Our Australia trip

Waking up I was nice and warm (smart girl with extra shawl under my blanky) Axel still feeling the remnants of his water escapade, was not warm at all, and tried to warm his hands on me!
Well, I got breakfast in bed out of it.
The morning sun was lovely, it was warming our faces, but not the washing, ah well put it in a bag for the next opportunity to dry.

We set of with loads of firewood and a few specks of gold, on the way to a bush camping near a large dam near Inverell.

This must be fox country, we saw about five dead foxes along the road but no kangaroos whatsoever.
Corrugated dirt road here and there, but all in all not to bad, and the navigator was better at predicting driving time than Axels thumb was lol!
At the entrance of the gate of the camping area there was a sign saying” no dogs allowed” what the..? We found it in a book “bush camping with dogs”!
We rang the owner, no problem, just keep the dog with you so it does not roam around the camping. Phew!
We found out the reason why there are no dogs allowed. We also know now where all the kangaroos of mid north west NSW have gone. Near a kangaroo sanctuary close to Copeton dam! The dam, by the way, is said to be three times the size of Sydney Harbour.

We found a perfect spot, with lake view, fireplace, fish smoking area (as if) and a short walk to hot showers!
AND a washing machine, very ancient, but hey, it worked.
Dotti did an Axel and went involuntary for a swim, Nos spotted a kangaroo and was gone with the wind, luckily he came back when I put my stern “I am the boss” voice on to call him back (he was very timid the rest of the evening).

Axel went for a mountain bike ride, and came back with the washing on his back.

I made dinner while Axel played guitar next to a small fire..yes small..he had his heart set on the heater in the bus, because we, for the first time, have a powered site this night.

Even the washing is standing in the bus near the heater, and the bed is cosy to crawl in to, unlike the night before.
See what the morning will bring.

The next morning the sun was out, the temperature soon rose and the place looked much different. No rain. No screaming. No cold. We canvassed and found a nice spot to park the bus, not too far and close to the river. After several attempts I got the bus perfect only to realize that the side door opened straight into a tree. I had parked the bus facing the wrong way. With Marjo’s help we tried a second attempt and got a perfect setting.

The sun made it really nice and we went out to look at digging our retirement fortune of gold. I guess naivity can be a blessing. When we arrived at the sand riverbank we were greeted by a 1:100 ratio of gold to sand grains. The sand was literally glittering with gold. Unfortunately the gold was so small and flaky that trying to collect it only meant that the flinter thin gold ended up smearing over your hand. A gold speckled hand is nice but not useful other than that we now understand the meaning of a golden handshake.

We managed to find some of the thicker pieces of gold but still only about half a millimeter thick and 2×3 millimeter in size. You would need thousands of those to make any noticeable weight, let alone making a fortune. I guess at some areas there could be larger nuggets but we lost interest.

The area is stunning though, large boulders everywhere and the water cold and in places streaming fast. The temperature of the water I experienced up close. Marjo ventured further with Nossi and returned after half an hour, I meanwhile tried ways to collect the gold slivers quicker and was professionally washing sand, sitting on my hunches, failing miserably. When Marjo returned I got up and apparently my veins decided to supply my legs with fresh blood after having been constricted for some time. With insufficient oversupply of blood my brain cells got starved even more than what is normally the case and I blacked out for a few seconds. I mumbled something and Marjo thought nothing special of that. The hill of sand on which I stood guided me back so that in two stumbling steps I fell backwards in the freezing water and got saturated. If something wakes you up better than freezing water then I don’t want to know about it. I was up in no time and got back to the bus, realizing that I had no keys. Luckily I only found the waterproof camera in my pockets. Marjo followed soon with keys and I changed clothes, hanging the soaked ones to dry in the sun.

After this adventure we lit a fire, found more wood and made a nice big fire to warm me and dry the clothes. Both worked so so, I stayed cold all night, also because with a clear night the temperature dropped to 2 Celcius and also the clothes smelled nice of smoke and were still quite wet on the clothes line.

NOW Axel..I honestly thought you were joking, when you mumbled something and started stumbling toward the waters edge! Sorry!
And yes the river area is stunning,I love the boulders in the water, creating little waterfalls.
On my walk with Nossi, he did a perfect impression of a kangaroo while spotting one across the water.
And a bit later he spotted an echidna,which in turn tried to hide under a rock.
Lucky only it’s bum stuck out,(Nossi was sniffing it) and not it’s face, I think Nossi would have gotten acupuncture otherwise.

Axel also collected firewood to put in the trailer for future campfires. At the last camping a guy commented you should jump on fire wood if you see any!

We both decided that we had seen the mid north NSW coast too many times and not the hinterland. So we decided instead of following the Pacific Highway that it would be good to go and check out Armidale.

In the Camping-with-dogs guide there was a nice camping presented near Uralla, with gold and gemstone fossicking. Rule of thumb measurements (my thumb worked well) made it a three hour trip.
The road was nice, past Bellingen, Ebor and other picturesque places and nice rolling hills. Six hours and 1,000 meter elevation later we arrived at dark near the Uralla Fossicking Area.

