The Beginning - April 05

The Hire Camper Van - never again!! We arrived Brisbane and pickup a Hire Camper Van for 6 weeks, this was to be an introduction for Sue to Living on the road. How ever, a camper van requires things called caravan parks, water, electricity, toilets & showers. Plus they jam you in on top of one another – no fun. Having a prior booking for the camper van we were committed. Oh! one small detail, we were supposed to have been heading to Cairns, But_____ Meanwhile – a week before we departed Thailand, a Bushtracker caravan and vehicle came on the market via the internet. To cut a long story short we brought the units. Complete includes, GPS, EPIRB, Satellite phone, full vehicle recover gears, mods by the hand full on the vehicle, and a state of the art off road caravan, complete with built-in coffee machine. (Kleenmaid). Thus we only survived four weeks in the camper, the fridge did not work for the 1st week with promises to fix, ended up changing out the camper in Sydney when we viewed the Bushtracker and vehicle. Departing Sydney for three weeks, we headed back up the coast via the New England Hwy to the Sunshine Coast.

Camped at Copeton State Water Park near Inverell in NSW, a great spot with stacks of wild life. This is the location for the BOGGERS Rally in September 05.

Sue got busy with some x-stitch with the Roo's looking on.

Meanwhile I got busy getting a roaring fire going to burn some pig chops and roasted pumpkin.

Finally the day arrived to live in a real camper, 5 star to boot. Mark spent 3 days with us going over all the features, plus setting up the annex and hooking up the van, along with some driving practice before we hit the road SOLO!

All in all we had a great time on the road minus the caravan parks, hence our preference for state parks etc.

A laughing Kookaburra was our alarm clock , not that we needed one at 0430hrs, that's early even for us/ me.

The 2nd of May we were also "LAUGHING" and off SOLO to Braidwood for some 4 X 4 and towing training. Yep, I needed the training, having never towed anything bigger than a 4 x 4 trailer and a Hobie Cat. Oh! and an over loaded trailer with my mate Trudge heading to Kalbarri, one year way back when.

See you on our next BLOG.

Cheers