3rd December 2012
When Merry went to close up the chickens for the
night there were only two and lot of scattered feathers, so the third chicken
had been taken by something. We suspect
it was a neighbours’ dog as Merry had seen two dogs near the house about half
an hour earlier but thought she had successfully shooed them off.
We drove out to Salonika Beach to say farewell to
Ankie as she is heading of to Sydney in a couple of days time and we will have
left before she returns. We also took
Foxy for a walk on the beach where we enjoyed the refreshing sea breeze as it
was a fairly hot day.
6th December 2012
Mark and Jeane are due back this afternoon.
8th December 2012
Jeane has discovered
from a neighbour that it was the dogs that Merry had seen on the property and
that they are now aware of whose chicken arrived on their door step.
17th December 2012
Along time between updates but little of interest
has happened as Barry is still not allowed to do anything strenuous, so other
than odd trips into Mackay most of the activity has been bird watching. There
is in excess of 26 different bird species that stop for drinks plus several
that fly straight through and hawks that circle overhead, especially during the
sugar cane cutting season that has just finished. Barry has assisted Mark with erecting the
last of the fencing on the property, by holding things in place without
lifting, to keep out any other dogs.
Mark has made up a rectangular frame on corner legs to Barry’s
specifications, which now sits in the caravan boot with the generator strapped
on top. This now means that neither of
us is required to lift it out of the boot to run it. This avoids lifting it up and over the 20cm
lip of the boot whilst leaning over part of the ‘A’ frame. We have also modified a short piece of curved
tube to fit over the exhaust pipe and point outwards away from the van. It also provides a large area of storage
space under the frame that was not available before.
We started packing up to final leave Sarina
tomorrow, subject to the specialist’s okay this morning, as we don’t expect any
problems. If there are and if it is not
urgent, it will become a New South Wales or Canberra doctors’ problem.
18th December 2012
We drove to Mackay today to visit Barry’s specialist
who gave us the better news than we expected as we had determined that he would
give us the okay to go on our way
subject to not overdoing the heavy lift (with no specific weight in mind, but simply
don’t stain). He also informed us that as
result of the recent operation, Barry’s PSA reading was now 3.1 or effectively
about half the accepted normal value for his age group. Considering that since his first blood test
reading, his PSA value fluctuated from 7.1 to 7.8 with several wild trips into
double figures. The last pre-operation
value was 14 along with an enlarged, full bladder that instigated the urgent
action.
19th December 2012
So all is well, at least for a while, and we are
underway again. We stopped at midday for
a lunch break in a rather lovely park on the outskirts of Rockhampton which
included a lake and three small waterfalls.
We stopped overnight at Biloela where we had to replace the water inlet nozzle
on the side of the van as the non-return valve decided to not let us have any
water. This is the second replacement.
20th December 2012
We continued on our way for another 400kms, or so,
and stopped overnight at a free camp about 5km s from the small township of
Bowenville. It is a large very quite
camp area with only a few other couples using it at present. Tomorrow will be a relatively short trip to
Tenterfield which is just over the border into New South Wales.
21st December 2012
Today’s trip was not as long as the previous two
days but has been more eventful with some lunatic drivers and atrocious road
surfaces despite being so-called highways.
Some stretches were no better than bush tracks with bitumen laid over
the dirt but despite that we arrived in Tenterfield in time to stop and have a
look around the town. We gave Foxy and
ourselves a walk in a pleasant but not spectacular park and then checked out a
huge cork tree, a saddlery shop where
the now deceased singer Peter Allen’s grandfather was the saddler, about
whom the song ‘Tenterfield Saddler’ was written. Peter Allen was born in Tenterfield. The other claims to fame are the Federation
speech by Sir Henry Parkes at the School of Art and Major JF Thomas who
defended Breaker Morant up until he was executed. We parked up in the afternoon at Bluff Rock
free camp spot about 11kms south of Tenterfield. According to the story, many moons ago, the
white population associated with Bolivia Station objected to the local
aborigines stealing their sheep, so forcibly drove them to Bluff Rock and over
the edge.
