Caravanning Camping Touring
Let me share some of our stories with you. I'll try to keep it fun and interesting, with heaps of photos, hints, tips and reviews all relating to life on the road.
Although we are no longer in Capalaba, we aren’t that far away. I had to have another series of tests and need to be back in Brissy this Friday for the results, but we thought bugger it! We’re going somewhere more interesting.
About an hour and a half drive from Capalaba is a great camping spot; Darlington Park camp ground. It’s a very well maintained, open area, quiet (apart from the much needed road works,) near a nice little river, and there are plenty of birds. Oh, and when I say a nice little river, I mean a river that’s crystal clear and so enticing for swimming – if the water wasn’t so cold.
Just a little side note. It really does pay to keep an eye on things. While Peter was setting up the camp, in particular lowering the awning, he noticed something that could have been a problem. The screws holding the awning to the van were not just loose, they were almost out.
FYI The test results came back; I need more tests. ☹ So, Darlington Park is our home for a few more days.
So to cheer us up here are some of the locals.
Even though this was a bit of an impromptu camp, we decided to have a camp oven meal. We didn’t have the right cut of meat for slow cooking. No stock and limited vegies. Who cares, I’ll give it a go. I dug out three lamb chump chops from the freezer, not a cut I normally buy, then because of Peter’s recent health issues, I went about de-fatting the meat. I know, I love my lamb fat too. Never mind, it’s all about eating healthier now, and the carnivore birds got a good feed from the off cuts. Butcher birds, Grey Butcher’s, Magpies, and Currawongs.
After heating the pan, I seared the meat bones, such as they were, along with a few bits of onions, garlic, parsnip, and carrot in olive oil. After that, I did something different. I would normally add the meat and sear that. This time, I added the vegies and coated them with the Moroccan seasoning and olive oil.
I then removed the vegies added a bit more oil and seared the meat, which was already coated in the Moroccan seasoning. Once that was seared, I added about 300 ml of water, 100 of wine and put the vegies back in. Gave it a good old stir and sat down to enjoy a beer.
Did it taste good? I don’t know yet, I’m still enjoying my beer. I’ll let you know in about an hour and a half.
An hour and a half later… They say a picture paints a thousand words, well this picture only needs one…Yummy! To be honest it was not one of the best camp oven dishes, but it was very tasty none the less and we had the leftovers as a fry up for breakfast the following day.
I told Hugo not to feed the birds, would he listen to me? Course not, he’s a boy bear.
And finally, great news. I got the results from my last test, and… we are good to go! No more hanging around Brisbane for anything. We are booked in here until Saturday 25th June then we gone. The plan is to travel west through south Queensland to Birdsville, then we we take the Birdsville Track and finally make it to south Australia. What?…we’re only seven months behind schedule.
See you out there somewhere
On tow and on the go!
I know it has been a while since my last post, and I am sure you are wondering where we have been, what we have been doing, and where we are now?
The answers to these questions are; not very far, not very much and pretty close to home. We are currently in the Greenacres Caravan Park in Capalaba; about thirty minutes from our home to be precise.
What happened? Well, here’s the short version.
We finally left Port Macquarie on the 22nd of April and headed back to QLD. We visited family and friends, got Chunky Bum re-registered, (she’s a proud Queenslander again) and did other bits of admin and medical stuff, regular check-ups and the like.
All of this took longer than we had hoped, but eventually on 16th May, our duties were complete, and we were on our way again. First stop Flanagan’s Reserve at Rathdowney. We arrived on a Monday and set up camp on the banks of the fast-flowing Logan River. There were no other campers in sight, but plenty of Possums walking through the camp to keep us company. Now this is what we needed. Time to chillax.
The road to Flannagan’s Reserve – Our chill-out camp is just up the road. 
The flooding was serious. 
As this driver learned – the hard way. 
Almost there… 
A few steps from our camp. 
Kayaking anyone? 
Or maybe just relax by the river for a couple of weeks 
Beautiful, peaceful country. 