It was very dark with the only light coming from cars close to what we assumed was the water with screaming voices from drunk or otherwise excited teenagers. We could only find a small curve from the parking area as stop place and parked the bus, set up and tried to find wood in the now starting rain. This was going to develop quickly to be our most favourite spot. Not.

The fire was struggling, the voices were getting louder and cars kept coming and going. The rain was intermittent and when it became steady, the rain gave in and so did the teenagers. The temperature dropped meanwhile to somewhere around 7 degrees which is cold when you sit outside.

The highlight of the day was that I got lucky that night 🙂

Waking up to….well nothing really. Because we felt like it. The dogs slept like roses, Nossi in front of the passenger seat, where he also travels and Dotti between the seats. Marjo and I on the king size bed in the back. In the background the noise of the highway….or….no….the ocean of course.
I get up to make breakfast, Marjo coffee and sandwiches with cheese, pâté and jam and for me peppermint tea and muesli. We share half an apple. Then back in bed to consume this while reading a book on the iPad, the dogs still slumbering. Marjo gets up, feeds the dogs and walks to the beach. Nossi goes nuts when he sees the sand and runs laps, he seems to have this running laps association with grass and sand. What goes on in a dogs mind will always remain a mystery although I’m sure most of it won’t be rocket science.

Meanwhile I have shaved and cleaned up, collected some firewood, my only planning for the day and made coffee. In the already warm sun we sit and watch and drink coffee. I said before, this could grow on me.

Then we do a repeat and walk with both dogs to the beach, a 1 minute walk. There we kick off our thongs (or toe slippers for non Australians) and walk barefoot on the still wet sand. The dogs run after the tennis ball and each other and run towards the sea until the oncoming water chases them back. We walk around the corner over the rocky breaker and see that it’s low tide. That creates little ponds with warmish water. In one Marjo gets a scare from a large fish (brand unknown) that was more scared from her delicate foot and trashes around to try and hide in the small pond. Nossi is intrigued and investigates. The fish gets even more scared and trashes himself out of the water onto the beach. Now Nos is triumphant and as he does pokes his nose into the fish. Being a softy I can’t let my dog kill a fish and help the poor little fella back into his pond where he clings to the rockwell in the hope that Nossi loses interest. He does when we walk on to give Dotti water therapy. This to activate his back leg since she’s been three legged for the last 2 months or so, avoiding to walk on her arthritis plagues back leg. This therapy consists of slow walking so that she uses the leg and also water movement so she can move it without having to put pressure on it. The idea was to do this in a shallower part of where the sea circles the rocky area. Well that worked only as long as not a big wave decided to come around and swoop Dotti with her. I could barely prevent her from becoming a seal.

In the he afternoon I picked up my guitar again, Marjo had a nap, we planned our next stop and I took my practice kite to the beach. It feels nice to let it soar through the air by moving the handle bar. Soon I have to do the real kite boarding!

Our first day on the road. This could grow on me 🙂
The morning was still busy with emptying the last few things from our house, locking up, feeding the chickens one last time and ‘hey surprise! An egg’ as parting gift from the chickens. While saying goodbye to neighbours we found how many people like to potter around in their pyama’s while unsuspecting visitors.
The neighbourhood will have to endure a week of the roadside throw away stuff to be collected by council but many promised to increase the pile by unwanted gifts, something everyone seems to do and I must admit that I’m guilty of this practice too.

The first time we hooked up the trailer behind the bus everything seems to work. A little puzzle was to try and unlock the perfect fitting padlocks on the 20 litre drums for diesel and water. They fit so well that it is hard to find the keyhole. Ah well, a quest for when we really need them.

Leaving Sydney seemed emotionally difficult so we took the longest possible detour via Coles for some last shopping and a circling visit to the Shell. On the highway in Wahroonga the petrol station is on the other side of the road and only accessible by circling the block twice; once to get access to the petrol station and once more to leave it in the direction we wanted to go.
The bus odometer is set on: 294,350

By then the clouds had parted and we could join the F3 motorway heading north. This road is well known, we regularly take it going to La Manda, our rental vacation home in Smiths Lake (link: La Manda). The road starts with a big hill that normally we drive with 110kph like everyone else. Now we find there’s another category of road users that struggle to go any faster than 40kph and we joined this stream of trucks. The rest of the road also showed that from not being concerned about hills and bends we now feel ourselves part of the trucking community that cares about down shifting up and breaking down hill. We event went sofar that we signaled extended semi-trailers when it was safe to return to the left lane after passing us, one kph faster than we were going and we got rewarded by the blinking left and right indicators.

