Australian Walkabout

After years of planning, debating, and dreaming, we are finally ready to hitch up the van and hit the road.

But where or where shall we go?

We didn’t get too far in those first two weeks, it was just a bit of a shake-down trip. We split our time between caravan parks and free parks, and although I’ll be the first to admit having power and ample water is great, I still prefer the free camps. I mean, you can’t experience sights like these in a caravan park.

So, where did we go? Well, we left Brisbane at nine in the morning and headed towards Kingaroy. We made it as far as the Harland Park Rest area. This means that on our first day of travel we were on the road for three and a half hours, minus an hour for a lunch break, and covered a massive one hundred and fifty kilometers. What can I say? We’re not in a hurry to go anywhere.

Our first night in the van could have been our last. It freezing cold. I swear we could have died of hyperthermia. Ok, perhaps it wasn’t quite that cold, but even with a heavy quilt and two blankets, we shivered through the night. We had very little sleep but woke up to a beautiful foggy morning: It was hard to wipe the smiles off our faces. The Helium filled balloons with “Happy Retirement” emblazoned all over them may have had something to do with that.

At Harland Park we were greeted by a very friendly Rooster, named Rodney. He and Hugo hit it off right from the start, an ample supply of rice bubbles and oats might have somting to do with that.

From there we hot-tailed it to Kingaroy to have morning tea with our family. After that, on to another free-camp spot at Wooroolin, (link to review) a mere twenty-minute drive from Kingaroy (probably only ten minutes for non-retirees). We figured we had done enough driving for the day and decided to stay there for two nights … it’s a tough life.

This brings us to day four and our first official caravan park stay at Maryborough where we are enjoying power, long hot showers, and grown-up sized toilets.

So, after the first four days, what went wrong?

• Peter almost wiped out a tree and gave us our first Tiger Stripes as we left home.
• We nearly froze to death on the first night and drove off next the day with a cupboard open.  Had a big mess to clean up when we stopped.
• Drove a short distance with the step down, no damage.
• Forgot to switch a few things off before driving, but nothing blew up.
• Nearly broke the awning by having one leg down to the ground the other still attached to the van, and we used one end as a clothesline anchor.
• Peter cracked his head on the awning arm.
• I fell out of the Ranger, (don’t ask).
• And we learnt that country roads cause things to bounce off the benches and spread all over the caravan floor.

All in all, not too bad for a couple of newbies.

Heading nowhere real slow.