Curious visitors 
Carry on, don’t worry about us… 
We’re all pretty relaxed now. 
Ahhh, at last …Chillax…
I woke up the following day, Tuesday the 17th feeling quite unwell. To keep a short story even shorter, by the 23rd of May I was in hospital having an appendectomy. My appendix had burst, and to quote the surgeon, “…it was a mess in there…” Five days after that, they let me go home, with the promise that I would stay close to medical facilities for at least a week, in case the infection flared up again, and that I was to have four to six weeks rest and light duties.
I won’t dwell on this but let me say I am extremely pleased that we only have one appendix, because I would not like to go through that again.
More from Flannagan’s Reserve
While I was in hospital, Peter moved Chunky Bum from Rathdowney back to Greenacres Caravan Park, (this had been our base while we were visiting and doing our admin stuff). It’s a lot closer to the hospital and more central for our regular GP. I did a follow-up with my GP on the 2nd of June, my bloodwork shows that the infection is gone but my liver is out of whack, so we have to hang around for another week to re-do the blood test. If my liver is settling down, then Hasta la vista baby! Auf Wiedersehen pet! Sayonara! Arrivederci! Tot ziens!
I don’t care how you say it, but we are out of here and you won’t see us for the dust.
See you out there somewhere
On tow and on the go!
Ok, so where to begin? Not to dwell on the bad stuff, but to keep you all in the know, Peter is doing superbly. Over the past few weeks, we have been getting back into the swing of things. Long walks, lots of exercise, lots of relaxing, and I’ve been brushing the dust off my trusty camera. These are a few photos I’ve taken while exploring mum’s lovely hometown, Port Macquarie.
It seems like a lifetime ago that we did some work on the caravan. You may recall we replaced the battery and the battery monitoring system. Replaced the radio aerial, (the old one is probably still dangling off a tree somewhere 😊) and replaced the water monitoring sensors and monitoring system. Two weeks ago, we finally had the opportunity to test our new equipment.
We booked six nights in the Oxley Wild Rivers National Park at the Tia Falls campground. It rained the first few days and was overcast for all but one day; ideal conditions to test the batteries. I’m not as technical as Peter, so I’ll be brief. The batteries and monitoring system are absolutely fabulous. The lights and fridge were on all night, we charged laptops and camera batteries and I got to use my hair dryer using the 240v inverter, Peter even left the outside light on one night, and we never dropped below 92% charge.
We want to give a big shout out to Terry and the team at Battery World Port Macquarie, who did such a great job for us. If you need any work done and you are in the area, call in and see Terry. If you want more detailed information about the batteries, leave a comment and I’m sure Peter will oblige. You’ll be pleased to know that we can listen to the radio again, and the water sensors and monitor give us a much better reading than the ones supplied originally.
This next series of photos were taken at Tia and Apsley Falls, and some of the critters we met.
Our next bit of news is super exciting! Well, it was for us anyway. We were sitting around the Oz Pig at Tia Falls, enjoying a peaceful evening when Peter saw something moving very quickly through the trees. It took us a while to figure out what it was, guess what? It was a Sugar Glider. I know, I’ve never seen one before either. Oh my gosh, it was tiny and flitted through the trees like Spiderman before doing a death-defying leap off the top of a dead tree branch. We were entertained by these little critters, a family of four as it turned out, for three nights in a row.
Sadly I don’t have the equipment for night photography, and my best lens for maximising light is a wide angle, which pushes the subject further away from you, but if you make the video full screen, then look at the bottom right horizontal branch, you will pick up some movement and will be able to follow the Sugar Glider through to its last leap.
The last night we saw them, I had set up my camera and tripod with my 400mm zoom, manually focusing on the branch for the final launch while the sun was still up, then I pulled up a chair and waited until dark, clutching my auto shutter release button. These next photos are some of the worst quality I have ever taken, but I am ever so chuffed to have gotten them. Saying that, if you want to see some real photos of these little cuties, follow this link. https://www.wilderness.org.au/sugar-gliders
It couldn’t get much better than that right? Wrong! We were pointed to an off-the-grid overnight spot, twenty minutes south of Walcha. We parked on the banks of a little river, lit a fire and sat down with a glass of wine to enjoy the sunset. When what should slowly surface, silently from the water, OMG a Platypus. I kid you not, in fact there were two of them! We sat mesmerised watching them then you guessed it, I grabbed my camera, and this time there was enough light for some decent photos. Enjoy.
