64 down, how many more to go?

Travels, part 1-Melbourne to the Fleurieu, with a side trip to Queensland.

  I’ve realised I haven’t shared any pictures of our travels at all. Some people must suspect we never actually went anywhere. So here’s the gist of it, as quickly as possible. This covers last July-September

First up, Melbourne to the in-laws, and a trip up Mt Donna Buang for the ‘snow’. We timed it badly, but our Queenslander children were still quite impressed.

After watching her nanna and I start a granny squares rug (my long, ongoing travel project) Oods mastered it and began her own. Not bad for a seven year old!

Most of our time was spent inside-it was July, and cold, and the husband worked for much of the time. Then our property SOLD (I still can’t quite believe it), we bought an awesome car and drove back up to the property to finish it all up.

 

With no gas, a solar system that didn’t work, and a snake skin hanging from the ceiling things were even more primitive than when we lived there. But we tidied it up, fixed a few things and packed what remained. When it got too much, a few days at the beach sorted us out.

Then with all done, we went to Lismore (just to check it out) with our very……….us load on the back of the mung bean (as we christened the green, rounded car). Yes that is a chook house, with a chook dome on the roof. The nesting boxes made excellent food storage for the trip.

We decided Lismore was OK but had to give the job offer in Melbourne serious consideration. So off down the gorgeous but frosty New England highway we went to Melbourne again.

The husband began working, I began looking for a rental (no-one rang us back for an inspection. Not one.) and the kids slowly started to fall apart. When Frosty started to wet himself regularly and ignore his daddy (formerly light of his life, to be barnacled onto at every opportunity) we decided a qualification isn’t worth that right now. We have plenty of time, it’s not like we’re approaching middle age or anything, so family can take priority now.

Plus, the husband was having kittens at the thought of having to face this every day. My poor bumpkin isn’t cut out for inner-city life (and neither am I).

So we went on Puffing Billy.

And to Sovereign Hill. Below is lolly making.

We liked the gardens and housing. (Jealous! JEALOUS!)

While the girls made moony eyes at the horses. They were extremely impressed with their carriage ride.

My workers got into gold panning with gusto, convinced they were going to strike it rich-unfortunately not. As an aside, does every former Victorian schoolkid remember doing this on camp?!?!?!

This is about the time we decided to go travelling, as we couldn’t work out what else to do or where else to move to, so in between getting attacked by too-tame cockatoos at Kallista and doing the family rounds, the husband welded up a big cage and turned our trailer into a box trailer, we packed what we needed and hid the rest in the in-laws shed, and took off along the south-west coast. Mostly because we hadn’t been that way, and because we had no interest in moving there there was no ulterior motive!

First stop, Kennett river. Lovely beach, pity about the exorbitant caravan park.

Then the fantastic Blanket Bay, on Cape Otway. Which is FREE! As we subscribe the the ‘buy it when we need it’ philosophy we had no chairs, or lighting, but we got by pretty easily. We did, however, have shovels, and managed to re-route the creek flowing across the beach.

 

The leeches decided Shorty was extremely tasty…………

 

……..but the kids weren’t so impressed with my first attempt at camp oven damper. The inside was good!

      

There were koalas everywhere-seriously, by the time we left they were a bit ho-hum. Yawn, another koala? We also spotted rufous wallabies and an echidna.

Then time to leave Blanket Bay and head along the coast. There’s something called the Twelve Apostles there. Seriously, it’s magnificent along that stretch. The reality makes the photos look like nothing (especially my crappy pics ). And the formations go for miles…….definitely somewhere i’d like to explore more, in better weather.

 

A stop at Dartmoor amid the carved trees for lunch.

Ogling wind turbines!

  Then it was across the SA border……..and quarantine. Silly us thought that if our plants could have been sent to SA we could take them there, but no. I couldn’t bear to throw them in the pit so labelled them, begging someone to take them back to Victoria and plant them. Other travellers said they weren’t there a few hours later, so here’s hoping someone was happy to find $150 worth of berries, potatoes and crowns. Sob.

