Well here we are in Inverell doing our first house sit. We’re looking after two lovely Cocker Spaniels, Bella and Buster, a home, plants, a couple of budgies and two gold fish. I’m sure both Bella and Buster miss their owners, but I’m also sure being in their own home with all the things familiar to them is much preferable to being placed into kennels.

Bella and Buster have a good routine which they know
well. They seem to have a good idea of time, and remind us if we’ve forgotten their morning tea treat, or if it’s getting near their dinner time. They’re good company.

Inverell is on the western side of the Great Dividing Range. Before we came to the east coast, the Great Dividing Range was something we hadn’t thought about. It’s amazing! Very steep in places and the most beautiful rain forests, palms, trees and ferns near the highest parts.

Rather than tow our van across the range we left it in storage at the caravan park in Grafton ($1 a day to store). We packed the things we thought we’d need into our car including emptying our fridge. However, we have left some things behind that we wish we had here, one being our camera. All a learning curve.

A couple I meet a few years ago have been house sitting full time for many years now. They say they always try to leave a house better in some respect to how they found it. However, this house is spotless, so that’s not going to be so easy. Paul did take the light shades down and washed them, but that’s something that would hardly be noticed. I’ve trimmed the dead growth off a couple of ferns and am trying to encourage some new growth on all the pot plants and also the lawn. However, as we’re only here for ten days, I doubt we’ll make a noticeable impression. Just hope we don’t make a negative impression by leaving any thing noticeably unclean. That would be easy to do in such an immaculately clean place.

We’re still in Newcastle. We took our Travelhome to get the front lifting legs replaced with the new, stronger type now being used on their Travelhomes. We also arranged to get a large storage locker added to the under frame, as well as a general safety check.

Safety check picked up a major problem. Both axles were slightly bent, which had caused major damage to three tyres on their inner side. As we haven’t driven over any large bumps or done anything that could have caused the damage, we figure it was possibly already like this when we purchased the van. Bit of a shock as no damage was evident. Also we had someone do the bearings in the caravan prior to moving into it, so it should have been picked up then.

Luckily it’s been picked up now and no real damage has been done (except to our bank acct). It could have been disastrous should two of the tyres have blown at once, and from the damage that was occurring, this was quite a possibility had we continued driving with it.

Travelhome have been terrific. They work on the van during the day, and then move it into their yard for us to use over night. So, we haven’t had the additional cost of finding alternative accommodation whilst the repairs are carried out. They’ve also had someone come out to service the fridge and the diesel heater which had some minor problems, and along with the new tyres and a couple of other things, are not adding a percentage to these costs. We’re grateful for that, as the repairs are costly enough as it is. Never mind, any home has it’s maintenance costs, and a caravan is obviously no exception.

We’re only waiting for the new tyres now which should be fitted early tomorrow, and we should be on our way by mid morning. We’re probably going to head for Port Stephens to have a look. The whales should be around there at the moment. It’ll be nice to get back on on the road again, and although most of the repairs won’t show any noticeable difference to us, the storage locker will. Currently our outdoor table and chairs are on our bed while we’re travelling. Now they can go in the storage locker, making packing up much easier on the morning of travel, and also making one night stops much simpler.

The past week or so hasn’t been so good, starting with the failed leg on our Travelhome when we first arrived at Kakadu.

After that we had to leave Edith Falls earlier than we would have liked after hearing back from a job agency in regards to a station job in SA. The agency had checked our references and recommended us to the station for the job. So, we took ourselves back to Katherine to await the phone call. After four days we had still not heard anything.

Whilst in Katherine we found another station job for us both, and this one sounded like it would be a beauty. We phoned the managers, and followed up with our resumes. They wanted someone to start on the 7th August. So, we arranged to arrive at the nearest town no later than today, and to go out to their station for an interview. We then made a mad dash of over a thousand kilometres (for a job interview – crazy, I know), to the NT/QLD border. We were under the impression from the station manager’s that we had a damned good chance, and we liked the sound of the jobs for us both. We figured we could do the job, and it seemed like as long as they thought so too, the job was going to be ours.