See you out there somewhere
On tow and on the go!
I started this piece with the title ‘The Serene Ostrich’. I figure it could be an interesting study. Does the ostrich lack courage to face the world? Is he just laid-back, experiencing serenity? Is he just plain stupid? Or maybe he does simply have his head in the sand.
I had heard the stories several times, how a guy retires and within 12 months all kinds of disaster have befallen him. I didn’t discount these stories, but I never thought that I would be a part of the record. Nah, I’ll be right! An ostrich for sure.
As most of you know, I retired fully from work on April 1st 2021 and on May 1st 2021 Jo and I began our trip around Australia. The ‘little bump in the road’ that Jo mentioned in the previous post was this…
… on 11 February 2022 at a young age of sixty-nine, (less than twelve months after we began our journey) I had a quadruple bypass.
So now I’m a part of the twelve-month retirement statistics. Now I am an official member of the Zipper Club.
I shouldn’t have been too surprised; I had an angina event in December 2007 and had been on medication all that time without anything too severe getting in the way of normal life. Nevertheless, when it did happen it was disruptive to say the least. So why write this? Well, there are some lessons here that are available for those of a mind to note them. Also, Jo and I like writing and we probably should explain the hiatus in Jo’s blog posts.
May I gain the courage to change the things I can
The serenity to accept the things I cannot change
And the wisdom to know the difference
Starting with ‘changing the things I can’. Well, I could have changed a lot of things and there’s every likelihood that the trauma of the past months could have been avoided. Trouble was, it was all much too subtle. I had the fitness and activity level pretty-much on the positive side of the risk register. But the food intake? Nah!
It’s not that I didn’t like good, wholesome food. But I liked peanut butter sandwiches on soft, white bread slathered with butter a whole lot more. And icy cold coke is really, really refreshing. And KFC, and Macccas, and pizzas… Well, you get the picture.
I never gave a thought for the fat and rubbish I was expecting my body to cope with. So, over the years I simply clogged the plumbing – as simple as that!
But it wasn’t only the clogged plumbing. You see, I really liked the sweet stuff as well. Coca-Cola, chocolate, apple pies and oh my, ice cream. My body couldn’t cope with the excess. It simply couldn’t deal with all that sugar – enter Type 2 Diabetes!
Years ago, as I ran a hundred kilometres a week, played maybe fifteen games of competitive squash and all that other good stuff, I burned up that sugar like a furnace. But then work took over. Instead of running I stressed behind the desk, I didn’t have time for squash, I was too busy working sixty to sixty-five hours a week and often longer.
Oh I did notice what was happening but what could I do? I had commitments and responsibilities; and I was doing really important stuff! It would have taken more courage to change than I could muster. So I kept all the bad habits and got rid of all the good.
Trouble is that Maccas, KFC and pizzas are really in your face, they’re on every corner and on every second advert. And they taste great, they’re cheap and convenient and really social.
Oh, did I mention… They’ll kill you – slowly but surely – they will kill you!
So there’s a lot of calories. But hey, we burn that off no worries with all our sport and active life, not to mention sex – Wow! Does that burn up the cals!”
But what if we stop all that fun stuff, but keep up with the killer diet?
Well there is an action plan. Plan to call the ambulance, plan a near-death experience and just in case you’re not lucky enough to have that near-death experience, pre-plan your funeral, that’ll take a load off those you love most. Thirty percent of heart-attack victims never make it to hospital – thirty percent!
So please use me as a good bad example. Trust me, you do not want to go where I went.
Find the courage to change your life while you still can.
On a brighter note, I’m well on the way to a full recovery, it’s now five weeks since the operation and although it will be several weeks yet before we get on the road, I expect to be back in a more robust body than before.
