres stacked in the back of his ute - not something you see every day!)
We spent a lovely night there and look forward to more of the same once we get to the more remote areas of our trip. We will need to ration our water better next time. We took 60 litres but Ben used 50 of those having a long hot shower. Next time he can stay dusty and smelly.
There is an app called WikiCamps and it shows all the out of the way places that you can camp for free. The sites range from dusty patches of nothing next to a truck stop to beautiful, secluded river side open spaces with clean drop toilets and a running water supply (those are rare).
We needed a place to stop in between Lake Boga and our next destination in Adelaide so we consulted WikiCamps and found a recommended spot called the Ngallo Tennis Court Campsite, a disused tennis court that the locals turned into a camp spot.
We set off from Lake Boga, drove through Swan Hill and stopped off in Ouyen for a coffee/hot chocolate and playground visit. It took a while to actually find a playground and when we did it was pretty run down. Ben and Lou had to give each other imaginary swings on this equipment.
If the state of the playground wasn't a strong enough indication of the regard this town has for children, the sign below certainly made it clear that the Fun Police are in control.
We left Ouyen, afraid that someone might kidnap Ben and lock him in a dark cellar and headed for our overnight Tennis Court Campsite. I was looking forward to seeing what the beautifully named town called Boinka actually looked like and was sad to discover that it is nothing more than a 80kmph zone and a rail crossing. We continued on through the town of Carina and turned off the highway onto our first dirt road with the van, Ngallo South Road.
After a couple of kms we saw the camp area and pulled in. It was deserted and dusty with a falling down old wooden shed that used to be club rooms and a very old asphalt tennis court that was pocked like a moonscape and had 2 trees growing in it. There was a rusty, corrugated iron drop toilet that was gross, full of cobwebs and a bit stinky and an old empty water tank. There was a big open space and 2 fire places that were full of ashes, partially melted beer bottles and an old burnt out sardine tin. It was perfect!
 |
| Happy with this great spot! |
As soon as we pulled up, Ben wanted to play some tennis so he and Jenny had a challenging match. Jenny played on the side with the two bushes. She called them George and Jeb.
She and Ben then got their bikes out and rode up and down the dirt road collecting fire wood while I dug out one of the fire places and found some good marshmallow roasting sticks (which Jenny then inadvertently threw in the fire). We got a great fire going and had a brilliant evening in the perfect quiet with no-one around for miles (aside from a couple of farmers passing by, one with 3 enormous truck tyres stacked in the back of his ute - not something you see every day!)
We spent a lovely night there and look forward to more of the same once we get to the more remote areas of our trip. We will need to ration our water better next time. We took 60 litres but Ben used 50 of those having a long hot shower. Next time he can stay dusty and smelly.
Monday, February 15, 2016
Lake Boga
We sadly left the land of fab pizza and new friends to continue our journey westwards. We headed towards Swan Hill and I thought that since we had been to Swan Hill a few times before, it would be nice to stay a little out of town.
I booked us in at the Lake Boga Caravan Park, which is about 15km from Swan Hill. The caravan park is lovely and we set up literally on the shores of the lake under a beautiful old gum tree. As lovely as it is though, it isn't that great for kids, hence the total lack of any other kids. I got a big frown from Ben when he discovered there was no playground, but if tranquility, peace and quiet is your want, this is the place for you. Except at night that is, when the passing trucks on the highway next door sound especially loud.
We stayed there for three nights because I accidentally booked for 3 nights instead of 2 and they have a no refunds policy (which triggered Jenny's intense hatred of pointless, inflexible policies and earned them a fairly scathing Trip Advisor review.)
We were planning to be free camping on these three days but it was HOT (high 30's). Free camping is setting up in a park or by a river etc where you are self sufficient and not plugged into power or water supplies (hence the free - no cost). Free camping means we can only run the aircon with our generator, and then not really at full capacity. We thought it would be best to spend these sweltering days plugged in to a 240V outlet so we would not swelter.