We arrived in Camoorweal (the closest town) yesterday,  one day earlier than arranged,  and contacted the station via email to set up a time for our interview today. Then we set about unhitching the Travelhome. The second leg failed! Result is we can’t risk unhitching from the car until the legs are operational again. It’s almost a 3 Tonne vehicle and to have it supported fully by car jacks, well the mind plays havoc with the disaster that could eventuate. So, we were faced with having to turn up down the dirt station road for our interview with the full rig. Not ideal, but we figured it wouldn’t be too much of a drama.

We went out for a nice dinner at the Camoorweal pub, the one highlight of the past week. On our return we opened our email, and the station managers had saved us the bother of taking the rig out, they had hired someone else that morning, almost two days before we were due to arrive. Needless to say, we weren’t  impressed.

So, what to do? We’ve been making enquiries, and getting replacement parts for the Travelhome is proving difficult, although I think Paul has now tracked them down. Dilemma is, Travelhome has stopped using these legs as they were less than ideal. Replacing them with the same seems foolhardy, given the amount of use they’ve had and failed, (less than 12 months use in total).

There’s a lot to be said for having a Jayco (or Junko as Kelv calls them) Being common on the roads, I doubt repairs cause the grief our current needed repairs are causing. But then again, we’ve just met a couple who lost their caravan in unexpected cross winds that flipped their rig over. That’s a lot less likely to happen with a fifth wheeler. Fifth wheelers feel a lot safer to have behind you, so we get back to same with whatever you have – every rig involves some sort of compromise. For us, the fifth wheeler is still the best compromise of all, simply because of that added element of safety.

We’ve decided the best course of action is to go to Newcastle and speak to the manufacturers. We’re hoping they’ll either replace the legs with the type they’re currently using, or else they’ll recommend someone else who can. We have a few other niggles with the Travelhome that we also want looked at, and being in the back of beyond makes that difficult. With normal caravans there’s an easier chance of repairs in out of the way places I should imagine. We’ve tried to phone Travelhome, but that’s also difficult in the back of beyond. We can never get to speak to someone directly, which means they always have to phone us back, by which time we’re either out of range again, or would prefer to be out of range.

We headed into Mount Isa today, and as soon as our phones came in range messages started to come through. We still haven’t heard from the SA job, but the agency contacted us for another couples station job, this time in Kununurra. We were initially interested, but after a couple of hours thought, we decided we don’t really need this twoing and froing across the country, at least not yet. So we phoned him back and said to count us out for this one as we want to continue on with our travels to Newcastle.

It means we can’t unhitch anywhere so it’s going to be a travel only trip without any real chance of getting out and seeing anything. It also means we’ll have to go via the inland country route so as to get big drive through sites which will allow the rig to remain hitched up.

We don’t need to be in a rush to find work, at least not for a long while yet. It’s me rather than Paul who has been researching and following up on jobs, and as Paul said today, why??? and I asked myself the same question. So, we’re going to step back for a while, get the rig sorted out, and then go back to taking time to smell the roses, and seeing this lovely country again.

Thank goodness for Paul’s calm sense of reason. I was becoming a fliberty jibert, and was rocking the apple cart for no good reason. So, much as we’re both peed off to say the least at the managers of Rocklands station, and also the SA station for not even contacting us, perhaps it’s a good thing.

Fingers crossed now that we get some satisfaction from Travelhome. It seems a bit drastic to have to travel almost 4000 kms to get our caravan repaired. Perhaps we’re being more knee jerky than we need to be, but we are probably in one of the most remotest parts of the country and to get to anywhere involves travelling thousands of kms. So, we figure we may as well just go to the people most likely to get our rig sorted properly, the manufacturers.

TO SEE THE RESOLUTION CLICK HERE

We arrived at Kakadu and couldn’t get one of the front legs on our Travelhome to raise the caravan up off our ute. After several attempts Paul realised there was a major problem, so came up with a make shift solution using our car jack to support it. Not ideal, but it will do until we hear back from Travelhome.
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We’ve now been living our caravan for more than 6 months and I don’t think either of us have had a moments regret.