We want …
Less of This…
More of this..
So we can do much more of this…
This has truly been a profound experience for Jo and me and I hope you will continue to join us as we get back on the road and we navigate the good the bad and the ugly.
Hey… it’s all character building.
As we approach the middle of March, Peter and I should be in the process of making sure that Chunky bum and big ears are well stocked and ready to hit the black. Unfortunately we have hit a “little bump” in the road, (I’ll let Peter fill you in on that in the next post) and as a result, we will be staying with mum for at least another two months.
Over the next few weeks, I want to do a bit of bird watching around the area, if it ever stops raining that is, and I hope to share some of these photos with you at a later date.
In the meantime, and at the prompting of the little furry dude himself, I will share a few of Hugo’s favourite photos.
Before I do, here is a little background information about Hugo and how he came to me. You see, Hugo was given to me by my grandma, many, many years ago, and as such he has a very strong emotional value to me. For Peter, Hugo is, and I quote, “An annoying little fur ball” He’s just joking I’m sure.
Hugo’s first overseas trip with us was to Alaska. Since then he has been to Singapore, Borneo, Japan, Tasmania and of course, he is travelling with us now around mainland Australia. It has to be said that we get mixed reactions when travelling with Hugo, lets face it, it’s not normal to see a couple of adults carrying a teddy bear, (that’s why I give him to Peter to carry most of the time, :)) but when our fellow travellers see Hugo posing for photos, well, then they all want to be in on the picture and as you can see, Hugo finds it quite easy to make friends.
The trick here was to get this little Kyoto cutie to give Hugo back. 
This lady in Sabah, Malaysia was so enamoured with Hugo, she called ahead to our next destination, and we were greeted with cries of, “Where is Mr Hugo?” 
Hugo loved travelling on the local buses in Sandakan, Borneo. 
A thorn between two Kyoto roses. 
Even when travelling incognito, Hugo draws attention to himself. 
Where’s Hugo? Standing in what is said to be the busiest pedestrian crossing in the world, Shibuya Crossing, Tokyo 
Roughing it in the Borneo jungle – well, not that rough. 
We’ll miss you Hugo. 
Never one to shirk his duties.
But it’s not just people that Hugo likes to mingle with and in most places he visits, he can be seen connecting with the local wildlife and other STC’s (Stuffed Travel Companions). 🤪
Hugo & his sisters, Willow and Alba. He always thought they were adopted. 
Hugo and Farmer George, he travels with Hendrina and Peter. 
What the duck?? 
We had to drop in and see Rodney the rooster who lives at Harland Park rest area, south of Yaraman in QLD 
Yes, it’s a capybara from South Amercia, Hugo met him in a pet cafe in Tokyo. 
When in Sydney – find a good drinking buddy. 
Watch out Hugo, Tasmanian possums bite! 
Super hero’s stick together.
As well as meeting people, Hugo is not averse to a bit of adventure. Whether it’s up high, or down low, Hugo’s where we go.
Ready for another fun filled day 
Getting up close to a glacier in Alaska 
Cap’n Hugo 
That’s one way to get on the beer! 
Mucklandama Creek waterhole near the old police barracks, Boulia, Outback QLD 
From Outback to Beach, Hugo loves it all. 
Bushwalking in beautiful Tasmania. 
There’s always time for a snackeroo at the Birdsville races. 
On Bilby watch, but only saw their tracks. 
Taking in the serenity of Mt Fuji. 
“They said that they were coming back, but I’m getting a bit worried.” 
“I can help.” 
Perhaps a bit too close. 
Worth the walk up Baldy Hill lookout in south-west QLD. 
Kayaking on Cooper Creek 
There’s always a place for a swing, this one’s at Nockundra on Cooper Creek, last water before crossing from Queensland into South Australia – the back way. 
Tokyo at night. 
Dining in style. 
I said ‘understand, not under sand… gee! 
Always the klutz. 
My boots aren’t made for walking, but they are awfully cute!