Lake Boga is really big and used to be the home of a secret flying boat repair depot during WW2, the flying boats were called "Catalinas". Jenny lived in Swan Hill in her early primary school years and used to swim in Lake Boga. We toured the Flying Boat Museum ("Home of the Catalina") which was really interesting. Rural Victoria is certainly a good place to hide your amphibious planes.
The highlight of these three days was the discovery of an exceptional water slide at the Swan Hill Pool. We went there 2 days in a row and got lots of good leg exercise climbing up the stairs over and over to get to the top. Ben absolutely loved it and declared both days "the best day ever!"
Lake Boga also has an observatory and we did a day visit there. We would have loved to do a night tour which would have included viewing the night sky but due to daylight savings it didn't start until 9pm which is a little late for Ben, even though he is on a holiday bedtime schedule. The daytime visit was still very interesting (to Jenny and me anyway. Ben declared it boring 5 minutes after the presenter began his talk).
We also would have liked to visit the new revamped "Sound and Light" nighttime show at the Swan Hill Pioneer Settlement. The old show hadn't changed in 40 years and is described by Jenny as "Piss Weak World at night"; the new show however is apparently fantastic and well worth seeing, however it doesn't start until 8:30pm and finishes at 10:30pm which are very unfriendly times for a 5 year old.
I had a grand plan for Ben and I to learn to fish together on this trip and have brought along the fishing rod and tackle box that I last used when I was 12 or so. Dad took me fishing occasionally and I really liked the fishing part, leaving the hook removal and gory activities that followed to Dad. I'm ready to do all that now though so I bought some worms and a 48 hour fishing license and headed to the shores of Lake Boga with Ben.
My first discovery is that worms are really wriggly and it's gross sticking them on a hook. Next time I am going to use mozzarella (recommended by several people here) or some other already dead type meat.
My second discovery was that Ben has the attention span of a pea and after 3 minutes declared the whole exercise really boring, running back to the caravan to play with Jenny. Oh well. My planned Mum/Ben bonding activity will become a Mum quiet time, hopefully catch some dinner activity.
Despite assurances from the caravan park manager that there were lots of fish in the lake, I didn't even get a nibble. I didn't mind though, it was very relaxing standing there as the sun slowly set, watching the pelicans groom themselves a short distance up the beach. I'll keep trying as we go along.
Good news at last on the car. We have found someone in Adelaide who can do a bullbar for us! We will get that done and then head off across the Nullarbor around 21st Feb.
We left Lake Boga on Feb 15th, heading to our first free camp about half way to Adelaide.
I booked us in at the Lake Boga Caravan Park, which is about 15km from Swan Hill. The caravan park is lovely and we set up literally on the shores of the lake under a beautiful old gum tree. As lovely as it is though, it isn't that great for kids, hence the total lack of any other kids. I got a big frown from Ben when he discovered there was no playground, but if tranquility, peace and quiet is your want, this is the place for you. Except at night that is, when the passing trucks on the highway next door sound especially loud.
We stayed there for three nights because I accidentally booked for 3 nights instead of 2 and they have a no refunds policy (which triggered Jenny's intense hatred of pointless, inflexible policies and earned them a fairly scathing Trip Advisor review.)
We were planning to be free camping on these three days but it was HOT (high 30's). Free camping is setting up in a park or by a river etc where you are self sufficient and not plugged into power or water supplies (hence the free - no cost). Free camping means we can only run the aircon with our generator, and then not really at full capacity. We thought it would be best to spend these sweltering days plugged in to a 240V outlet so we would not swelter.
Lake Boga is really big and used to be the home of a secret flying boat repair depot during WW2, the flying boats were called "Catalinas". Jenny lived in Swan Hill in her early primary school years and used to swim in Lake Boga. We toured the Flying Boat Museum ("Home of the Catalina") which was really interesting. Rural Victoria is certainly a good place to hide your amphibious planes.
 |
| Ben with a Catalina and Blake's undies |
 |
| Ben's head, Jenny's feet |
Lake Boga also has an observatory and we did a day visit there. We would have loved to do a night tour which would have included viewing the night sky but due to daylight savings it didn't start until 9pm which is a little late for Ben, even though he is on a holiday bedtime schedule. The daytime visit was still very interesting (to Jenny and me anyway. Ben declared it boring 5 minutes after the presenter began his talk).