22nd December 2012
We are now well and truly into NSW with much
improved roads proving that much more Federal money is available to NSW than
anywhere else. We are now in Tamworth,
famous for the ‘Hippie’ communes that sprung up in the area as a result of the
first drug induced country music festival.
The Festival is still an annual event but the hippies have died of drug
overdoses or finally grew up. On the way
we passed round the edge of the lovely town of Glen Innes that appeared to have
some grand old buildings. Even the
highway had a beautifully tended central median strip. Later, we stopped in Guyra for lunch. We have decided to return to both towns for a
proper look as driving through them only wets the appetite, and Glen Innes has
some waterfalls in the area, which you would expect in mountainous country. Guyra boasts to have the highest caravan park
in Australia at about 4200 feet above sea level.
At Tamworth we were going to free camp but the place
we chose turned out to be 35kms out of town and not so inviting. We had chosen it as it offered power at a
small cost but on arrival were told there are only two powered sites and both
are booked to the end of January, but they didn’t mention that when we phoned
in advance, so we returned to Town and a caravan park making it more convenient
for looking at the town tomorrow. The
alternate free camp is much further out of town which meant another $45 worth
fuel to run back and forth to look at the town.
The two nights at the caravan park cost $50 and gave us more time
without a lot of driving.
23rd December 2012
Our first point of interest was the Oxley Lookout
which was a well laid out picnic area with a good view over the town, which is
much larger than we thought. We then
visited the guitar shaped visitors centre to wander around the ‘Walk a Country
Mile’ museum explaining the history of the festival and the numerous
performers, some of which became relatively famous after winning Golden Guitar
Awards.
We then drove out to the ‘Big Golden
Guitar’ wax works to see the wax models of some of the more successful singers,
such as Slim Dusty. This was followed by
a drive around town which ended in Centenary Park and the War Memorial with a
tribute to the Light Horse Infantry and in particular the horses, of which only
one out of half a million actually returned to Australia.
24th December 2012
We have arrived at our pre booked caravan park
outside of Newcastle. Actually rather too far out of Newcastle and is not a
particularly inspiring caravan park, but we are stuck with it.
On this section of the journey we called into
Wallabadah, which had been our second choice for the Tamworth free camp. It was a long way out but a very beautiful
spot alongside the First Fleet Memorial Gardens. They are really attractive gardens with a
large board listing everyone that travelled out here, both voluntary and as
officers, and those that make it. Each
ship has its own section of the garden with headstones listing their passengers
and a sail shaped board explaining it journey and troubles encountered. A smaller section at the rear of the garden
did the same for the Second Fleet. It
appeared to have once been a caravan site as it still had taps and power poles
but was not available for camping use.
The camping area was outside the gardens near the creek without power
but water was available. We stopped
later on for lunch near a small township that offered a Vietnam War Memorial rest
stop that was almost impossible to get into with a caravan, but we managed.
25th December 2012
The park is fairly empty and those people that are
here are kept themselves to themselves, so we had a very quiet Christmas day that
included a traditional Christmas dinner.
The weather was not so traditional from our point of view with rain on
and off all day plus thunder and lightning.
26th December 2012
We should have posted this blog yesterday to wish
those that actually read it a Merry Christmas but it didn’t happen, however, we
hope you had one and that you have a happy New Year. The weather is slightly better but not good
enough to visit Newcastle so that will have to wait for another day. If it doesn’t rain Barry will probably
attempt to replace the fuel level sender in the car. The current one seems to have two options, tell
the truth or read approximately a quarter of a tank low. When it reads low we have to assume that it
is telling the truth but may have a heap more fuel than it shows rather assume
it is low and discover it is telling the truth and run the risk of being caught
out. We carry a 20 litre jerry can of
fuel so will never actually run out but it is not always possible to pull off
the highway to put that fuel in. The
problem with changing the sender unit is the need to empty the rear of the car including
the 56 litre water tank, and then removing the roller draws in order to gain
access to the plate in the floor to get to the top of the tank. It will be good to get it done and not have
guess how the fuel system is behaving.
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