   

Mount Gambier, and the Umpherston sinkhole by day…………..

  And night, feeding the possums that live in the sinkhole.

 

And the Blue Lake-would you believe we knew absolutely nothing about this area before we reached it? I’d never heard of any Blue Lake.

Then onto Naracoorte to check out the World Heritage caves and megafauna remains-this was where our first wind troubles appeared, and we had to pack up and fork out for a cabin rather than sleep in this.

The caves were truly spectacular, and I look forward to going back and doing ALL of them soon!

Then a rather too-big driving day to Normanville, on the Fleurieu Peninsula, south of Adelaide. Picked completely at random from an accommodation directory. We camped just behind the dunes, and bonus! Another creek to dam! Out came the shovels again.

And we found the eggs of an endangered plover.

 

  We also checked out the whaling museum at Victor Harbour, among other things, and that is where the camera finally decided to die, after months of not zooming and having to be smacked to turn on (let no-one say we are wasteful).

  We were getting heartily sick of the cold by now-we were in bed by seven each night because it was simply too cold to do anything else. September in a tent in the south is not exactly comfortable. So we decided to head generally north and see where that took us.

Quitting everyday fun

  This comment on a sort of unrelated post on the Camp Creek blog got me thinking recently-

It's a sad comment on our times that we trust our own feelings about things so little. Almost by definition, anything people, especially kids, like a lot is suspect. I had a colleague a while back who kept giving things up because he thought he was addicted to them. His evidence? He wanted more of them. It wasn't a mindset that allowed for the simple fact of pleasure--the notion that it is natural to want to do things you like.

  I could be defined as just such a killjoy, I suppose. I’ve stopped drinking alcohol, don’t have a TV and choose not to have the internet connected in my house. I’m currently even quitting my tea drinking habit. All of this has been because i’ve been ‘addicted’ to each of them in some way-and yes, derived pleasure from them.

  However, the pleasure of each wasn’t real pleasure, hence the quitting. I adore sewing and reading, and have no intention of ever giving either up. But the internet, with its time-sucking, surreal world-yes, I needed to stop that, as much as I mostly enjoyed it. It interfered too much with my real life, and therefore was detrimental to happiness overall. I don’t like anything having a hold over me, and affecting my moods, hence calling a halt to the tea (caffeine and sugar) and alcohol. TV is just crap (and I had to de-zombie the husband, he freely admits that).

  But whereas quitting something universally accepted to be bad, such as heroin, is seen only a good thing, quitting the above is seen as……well, a bit silly. And obviously the work of a boring person. TV, internet, alcohol and tea drinking are completely accepted, to the point where it is socially acceptable (and normal) to spend all your waking hours doing something involving at least one of the above. And for people who do spend all their time involved in them, it is a completely foreign concept to quit. QUIT? But then how would I remain socially connected, if I didn’t have constant Facebook/email connection? How would I relax and have fun without alcohol? AND HOW WOULD I KEEP UP WITH MASTERCHEF?

  It is somewhat socially exclusive-both the husband and I have been out and had absolutely nothing to contribute to the conversation, because it’s all been about TV and movies. Non-drinking is acceptable for a woman, but an Australian man? Freak!

  Ah well-I feel much, much better without any of my addictions, whether others understand them as that or not. And maybe I should just use the husbands response to peoples incredulous questions of just what exactly he does with his time……

  “Have LOTS of sex” (snort!)

House time

  After over seven months of living in a tent, with small stretches gatecrashing other people’s houses, we are in our own (rented) house. It is totally awesome. Lights! Hot running water! Protection from the wind and rain and sun! And we haven’t even got any stuff in here yet-but handwashing inside in a laundry tub is so infinitely easier than outside in a plastic container.