We also would have liked to visit the new revamped "Sound and Light" nighttime show at the Swan Hill Pioneer Settlement. The old show hadn't changed in 40 years and is described by Jenny as "Piss Weak World at night"; the new show however is apparently fantastic and well worth seeing, however it doesn't start until 8:30pm and finishes at 10:30pm which are very unfriendly times for a 5 year old.
I had a grand plan for Ben and I to learn to fish together on this trip and have brought along the fishing rod and tackle box that I last used when I was 12 or so. Dad took me fishing occasionally and I really liked the fishing part, leaving the hook removal and gory activities that followed to Dad. I'm ready to do all that now though so I bought some worms and a 48 hour fishing license and headed to the shores of Lake Boga with Ben.
My first discovery is that worms are really wriggly and it's gross sticking them on a hook. Next time I am going to use mozzarella (recommended by several people here) or some other already dead type meat.
My second discovery was that Ben has the attention span of a pea and after 3 minutes declared the whole exercise really boring, running back to the caravan to play with Jenny. Oh well. My planned Mum/Ben bonding activity will become a Mum quiet time, hopefully catch some dinner activity.
Despite assurances from the caravan park manager that there were lots of fish in the lake, I didn't even get a nibble. I didn't mind though, it was very relaxing standing there as the sun slowly set, watching the pelicans groom themselves a short distance up the beach. I'll keep trying as we go along.
Good news at last on the car. We have found someone in Adelaide who can do a bullbar for us! We will get that done and then head off across the Nullarbor around 21st Feb.
We left Lake Boga on Feb 15th, heading to our first free camp about half way to Adelaide.
Thursday, February 11, 2016
Moama - where the pizza is still brilliant.
Six years ago, Jenny and I had a long weekend away at a fancy spa resort in Moama (near Echuca). Despite our decadent and luxurious surroundings, we had a hankering for pizza one night and thought we'd try our luck at the local pizza/pasta restaurant. Mmmm - pizza perfection! We were blown away and promptly declared the Moama Pizza the greatest pizza in the world, taking a handful of fridge magnets and handing them to everyone we knew who was travelling in that part of the state.
<six years later>
There we were last week, in Moama once more, promising Ben the greatest pizza in the world. As we approached the door we looked at each other, sharing an unspoken fear that perhaps there were new owners, or they'd gone gourmet or perhaps our memories had somehow blown the whole experience way out of proportion. Perhaps it was actually crap pizza, made better at the time by the fact it was preceded and followed by spas, warm towels and incense. I was reminded of the time I had raved to my brother and sister-in-law about a movie I thought was brilliantly funny, badgering them for years to watch it, only to sit through it with them one night, agreeing that it was actually pretty bad. (Dogma - I still like that Alanis Morrissette was cast as God)
Pizza, please be good. Please.
Praise be to Moama Pizza! It is still the greatest pizza in the world! It was with great relief that our teeth slid through the thick layer of delicious toppings and crunched through the crisp crust. Still awesome after all these years!
We stayed in Moama for three nights and Ben had a great time with the 2 girls in the van next to ours. They rode bikes around the park, swam and watched Paw Patrol together. We've noticed that all the kids seem to find their American accents when describing Paw Patrol and pronounce it "Par Patrol". Their friends also arrived on Thursday with another 5yo boy in their fully kitted out giant BUS. The inside was like a modern apartment, it was amazing. Both families were lovely and we were sad to leave them. They had come up for the annual boat/ski race the 'Southern 80' and if the park hadn't been totally booked out by people attending the event we would have stayed an extra couple of days.
Watching the news a couple of days later we saw that a veteran skier had died during the event - so perhaps it is best that we missed it.
