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.
Continue reading →

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.

Paul only has two more days of regular work now, and we have four more sleeps till we leave Perth to begin our new life.

We have taken care of most things that are mandatory before embarking on an adventure such as this. The caravan is ready. Legalities such as wills and land deeds have or are being attended to, and will be left in capable hands for safe keeping. And we ourselves are ready. The only thing we haven’t done that we intended to do is an updated first aid course, so we’ll have to pick one of those up sometime soon.

The caravan and annex are organised whilst we’re camped up, with a place for everything. Travelling between camp spots is going to pose a bit of challenge though. We’ll no doubt be staying for one or two nights on route sometimes, so we have to find a way to pack the gear from our annex into the van, and still allow reasonable access to fridge, stove, loo and bed without having to haul everything out. Sorting out the packing of the van is this week-ends job.

After years of camping, Paul is great at that sort of thing and works the packing like a jigsaw, with a perfect place for each item. I have every faith he’ll manage it all perfectly.

Today, I’m off for a bit of beauty therapy with a girlfriend. It’s the result of a bet I lost with her last year. I’m sure she thought I was never going to make good on the bet, but I’ve deliberately saved it for a time that will make a lovely last day with her before we leave. We’re both having a sea salt body scrub followed by a full massage, and lunch afterwards. Can’t wait.

The caravan park we’re staying in has most of their larger sites for bigger rigs kept mostly together. From speaking to the owners, at least half of these rigs seems to be being used as a home rather than holiday accommodation.

One man is now travelling on his own after his wife passed away five years ago. He has been on the road for 18 years now in total he tells me. A couple I met yesterday have been on the road for six years and she said she never wants to go back to a house. They do occasional house sitting and each time she does it re-enforces to her the woes of owning a house with the constant maintenance, cleaning and expense.

Another couple we met in our first week here has now been on the road for 16 years, they love it and are on their 2nd van now. Their advice is to stay at farms where-ever possible. They also love the wide spaces in the free camping areas or national parks.

Yesterday I met a middle aged woman travelling in a small motor home on her own. She does house sitting all around the country and calls her motor home, ‘a suitcase on wheels’.

Everyone seems to love life their on the road and not many have any desire to see it end. Everyone has stories to tell of places they’ve been and seen, and adventures they’ve had.

I had thought we might have been a bit ambitious thinking 6 – 8 years (possibly even longer) would be the go. But after speaking to so many people I’m realising that isn’t ambitious at all. Time will tell, but I don’t think it’s out of the question that we’ll still be on the road at the ripe old age of 78 (20 years from now).

I can’t wait now to get going. Whilst this park is pleasant, it isn’t on a beach front, riverbank, or edge of a forest. I want to be able to walk out of the van and into nature without having to get into the car. I want million dollar landscapes on my doorstep from my $120,000 home on wheels. I want to get started on this new life. Only 19 more sleeps…..