We’re learning to slow down, but it doesn’t come easy, we have to work at it. We’ve been used to driving for 10 – 12 hours a day to get to a holiday destination. We still sometimes drive for more than 6 hours on a day but try to remind ourselves there’s no need to do that. There’s plenty of roadside free camp areas to stay in, and we’re finding these useful. With good ones only a couple of hours apart, it makes driving distances easy, and they’re great places to stay in. We’re even starting staying at particularly nice ones for a couple of nights.

We’re mixing our trip up with free camps, national parks, cheap caravan parks and really nice parks. Each has it’s own beauty, or convenience. The caravan parks are best for convenience, the free camps and national parks are best for beauty, and making friends. In caravan parks people keep to themselves more.

Part of our plan has evolved take a ‘life of Riley day, a couple of times a week. A ‘life of Riley day,  is one when we won’t use the car, and we won’t go exploring or sight seeing, or shopping. We took one of these days in a road side place on route to Katherine, and just pottered around the caravan for a day. Paul washed the van and car, and I did some cleaning inside. We read, and did puzzles and played cards, and watched the birds. None of it was rushed, and we only did what we felt like doing. It was great!

We’re currently in Katherine, only a few hours south of Darwin, and will stay here a few days. The days are around 30, and it was cold and good for sleeping over night. We’ll go and see the hot springs in town today, and probably do a boat trip up the Katherine gorges tomorrow before heading for Humpty Doo, probably the next day. We may do a dinner at the local museum tomorrow night where they have a story teller who is apparently very funny.

We spent the first three days staying in free roadside campsites. The first and the third at Nerren Nerren and Peawah River were comfortable but not memorable. The free camp spots are so useful for caravaners and are well used. Staying in them, means you can leave your van rigged up and there’s no backing. Not to mention of course that they are free. We have found that it’s best to try and get to one showing the green symbol in the camp seven book, which indicates there’s usually, drop toilets and a dump point for our van toilet to be emptied. They’re usually quite large and we’ve found if we get there before three, there’s a good chance of getting a place to park quite a distance in from the road and a chance of a good walk before dinner.

We were lucky on our second night when we stopped at Lyndon River. We managed to get a spot over looking the shallow but clean flowing river and as we were conserving our caravan water, the clean water in the river was inviting. We took our environmentally friendly shampoo/soap on a short walk down the river to find a spot out of view and washed our hair and bathed in the river. It felt wonderfully primitive and left us feeling clean and fresh. Afterwards we were treated to a wonderful sunset over the river as the sun went down.

Paul’s back from the UK and is almost over his jet lag. We’ve had our car serviced and now only have to do our final shop tomorrow, and pack everything up and we’ll be ready for departure on Wednesday.

Going down south for two months was ok as a trial run, but it was all previously covered territory. It feels better to be heading towards new territory.

I don’t know if or when we’re likely to be back in Perth. It really is a very isolated city and I imagine that once we’re over East the distance to here will seem daunting. But who knows what roads the future will take us on.

Our plans for the near future are to leave Perth early on Wednesday morning and put as much distance between us and Perth as we reasonably can on the first couple of days. We’re not going to travel at break neck speeds or drive silly distances, but we figure we should be able to get past Carnarvon by Friday. Then we’ll slow down a bit. We’re heading for Barn Hill just south of Broome for our first major stop.

After that, we’ll spend a month or so travelling slowly towards Darwin, hopefully arriving there before the end of July. By then we’ll be needing to find some work for a couple of months to keep us going.

Can’t wait to get going now.

Four months on the road and we’re learning what’s essential and what isn’t. We took our rig over a weigh bridge in Bunbury and fully loaded it’s close to half a tonne overweight. We figure with a 5 tonne rig we can possibly get away with that. If not, we’ll have to change the vehicle I guess. Shame the Hi-lux isn’t rated higher, it’s more than capable of pulling around what we have. We don’t even know the vans behind us most of the time, and towing the fifth wheeler we sit on around 90KPH, and around 2000 revs. It’s doing 12.5 – 13 litres per hundred when towing, which most people think is pretty damned good. I think the aero dynamic shape of the Travelhome helps that a lot.