<six years later>
There we were last week, in Moama once more, promising Ben the greatest pizza in the world. As we approached the door we looked at each other, sharing an unspoken fear that perhaps there were new owners, or they'd gone gourmet or perhaps our memories had somehow blown the whole experience way out of proportion. Perhaps it was actually crap pizza, made better at the time by the fact it was preceded and followed by spas, warm towels and incense. I was reminded of the time I had raved to my brother and sister-in-law about a movie I thought was brilliantly funny, badgering them for years to watch it, only to sit through it with them one night, agreeing that it was actually pretty bad. (Dogma - I still like that Alanis Morrissette was cast as God)
Pizza, please be good. Please.
Praise be to Moama Pizza! It is still the greatest pizza in the world! It was with great relief that our teeth slid through the thick layer of delicious toppings and crunched through the crisp crust. Still awesome after all these years!
We stayed in Moama for three nights and Ben had a great time with the 2 girls in the van next to ours. They rode bikes around the park, swam and watched Paw Patrol together. We've noticed that all the kids seem to find their American accents when describing Paw Patrol and pronounce it "Par Patrol". Their friends also arrived on Thursday with another 5yo boy in their fully kitted out giant BUS. The inside was like a modern apartment, it was amazing. Both families were lovely and we were sad to leave them. They had come up for the annual boat/ski race the 'Southern 80' and if the park hadn't been totally booked out by people attending the event we would have stayed an extra couple of days.
Watching the news a couple of days later we saw that a veteran skier had died during the event - so perhaps it is best that we missed it.
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
Hello Rutherglen!
The drive to Rutherglen was pretty uneventful. We have realised that now we are towing a
whale behind us, we need to be extra mindful of the routes we take. Our GPS and Google Maps all tend to select
the quickest routes without consideration of the vehicle making the journey and
whilst the roads we drove were all bitumen and in excellent condition, some
were very windy, single lane and narrow.
This made manoeuvring around corners a little tricky as we couldn’t see
oncoming traffic and it also meant that we pissed off a lot of people who got
stuck behind us doing 45kmph up steep bits with no chance of overtaking. We
were good citizens and pulled over wherever we could though, which resulted in
some nice waves of appreciation. It was
a relief to eventually hit the Hume Hwy.
From now on we will examine the suggested route more
carefully and take the bigger roads if there’s an option to do so.
We have long time family friends in Rutherglen and it was
great to see them all again. We hadn’t
been up here for a few years (Ben was crawling when they last saw them) and
they greeted us warmly even after we’d dumped 150kg of gear in their garage. Huge thanks to Phil and Frances for this
generosity. We all went around to Gill
and Ken’s house for a great BBQ and Ben christened their pool with its first
skinny dip, before running around so much that he even exhausted their 2 year
old dog. He is certainly taking to this
nomadic, outdoor lifestyle with relish (notwithstanding his current Sonic the
Hedgehog obsession).
This week we made a break-through by finally getting out of
Victoria (even though it was only for a couple of hours into NSW and then we
came back). Nonetheless we finally feel like we have broken the shackles of
home. Corowa in NSW is home to the Corowa Whisky and Chocolate Factory where we
met up with Frances, Kathryn, Gill, Sara and Emily for coffee (and chocolate of
course). Ben made a giant freckle which tastes absolutely delicious and it took
a lot of restraint for me to not eat it all on the spot.
In the afternoon we all met up again at Moodemere Lake
(minus Sarah, plus Phil) for a swim in the warm waters. The bottom of the lake
was super squelchy black mud which felt smooth and moisturising once you got
over the initial texture shock. It reminded me of $100 tubs of beauty products
I’ve wasted money on before, so I smeared it all over my face and neck. I asked
Ben if he thought it would make me look pretty and he said “No, it makes you
look old”. I’m convinced that people would pay loads of money to have this mud
spread over them at a day spa and as I write this blog entry I’m sure my skin
is glowing.