  We saw lots of stuff-some of it was awesome, some a let-down, some surprising. We drove over 35,000kms, well and truly destroying any benefit of our six months of car-free living. We met many people, some of whom have hung around as long-term friends. Two tents were destroyed by overuse, and I don’t think I ever want to camp again. I was well and truly over it before we stopped, and it will take a while to lose that attitude.

  Right now I am being Housewife of the Year-keeping the house spotless, cooking endlessly, and helping the kids adjust to normal life again, and life without their much-adored daddy around full time. Travelling was both good and bad for them, and we’re working on the bad (like table manners, which disappeared somewhere around Alice Springs). I’m also enjoying our own company-travelling means you’re thrown into close proximity with many people all day, every day, and live your life observed by many. As a fairly independent, reclusive person this has been hard to deal with, and i’m revelling in privacy. I imagine my domestic goddess stage will last until our stuff gets here and I unpack my sewing gear, which i’m dying to use. Then the children and house can return to their normal state of benign neglect.

  I am now a South Australian, which i’m lukewarm about. The state itself is fantastic in terms of environmental measures, small farming and education, but the weather is shit. I believe those two are correlated, in that the worse the weather the more the government has to provide incentives to live there (look at Queensland-fantastic weather, shit everything else). The Husband is beginning a new career, here is the best place to do that, so for now i’m wearing my winter woolies in February and wondering exactly how much clothing i’ll need in July………….

  And that’s about as much introspection as you’ll get from me right now-another week of sleep top-up and I should be back to full speed.

Homeless and wandering

  So. We took off for our 'holiday', planning to move back to our property and put a huge effort into selling it, while doing some travelling and searching out a new place to live. Then, it sold. And threw us out completely. Since buying our car less than six weeks ago we've driven over 6000kms-back up to the property, finishing up there, back to Melbourne via northern NSW and everything in between. There's been two deaths in our extended family, a Melbourne job offer we've agonised over and just rejected, and lots more in between. We are tired. And it's looking like we're about to go off and do the travelling without the benefit of a house to go back to and recoup, or half of our camping gear or our roofracks-they're in storage.

But, it's all in the attitude. We have the opportunity to find somewhere where we really fit in, where we're not the oddities of the area. Just being in places where there's been vegetarian take-away and dreadlocks has been exhilarating-look! They're like us! Handmade markets that actually have inventive handmade stuff, gorgeous beaches and bush and creeks to swim in are all out there-time to learn how to holiday and actually enjoy some of it, instead of driving through to the next destination.

If you have any recommendations of beautiful places to go along the east coast, bring them on!

Homeschool snapshot-codes and mysteries

  Cracking the code in Graham Base’s Enigma.

Catapulting ourselves back into impulsiveness

  We used to be cool. Cool as in, waking up on a perfectly normal day and deciding it was time for a holiday. Throwing camping gear, and kids, and clothes into the car and being on our way by 10am. (Deciding to move back to Melbourne from Cairns, and packing the house, putting it on the market and being gone in 36 hours was the pinnacle of impulsiveness. And a major fuck-up-we were back six months later, minus our gorgeous Queenslander, which predictably sold immediately).

  Over the last few years we’ve become boring. More than boring-beige. A combination of an unreliable car, five rather young children and debt on two properties stopped us doing much that could be called exciting. We have been stagnating in a pool of boringness, and it’s showing. Neither of us are much suited for a predictable life, and when the biggest decision of the day is what to have for dinner………well, lets just say I don’t cope very well with that. Obsessive working works well to a point, but I have to snap sometimes.

  Result-notice given to move out, moving truck booked to dump our stuff at the property, bus booked to Brisbane, plane booked to Melbourne. Not bad for an afternoons work. We have less than a fortnight to pack everything we own, get it on and off a hire truck, clean this place and be gone. It’s at least five times longer than we’ve had any other time, so it should be a breeze.

  And I already feel as though I can breathe again.