We know we have to be careful to keep the weight from increasing, or possibly even reduce a few things if we can. We had been looking at changing our air con, but that would add more weight, so we’ll try and live with what we have. A roof unit would be more efficient, but with shady sites and moving on with the seasons, we think the one we have may be just adequate.

We are constantly in ‘cull’ mode for anything that’s not performing as expected or anything that’s not getting used and not likely to be used.

This week we replaced our 5 month old barbecue with a Baby Q. The Baby Q roasts and bakes beautifully, so is more efficient that the one it’s replacing. Because it roasts so beautifully we’re going to find a new home for our heavy, but much loved cast iron camp oven. The occasional access we have to camp fires on which we can use it, doesn’t justify it’s weight when we can cook all the same things and more often on the Baby Q.

When we first moved into the caravan it felt like it was short on storage. It’s a pleasant surprise to find out that’s not the case. But we do have to be constantly vigilant. Almost weekly, we clean and tweak our belongings. This week it’s the camp oven, replaced barbecue and a surplus table. Last week it may have been a tea pot, or/and a couple of cups that we find we’re not using and not likely to use. Next week, it may be a couple of t/shirts and a few pairs of knickers. We both have more than enough clothes, so it’ll be a while before we have to replace things that are starting to wear out.

Another thing that’s pleasantly surprising about living in the caravan, is that I thought there would be lots of times when we’d feel like the other half was ‘under foot’. That rarely ever happens, in fact it makes me wonder why the hell houses are getting so big. This feels absolutely big enough for two people. It’s quick to clean, and because we don’t have spare storage space, we can’t spend money on shite that sits in a cupboard or garage, forced economy!

Rather than adjust our house to fit unfavourable climates, we can just up wheels and move to where the climate’s better. Moving into this really does get needs and wants in prospective. There’s room here for me and mine, and room for friends and family when they visit. Entertaining isn’t any harder here than it was in a house, in fact with park ablution blocks, pools, and camp kitchens, it’s easier, we have all the mod cons for our guests and don’t have to clean any of them.

At Lucky Bay we started to realise what it means to have our 2 x 150 watt solar panels, our 1500 watt inverter, Ctek battery charge and our generator. I can’t pretent to understand any of it, but after a few days at Lucky Bay without power and a bit of time to start looking at our own energy supplies, Paul started to work it out. There’s no shortage of willing and able blokes in camp grounds all willing to share their knowledge as well.

Firstly we took the fridge off gas and had it running on 240 volt from the inverter. However that was a mistake, the fridge draws to much power and ran our battery charge right down. The next day was overcast so re-charging the solar panels was slow. That’s when the generator came into it’s own, a couple hours of running that and we were fully charged once again and the fridge was back on gas.

So, we found running the big fridge isn’t possible from our own power source, but the things that are possible amazed me. I used my thermomix for making dips, we ran our TV and charged all our phones and computers, and I used my hair straighteners, all with hardly a change to the battery charge level.

As our microwave is only 850 watt we think that’ll be okay, but aren’t sure if we’ll be able to cook with the thermo mix yet. I still have to check the wattage of that before I try it, and I haven’t as yet tried the washing machine.  Those things are still be tried yet.

Currently the only things we know for sure it won’t run is the big fridge and my hair blowdryer. The fridge runs very well on gas and it takes hardly any gas, and as long I let me hair dry naturally, I can still use the straighteners to make it look passable.

This all means we can lived in a very civilised manner with only a few exceptions providing we have sun. When we don’t have sun, we can still be very civilised by using the generator.

Compared to our last caravan in which we had to boil a pot for hot water, I am amazed at how far removed from the pioneer feel this is. We really could live very well and for a very long time in one place providing it’s sunny, there’s a water supply and our cupboards are stocked. The biggest problem though of course is often there isn’t water, so once the water in our tanks is nearing it’s end we either have to look at finding a way to bring water to us, or move on to a water supply.