We stayed in the warm water for over an hour. About 60
seconds after we got out, Louise and Ben spotted a slithering shape in the
water where we had been playing. It was a red bellied black snake (quite a
small one though at only 1 meter long) and it slithered up to the shore to have
a good look at us. It hung around the shore for a few minutes and checked us
out from different angles before swimming into the reeds 5 meters away (perhaps
where its mummy was resting?). As we’ve since found out, we were lucky that it
was a red-bellied black snake as they are quite timid; it could easily have
been a far more aggressive brown snake.
Also, our friends spent many, many years living on a cattle station in
Darwin and to them it was a case of “oh, that little thing? Don’t worry, it’s just a juvenile. It will go
away. Lucky it’s not a brown.” Their calm helped us suppress our city
slicker freak out.
Feeling a little shaken but excited from the snake
experience, we decided it was time to leave and enjoy fish and chips from the
Silver Key café on Main Street Rutherglen and watch the big rigs go by on their
trucking routes.
Saturday, February 6, 2016
Lake Eildon
Although we had been living in the van in Mornington since
mid Jan, we kept popping back to our Mum’s places to drop off gear we didn’t
need, so we didn’t feel like we had officially left yet.
On Feb 1st, we finally departed for our first
stop – Lake Eildon. We stayed in a
lovely caravan park next to the Eildon Pondage (a waterway that you can fish in
but not swim in) and were surrounded by trees, birds and very few other
campers. This bird found our clothesline
to be a very comfy perch.
Ben discovered a love of tennis and mini golf so both became
daily activities. Despite being
surrounded by lakes, he also insisted we go to the Eildon Pool, which he
enjoyed immensely until the end of our second visit when he was playing catch
with Jenny and ran backwards into a large metal pole. Ouch!
He ended up with a big egg on the back of his head that has taken
several days to subside.
Off season is great for seeing the touristy things. We went to Eildon Dam and there was nobody
else there. The roads were quiet, the
shops were deserted and the caravan park was tranquil (until 2 carloads of yobs
with slabs of beer and loud music turned up on Friday night – but the previous
4 nights were tranquil).
Ben’s last playdate with his kinder friends saw them all use
the local cricket pitch’s plastic rain covers as a slip ‘n slide after a cold
rainy day. Ben got absolutely saturated
so his friend Blake lent him some clothes.
We won’t be seeing Blake again for many months so we are taking Blake’s
undies for a holiday. This is Ben at
Eildon Dam with Blake’s Adventurous Undies.
We were still sorting things into their rightful places in
the van and car, and over the first few days we realised that we just had too
much stuff. As sad as it made us, if we didn’t
want to go mad from clutter, we would have to offload the non-essential big
things. We had some bulky items that took up too much space, and unnecessary
weight means using more fuel than we need to so we had another big cull. Tools we didn’t need any longer, big super comfy
deck chairs, heavy solar panels and 65kg of annex all went in the ‘back to
Mum’s’ pile. Then Mum had a great
suggestion (partly from trying to save us a trip and probably partly from panic
that we were going to fill her shed with even more stuff). We were about to head to Rutherglen to visit
friends and Mum knew that they have a big garage – she suggested we ask if they
might store some things for us. We
asked, and they very kindly said yes!
We left lovely Eildon for Rutherglen, having had a great
first stop.
Wednesday, February 3, 2016
Yes - we are still alive! What a crazy few weeks..
Hi blog land!
Apologies for the delay in updating - the last few weeks have been ridiculously busy and we literally have not had a spare minute to log onto a PC.
With any endeavour of this magnitude, there are bound to be delays, but the few glitches in our plans so far seem to be uncommonly large and time consuming to overcome. So as not to bore you with the minute details of our past few weeks, here is a not so brief summary of our first world issues :)
More specifics around some items will be in a forthcoming post to be called one of the following:
a) "Gee, I wish I'd known that 3 months ago..." or
b) "Gee, that expert certainly got this very wrong..." or possibly
c) "Jenny, do we actually have any money left for food?"
Pesky delay number one - can we please have our car and caravan back?
