Week 267 ” Off on a new adventure”

We have waited in anticipation of this day for a long time, thinking that it is only something in our imagination. The last few days as we prepare clothes, food and the van have been great. I am not sure how we will handle the trip – 2000k which I have broken down into 3-400k daily drives. We will see how we handle day one and our first stop in the van and then decide on the length of our daily drives.

I have booked into the Forbes Big 4 caravan park for tomorrow  (27th June) about 420k. the biggest effort is to get up and on the road before 9am. Our second night was going to be Coonabarabran ( but the caravan park review was not promising) so we may push on to Narrabri and then to Goondiwindi and the Gundy Star Caravan Park, then onto Dalby or Kingaroy. The final stop before getting to Hervey Bay on Friday will be Rainbow Beach. The people that manufacture the TV antenna ( Saturn Antennas) is there and as I am having some problems with it – I thought it would be a good chance to get it checked out. Then on Friday we would have only a 150k to Fraser Lodge Caravan Park in Torquay ( Hervey Bay). We will be lucky to be greeted by Riley when we arrive at Hervey Bay.

We had an anxious wait on the caravan as I had gas heating installed before our trial run to Eildon and it would not work. They have had the van for a week and on last Wednesday they could still not get it to run for more than 30 seconds. The manufacturer kept saying it was lack of gas. Our gas bottles were low about 2kg in each – with all the other appliances – fridge, stove and hot water all happy to operate. I picked up the van on Thursday with the heater still not working. I also swapped the gas cylinders for full ones and guess what- the heater worked. I still cannot under stand why but am thinking that the heater is a bit more critical on gas requirement. Pat and Keith arrived with lunch for us on Saturday. Keith had put a complete set of seals in our caravan jack – no more oil in the drive. Thanks Pat & Keith . We hope that you get up to the Gold Coast to look after the grand children.

We spent last evening making meals to eat on the way so that I don’t have to prepare a complete meal after driving all day. We have Chicken & Leak pies, Chicken Stir fry, and Chicken Fried Rice as well as some sausage rolls. I am about to make a lasagna and a zuchini slice. If you want to share a meal with us give us a call and we will arrange a meeting location along the road.

It is going to difficult leaving Jessie at home , but we are fortunate to have great neighbours ( Lorna & Pete) to look after her. I keep telling her she must behave.

Well I had better get Jill up – I actually told her that we were going to have a trial run at getting up and ready to go this morning – but she simply refused saying that this is her last chance to sleep in for a week.

See you on the net or on the road north ( Newell Highway)