Before we sign off on Hugo’s post, there is one more thing he wanted me to let you know. I tried to talk him out of it but… Here goes, the answer to the age old question; Where does a bear go, when he has to, you know…go?
In the woods of course, but hey, there’s no need to rough it.
See you out there somewhere
On tow and on the go!
Let me start by saying; I hope each and every one of you had a wonderful Christmas and that you were able to see in the New Year the way you wanted to.
Peter and I had a lovely Christmas with family, and mum hosted a New Year’s Eve party. I think it’s safe to say, everyone had a terrific time and, like every other person in the world, we enjoyed saying goodbye 2021 and are looking forward to a much better 2022.
Now, I would love to tell you all about our travels, but…we are still stationary at Port Macquarie. Mum had her cast removed on the six-week mark, and even though the break was healing well, she was given a moon boot to wear for an additional six weeks. Let me tell you, she was not happy about that. But at least she could walk around and do more for herself.
The silver lining to our prolonged stay is that we have been able to make some changes to the caravan. Mainly, upgrading our batteries, installing a couple of fans, fixing the arial we ripped off the roof some months ago, (don’t ask me where or when we did that) and insect proofing the van. I’ll hand you over to Peter tell you about the electrical stuff.
Hi, yes it’s me, Peter. So, about the electrical stuff (and other things). It’s been over 18 months since we took delivery and we’ve spent the majority of that time living in the van so we’re getting to know our way around the lifestyle. Generally, the van has proven to be very good but we’re pleased to be addressing these few things:
- The water tank level meters never worked anywhere near well enough. Projecta replaced the PM 200 for us but it still just didn’t work so now we’re getting it replaced with a separate meter, we’ll have to let you know how that works out.
- Night-flying insects love the inside more than the outside and the insect screening just isn’t effective. Talking to others and it seems that this is a very common situation. Jo spent some time looking for their secret entrance and we came up with what we hope will make it a bit more difficult for them.
- The big one is the batteries. Our 200 AHrs of AGM battery was just not enough and we killed them! So now we have 400 AHrs of Lithium Ion, I reckon this will be great.
THE BATTERIES
We had two, 100AH AGMs That seems like an ok spec but here’s the rub: We have a 12/240V fridge that has a rated power demand of 3 Ahrs, that assumes that it only needs to run 20 minutes in the hour… not so. I reckon these fridges probably run for more like 60% of the time if not more (and that’s in winter with the fridge set to 3 of 5) so if you do a bit of basic arithmetic you’ll find that they probably pull 120 plus AHrs in any 24 hour period. Add in a few overcast days and before you know it, your 200 AHrs of AGM are down to less than 50% even without switching on a light. Do that a few times and you have dead AGMs!
So we killed our AGMs! The lack of a current flow meter on the Projecta 200 series management system made it hard to monitor the battery charge/ current drain so we had to guess. To solve this, we had a Caravan Repair workshop install a Projecta BM320 which is a good unit as long as it’s installed properly; unfortunately, that didn’t happen, not everything went through the earth shunt, so a bit of a waste really.
You know there’s a lot in this so I’ll just jump to the take-aways:
THE TAKE-AWAYS
- Budget your compressor fridge to use 120 to 150 AHrs per day.
- AGMs do not like to be flattened, and flattened means being taken down below 50%. That means that 2 x 100 AHrs are at best (and I do mean best) only good for 100 AHrs in a day.
- Solar panels aren’t all the manufacturers say they are and if you relate 100 watts of solar to the current you can draw from your batteries per hour it comes to about 3.5 amps in summer and 2.5 amps in winter. So if you have 300 watts of solar multiply the above hourly usage by 3. Of course this is reduced with every cloud that passes and every layer of dust on your panels.
WHAT BUGS US AT NIGHT
You may recall from an old post (ref it) that we have a lot of problems bug-proofing the van. After a few tests Jo was able to find out exactly where they are getting in. Following the light they hit the fly screen, make their way up into the roller mechanism, then still following the light, into the window frame then into the van from the space between window frame and the wall.