Despite purchasing our van in Feb 2015 and our car in August 2015, delays with the manufacturing and deliveries of both meant that we did not take possession of the car until mid Nov and the van until late Nov. To say this is not ideal would be an understatement, as it means that we had very little time to have any modifications done and to make sure everything worked as it should. We had a bunch of upgrades done to the car to help with the long haul towing of a big van and those all meant time for the car at the mechanics. We still don't have a bullbar because the model we have (Ford Ranger Wildtrak PX2) is so new that no-one manufactures one that will work with the front sensors. No bullbar means no driving lights or UHF system yet as they both need to be mounted on the bar. (We will list all the stuff on the car and van in a later entry though much of it will get a mention in pesky delay number 3). We don't want to head across the Nullarbor without a bullbar so hopefully it is not too much longer until one hits the market.
As for the van, it needed some specialty work done so we could carry the bikes. Despite asking for bike racks when we ordered it, there wasn't one on there when we picked it up and the sales guy said he was getting something custom built to sit on the back chassis bar of the van. He had one of those metal three bike holders that usually sit on the towbar of your car and said he needed to get a metal extension rack built so it sat far enough off the back to clear the spare wheel, generator box and back wall of the van.
A week later we did our caravan towing course and all three instructors said that having a bike rack on the back of a van like that was a truly terrible idea as the vibrations and harmonics can cause micro cracks in the chassis and damage the bikes as well. Apparently the bikes also get filthy and often fall off. A quick Google search validated this advice. It seems that most of the internet is aware of this issue. We are still irked that our caravan supplier was (and still is) insistent that it would not cause an issue ('It's laughable' were his exact words). Anyway, we spoke to the awesome guys at Harding Swift caravan services in Kilsyth and they custom built us a rack on the front tool boxes of the van. So far, they are great. But all that negotiating back and forth between us, them and the manufacturer occurred right before Xmas so in order for them to get the work done, we had to drop the van to them on Dec 22nd and not pick it up until they re-opened on Jan 9th (which was our original original departure date). The van then needed to go back to the dealer for a couple of other minor repairs.
So it was then Jan 9th and we finally had a caravan ready to be loaded, and 80% of our car stuff done. We moved our departure date to Jan 20th.
Pesky delay number 2 - moving out of our house
The first entry in 'Gee, I wish I'd known that 3 months ago.." would be that trying to pack up your house, move into a caravan and find tenants simultaneously is a VERY STUPID IDEA! Having to tidy the house up twice a week for inspections nearly drove us mad, although when we finally got tenants signed up in early January we were very happy that they wanted us to leave lots of the big stuff like the fridge, washing machine, couch, recliner and bed frame.
We were running fairly to schedule with the packing and moving but were delayed a little by Jenny's previously blogged neck injury. We had a garage sale, donated what we didn't sell and started packing the rest. But then we discovered that by golly, we have a lot of crap. Far more crap than we anticipated. In fact, if crap were shoes, we were Imelda Marcos (ask Google, young folk). Our gross underestimation ended up being a big problem.
It was Sunday, and we had moved to Jenny's Mum's for a few days while we were still packing. Cleaners were coming on the following Tuesday at 2pm, a real estate inspection was scheduled for Wed, with tenants moving in on the Thursday. We packed and we packed. We took a seemingly endless number of boxes to the kindly offered storage space of Jenny's Aunt and Uncle and my Mum. And still there was crap. We had three piles - one of things for the trip, one of things to store and one of things to take to the tip.
And still we packed. Who knew our house was a Tardis? On the Monday morning we received an email from the real estate agent telling us that the tenants didn't actually want the couch and recliner after all. This totally threw out our planning as we suddenly needed to make 2 extra trips and then try to find room in storage (or Jenny's Mum's lounge room as it turned out) . We were up til 4.30am that night and are still deeply apologetic to my Mum for waking her up at 3.30am as we lugged boxes up the driveway, and also to Ros for forgetting the front door key and calling her on the mobile come and let us in the house at 4.15am. Worst. Children. Ever.