With two stops in Heatherbrea (we had the McDonalds Sydney Stack for lunch, verdict: not recommended) and a roadside stop we arrived at Kempsey and turned off to Crescent Head. Luckily this is one of Marjo’s regular stops on her annual pilgrimage with Els the air hostess so via a winding road, roadside watching roo’s and the worst corrugated and potholed 5 km road (ok, I admit I’m not used to much) we tried to find the camping in the dark. Arriving at some turnoff I decided not to turn in head first but park our rig (sounds impressive) on the round and walk to see in the pitch dark whether we would not drive straight into the local swamp. Luckily a local stopped and gave instructions after which we arrived at the campsite, parked on the first reasonably looking spot and got out. In no time we had seats out, dog beds, awning and while Marjo looked at food options, I got friendly with a neighbouring camper (a young couple doing the same as us but with a brand new ute converted with sleep-on-fold-out) and begged for his wood. With everything still wet from the weeks of rain dry wood is hard to come by but with his dry wood and some other found woodcuts we managed a small fire that the dogs approved of too.

Not much later, after dinner (yummy beanstew with chicken mince), coffee (with oat and raisin cookies) and beer/wine we hit our beds. Marjo expertly made everything work. Evening wash, all the things you might ever need to go to sleep and wake up and for the dogs a perfect cosy nest in the front of the bus.

All in all a perfect day (a well, we won’t tell that I forgot to lock the trailer and that I left the keys all night in the door of the gas bottle with the door wide open).

Odometer: 294,769

Posted from Crescent Head, New South Wales, Australia.

We had a late start at the Copeton Dam camping. A real shower with real warm water is actually quite nice and also we tried out the kayak which we carry on the trailer that we tow everywhere during our trip. We tied Nossi to a tree as he keeps trying to chase kangaroos and within a minute from leaving him there he chewed through the rope and was standing next to us. Ah well.
Marjo had the first go on the water and Nossi didn’t like it at all, he tried to follow, first with advances in the stone cold water but, being a bit of a wuss, that didn’t succeed. Then he tried to follow along the shore until a kangaroo got his attention. Well Marjo seems to have a lower priority than a kangaroo. Loyalty only goes so far.

We finally packed up and were on the road by midday. First we wanted to go higher up inland, but reading the weather forecast we didn’t want a freezing night (forecast -2). So we decided to go towards Grafton and camp on the only dog friendly bush camping in Boundary Creek Falls.
On the way there we passed Inverell and did shopping, ate a burger with fries :p and stocked up on diesel and water. Water is something scarce; most places we go to have tank water which is darker brown then my white socks after 3 days wearing and not something we want to fill the water tank of the bus with. So when we were taking on diesel at a petrol station where people looked quite healthy and it seemed they were connected to the power grid and the sewer, we trusted that the tap water would be of consumable quality. So I asked the attendant (at small places like Inverell they actually put the nozzle in your tank for you…..unexpected service!) if I could have some water. I’m sure he expected something like “a litre” when he asked “how much”, and I underestimated and said 40 liters or so. He uhm’d and ahhh’d and said: “sorry, the truck is in the way” and I said: “we’ll wait till it goes” and then he tried “also the utes are parked in front” and I countered with: “our hose is long enough”, then his final attempt was “I don’t have the key for the tap” and luckily he got overruled by his colleague who said “just ask for the key when you pay for the fuel”. So we got our water. All 80 liters.

Then we continued on our way to Boundary Creek Falls, almost in free fall, from 1,000 meter elevation down winding roads, some bends so sharp that we could only go 20kph to the dismay of the cars behind us. Luckily there are many rest areas where we could veer of the road to let the cars past.

When we arrived at the turn off for Boundary Creek Falls, again in the dark, we followed the dirt road and were surprised by the sign that we were entering the Boundary National Park. Hmmmm, National Park = no dogs…..the camping guide was pretty clear that this was the only camping on the way to Grafton where dogs were allowed. Continuing on the dirt road we came to the camping ground, pitch dark, no one there, and again pretty clear that it is National Park. Closer inspection of the Camping guide revealed that it is from 2003 and the National Park signs didn’t look much older than a few years……After some discussion, Marjo in the warm bus with the dogs, Axel in the just above freezing cold outside, we decided not to take the risk to camp with dogs in a National park. The same dude that told us to carry lots of firewood also said that getting caught with dogs in a National Park could cost us up to $20,000.

The next option was an overnight stay on a roadside stop and we both decided not to go for that since the road is used mainly by trucks and from the roadside stop we could hear, feel and almost touch trucks coming past.

Then there was Mann River Camping in Jackadgery. A paid camping with shower (yumm again) and power. The nice part of it is the luxury, the downside is that the sites are pretty close to each other and that the dogs can’t walk freely around. The risk was though that it would be closed and the mobile phone had no reception. At 6.05 pm the mobile sounded a message, from Niki….reception! So, soon Marjo was talking to the caretaker who was not too happy with the call. He was in the process of locking up. With all her charms and her sweetest voice she convinced him to stay another half hour. The rest of the trip down the hills was an adventure of tight turns, analyzing every stump on the side of the road as being a stump and luckily not a kangaroo and with a minute to spare we arrived at the camping.

Now we are parked on the Mann River Camping in Jackadgery. Just finished Dutch Kerrie soup with rice and a sandwich and are calling family over VoIP. I got lucky again (with food of course, what were you thinking) and we had Griesmeel as desert (for the non dutch: semolina custard).

Tomorrow the coast!