Hi everyone
Well this is our last blog entry. We arrived home on Sunday afternoon. We found the house in very good order as Sarah and Nev had done a lot of work to make it spick and span for our arrival. Charlie and Brinkley, our dogs, were really excited to see us.
We have had a fantastic time and feel very fortunate that we were able to to do it. We travelled a total of 44551kms (Michael drove all but a few of these kms). Here’s a map showing our route.
Our favourite places (in no particular order) were:
* Shark Bay, WA
* Litchfield and Kakadu National Parks, NT
* The south coast of WA from Denmark to Esperance
* Carnarvon Gorge, Qld
* Boodjamulla (Lawn Hill) National Park, Qld
Other highlights were staying at Barn Hill Station,WA and Kingfisher Camp on Bowthorn Station, Qld.
WA was by far our favourite state. There is so much variety from the ruggedness of the Kimberley’s to the forests in the south and the gorgeous beaches.
There’s still so much we want to see especially the centre of Australia (including Uluru) and Tasmania and we really need to spend more time checking out SA, Vic and NSW. (And then there is overseas as well). We aren’t sure where our next holiday will be to, but I expect we will be starting to think about this in the next few weeks. In the meantime Michael is excited at the prospect of getting a boat in the next few months and taking it down the coast on the weekend. Of course he has to find a job first as this is the deal we have made.
We have been really pleased with the camper and car and are glad that they have arrived home relatively unscathed. We haven’t done a proper count but we estimate that we set-up and packed away the camper over 100 times. The only visible damage to our car is a small dent (like a small pox mark) in the passenger door which is a result of a branch on a narrow 4WD track.
At one stage we thought that we wouldn’t travel for such a long time again. As the trip came to an end we both realised that we had adapted to the lifestyle really well and with a little more luxury (like a caravan) we could easily stay on the road for a year or more. The hard part is being apart from family, but this can be fixed with short trips home. Perhaps the best thing about being on the road is that time seems to slow down. This probably comes from not having the usual demands on our time (like work, doing stuff around the house etc).
If anyone is interested in the logistics (eg. costs and budget, equipment needed, best timing etc) of travelling we are happy to provide any info we can.
Since we arrived home we have been busy moving our stuff out of storage, unpacking and cleaning the camper ready for future weekend trips. We have enjoyed having a proper kitchen and our own bathroom (no showering in thongs, yeah!). The downside has been coming to terms with how much stuff we have that we don’t really need- we both enjoyed the simplicity of having very little.
We hope you have enjoyed reading our blog. We have enjoyed sharing where we have been and what we have done. Its been a great way for us to record our trip. We estimate that we have taken over 5000 photos. Our next challange will be to pick the best as we are planning to have a series of photos mounted and framed.
Well that’s enough waffle. If you are interested here is the story of our last 2 stops:
26 February to 2 March 2010 (day 344 to 348)
Shady Glen Caravan Park, Mallacoota, Victoria
It rained almost every day while we were at Mallacoota so we didn’t get to do or see an awful lot. Mallacoota is located at the entrance to a large lake and estuary system. We were expecting it to be very like Lakes Entrance but discovered that the water is very brown and murky so it isn’t very picturesque.
This photo shows what the weather was like for the 4 days we were in Mallacoota:
We managed to do some fishing in between the wet weather but had no luck as we only caught several small fish.
2 to 7 March 2010 (day 348 to 353)
Narooma Shores Caravan Park, Narooma, NSW
As we drove up the coast from Mallacoota we crossed the border into New South Wales. There wasn’t a Welcome to NSW sign, like there has been to mark other state, but just up the road there was a sign saying we were in the South Coast of NSW.
We decided that Narooma would be our last stop as we did a weekend camping trip to Narooma just before we headed off on our big trip and were keen to do more fishing here. Unfortunately the fishing wasn’t good to us. On one day we hired a tinny for 4 hours. We caught lots of little fish including lots of baby pink Snappers which were all undersize.
We took the chance to visit Cathy, my step-mum, in Berry which is north of Narooma. I enjoyed looking at the photos of Dad and Cathy’s trips around Australia. They visited many of the same places we have been to in the mid 1990’s. It was interesting to see that many of the places are still very much the same.
We packed up on our last day with a mix of excitement at the thought of coming home as well as sadness that the trip is over.
Karen and Michael's Blog 