On Tuesday we were back at the house early, still packing. Ros and Charles came to help. By lunchtime, panic started to set in as we realised that there was no way we were going to get everything out by the time the cleaners arrived. What did we do? We just started taking everything outside onto the the lawn, packed or not. It looked like a giant bric a brac store had exploded and showered all of its eclectic wares into our yard. The 'take on the trip' boxes were mixed up with the 'take to storage' boxes and the 'take to the tip' bags. It was not pretty.
It started getting late and we then realised that there was no way we were going to get all our stuff off the lawn, packed in boxes and to their final storage location (45 min away) by the following morning. In between wondering how things had managed to go quite so pear shaped, we came up with the bright idea of hiring a storage unit close by and just shoving everything in there so we could sort it in daylight and without a looming deadline. Our lovely friends Fiona and Andrew offered us a nearby place to stay that night and two super duper super heroes, Tony and Leigh came with their cars and helped us load, ferry and unload everything to the unit. Jenny hopes that Leigh will eventually forgive her for not warning him that our temporary storage unit at "Moor Room" was on the second floor and meant double-handling everything through a cargo lift. But, phew! The house was empty.
In the rush, everything had just been shoved in randomly so we spent the next week sorting it all out again and taking what we needed to the van, which we were now living in down in Mornington or to storage (the free sort!) or to the tip (Lesson learned: Jenny was horrified to find that Bayside tip cost us $106 for a trailer load - no wonder people just dump it on the roadside).
Storage Unit - badly, madly packed...
Storage Unit - finally sorted and empty!
The good news is that we have now left Mornington and officially 'hit the road'. Our future posts will be far more regular and hopefully more adventure filled!
Apologies for the delay in updating - the last few weeks have been ridiculously busy and we literally have not had a spare minute to log onto a PC.
With any endeavour of this magnitude, there are bound to be delays, but the few glitches in our plans so far seem to be uncommonly large and time consuming to overcome. So as not to bore you with the minute details of our past few weeks, here is a not so brief summary of our first world issues :)
More specifics around some items will be in a forthcoming post to be called one of the following:
a) "Gee, I wish I'd known that 3 months ago..." or
b) "Gee, that expert certainly got this very wrong..." or possibly
c) "Jenny, do we actually have any money left for food?"
Pesky delay number one - can we please have our car and caravan back?
Despite purchasing our van in Feb 2015 and our car in August 2015, delays with the manufacturing and deliveries of both meant that we did not take possession of the car until mid Nov and the van until late Nov. To say this is not ideal would be an understatement, as it means that we had very little time to have any modifications done and to make sure everything worked as it should. We had a bunch of upgrades done to the car to help with the long haul towing of a big van and those all meant time for the car at the mechanics. We still don't have a bullbar because the model we have (Ford Ranger Wildtrak PX2) is so new that no-one manufactures one that will work with the front sensors. No bullbar means no driving lights or UHF system yet as they both need to be mounted on the bar. (We will list all the stuff on the car and van in a later entry though much of it will get a mention in pesky delay number 3). We don't want to head across the Nullarbor without a bullbar so hopefully it is not too much longer until one hits the market.
As for the van, it needed some specialty work done so we could carry the bikes. Despite asking for bike racks when we ordered it, there wasn't one on there when we picked it up and the sales guy said he was getting something custom built to sit on the back chassis bar of the van. He had one of those metal three bike holders that usually sit on the towbar of your car and said he needed to get a metal extension rack built so it sat far enough off the back to clear the spare wheel, generator box and back wall of the van.
A week later we did our caravan towing course and all three instructors said that having a bike rack on the back of a van like that was a truly terrible idea as the vibrations and harmonics can cause micro cracks in the chassis and damage the bikes as well. Apparently the bikes also get filthy and often fall off. A quick Google search validated this advice. It seems that most of the internet is aware of this issue. We are still irked that our caravan supplier was (and still is) insistent that it would not cause an issue ('It's laughable' were his exact words). Anyway, we spoke to the awesome guys at Harding Swift caravan services in Kilsyth and they custom built us a rack on the front tool boxes of the van. So far, they are great. But all that negotiating back and forth between us, them and the manufacturer occurred right before Xmas so in order for them to get the work done, we had to drop the van to them on Dec 22nd and not pick it up until they re-opened on Jan 9th (which was our original original departure date). The van then needed to go back to the dealer for a couple of other minor repairs.