- Getting the blind/screen assembly off the wall is easy but I found that using a lever to prise the assembly away gives more control than just ‘grabbing and reefing’ them off.
- Using a sponge sealing strip around the frame with the sponge a couple of millimetres proud of the frame will seal that gap nicely.
- The biggest gap is between the screen roller and the assembly frame so this needs to be filled with foam also, but you will need to be careful not to create too much pressure against the screen as this will impact on the operation of the screen as it moves up and down.
- Removing the screen roller to fix this sponge means managing the wound up spring inside the screen roller. If you lose control of this spring it will unwind quickly (and noisily) and could cause damage. You need to control the spring not only from unwinding but also from pushing out axially so expect the spring axle to push outwards and brace the end of the spring axle against the framework or you will lose it. In the last photo below you will see that the axle pushes out 50 mm (this is it fully unwound on one that I lost control of). If this happens you just have to guess on how tight to rewind the screen but I would suggest not to over-tighten it.
- I found that using vice-grips gave me better control and I kept hold of the screen while Jo applied the sealing sponge.
- Whether this is successful or not is for another day – but we’re hopeful.
Another little change we’ve made is that we have found some storage cupboards to benefit from extra shelves. I rather like the way this has worked out and it’s really quite simple, so in the photos below I’ll show you what I did.
Another little change we’ve made is that we have found some storage cupboards to benefit from extra shelves.
I rather like the way this has worked out and it’s really quite simple.
The material is all from Bunnings (where else?).
- 7mm ply for the shelves. Allow 2-3mm clearance each side for easy fitting (and to allow for error). Our cupboards are 460 wide so I cut mine at 458 and that worked out well.
- 18mm ‘L’ moulding braces the front and back of the shelves to stop them bowing under weight and provides a lip to stop things sliding off. I just glued these on to the shelf. I cut these 450mm wide allowing 5mm either side for easy fitting.
- 18mm quad forms the shelf supports. I glued and screwed these. Cut them a little shorter to allow for the ‘L’ brackets. I cut mine . To get them level I used an appropriate height support that I knew was parallel and just sat the shelf support on top of that to get the height – worked out fine.
A COOL IMPROVEMENT
We bought a couple of Sirocco fans. They’re not cheap, over $200.00 each but they’re quiet operating and only draw three to four hundred milliamps at full speed. We had thought to mount these on the ceiling above the foot of the bed. But after looong consideration we bowed to reality – getting power to them would have been difficult and there really is not enough support in the ceiling.
So we mounted them on the sides, this is all pretty good. Power on one side came from the TV 12v power outlet and on the other side we took it down through the corner cabinet and into the battery compartment under the seat.
Just a hint on this. Rather than just connect to the battery I installed a 4-way 12V terminal strip, so in the future we just need to connect to this terminal strip rather than meddle with the battery connections. This is important given that the RedArk BMS would need to be reprogrammed if we were to disconnect the battery.
WHO NEEDS A RADIO ANYWAY?
Well, we do; so we have to replace the one we ripped off under a tree. I reckon it was when we were bush-camped on the Darling River, but who knows?
It’s probably a very simple task to replace the radio aerial but I don’t want to mess with the waterproofing on the roof of the van, so I’m getting it fixed by the professionals. Mind you, not all professionals are… so I’ve done a bit of prep work for them.
I checked with the manufacturer and got them to send me the extraction tool to get the radio out of its’ chassis and took the radio out in preparation. I also plan to ‘suggest’ to them that they use the existing radio aerial lead (after cutting off the broken aerial mount) as a draw wire to pull the new aerial cable through from the top. It really should be quite straight-forward – we’ll see.
Back to me, Jo. So our time in Port is coming to an end, and we are getting very excited about getting back on the road. We have a few more bits and pieces to fix up on Chunky Bum, but in the mean time we will continue to enjoy mum’s company and the beautiful scenery and wildlife of Port Macquarie, even though it has rained most of the time we have been here.
See you out there somewhere
On tow and on the go!