So it was then Jan 9th and we finally had a caravan ready to be loaded, and 80% of our car stuff done. We moved our departure date to Jan 20th.
Pesky delay number 2 - moving out of our house
The first entry in 'Gee, I wish I'd known that 3 months ago.." would be that trying to pack up your house, move into a caravan and find tenants simultaneously is a VERY STUPID IDEA! Having to tidy the house up twice a week for inspections nearly drove us mad, although when we finally got tenants signed up in early January we were very happy that they wanted us to leave lots of the big stuff like the fridge, washing machine, couch, recliner and bed frame.
We were running fairly to schedule with the packing and moving but were delayed a little by Jenny's previously blogged neck injury. We had a garage sale, donated what we didn't sell and started packing the rest. But then we discovered that by golly, we have a lot of crap. Far more crap than we anticipated. In fact, if crap were shoes, we were Imelda Marcos (ask Google, young folk). Our gross underestimation ended up being a big problem.
It was Sunday, and we had moved to Jenny's Mum's for a few days while we were still packing. Cleaners were coming on the following Tuesday at 2pm, a real estate inspection was scheduled for Wed, with tenants moving in on the Thursday. We packed and we packed. We took a seemingly endless number of boxes to the kindly offered storage space of Jenny's Aunt and Uncle and my Mum. And still there was crap. We had three piles - one of things for the trip, one of things to store and one of things to take to the tip.
And still we packed. Who knew our house was a Tardis? On the Monday morning we received an email from the real estate agent telling us that the tenants didn't actually want the couch and recliner after all. This totally threw out our planning as we suddenly needed to make 2 extra trips and then try to find room in storage (or Jenny's Mum's lounge room as it turned out) . We were up til 4.30am that night and are still deeply apologetic to my Mum for waking her up at 3.30am as we lugged boxes up the driveway, and also to Ros for forgetting the front door key and calling her on the mobile come and let us in the house at 4.15am. Worst. Children. Ever.
On Tuesday we were back at the house early, still packing. Ros and Charles came to help. By lunchtime, panic started to set in as we realised that there was no way we were going to get everything out by the time the cleaners arrived. What did we do? We just started taking everything outside onto the the lawn, packed or not. It looked like a giant bric a brac store had exploded and showered all of its eclectic wares into our yard. The 'take on the trip' boxes were mixed up with the 'take to storage' boxes and the 'take to the tip' bags. It was not pretty.
It started getting late and we then realised that there was no way we were going to get all our stuff off the lawn, packed in boxes and to their final storage location (45 min away) by the following morning. In between wondering how things had managed to go quite so pear shaped, we came up with the bright idea of hiring a storage unit close by and just shoving everything in there so we could sort it in daylight and without a looming deadline. Our lovely friends Fiona and Andrew offered us a nearby place to stay that night and two super duper super heroes, Tony and Leigh came with their cars and helped us load, ferry and unload everything to the unit. Jenny hopes that Leigh will eventually forgive her for not warning him that our temporary storage unit at "Moor Room" was on the second floor and meant double-handling everything through a cargo lift. But, phew! The house was empty.
In the rush, everything had just been shoved in randomly so we spent the next week sorting it all out again and taking what we needed to the van, which we were now living in down in Mornington or to storage (the free sort!) or to the tip (Lesson learned: Jenny was horrified to find that Bayside tip cost us $106 for a trailer load - no wonder people just dump it on the roadside).
Storage Unit - badly, madly packed...
Storage Unit - finally sorted and empty!
The good news is that we have now left Mornington and officially 'hit the road'. Our future posts will be far more regular and hopefully more adventure filled!
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