Adelaide to Coffin Bay

We headed from Adelaide to Port Germaine and the drive was our first taste of seeing beautiful, vast scenery.  We drove alongside the Flinders Ranges where we were surrounded by salt bush and red dirt.  Port Germaine is a very quiet town with a very long pier, one pub, one milk bar and a very strange second hand shop with skeletons in the window and a sign 'I died waiting for customers'.  We went for a walk along the pier at sunset, with a view of the Flinders Ranges in the background.  It would have been very peaceful, however Flynn wanted to ride his plastic bike all the way along, so we enjoyed the scenery with a very loud 'clackety clack' (for about 300 metres)!

The next day we headed to the Mt Remarkable national park for our first experience outside of the comforts of caravan parks.  The camping ground we went to had great facilities with toilets and drinking water, and we relied on gas for the fridge and cooking, and all went to plan!!  It was a very pretty area with plenty of hiking right at our doorstep.  For those of you who know Nick well, it wouldn't surprise you that within about an hour of arriving, we have met most of the people in the campground.  So we shared the camp fire with some new friends and heard about the Eyre Penninsula and decided to take a diversion.  We learnt a lesson about how quickly we can sneak out of the caravan after putting the kids to bed- and we need to wait for Flynn's snores to start before departure; I went to check on Flynn about 20mins later and he was having a party in the pantry with a bare bum!  (Loose leaf tea seems to be a very fun thing to a two year old.)

We had a quick stopover at a pretty place called Arnos Bay to recharge phones, wash clothes and shower, then we headed to the Port Lincoln national park.  We had a fantastic time there with a few nights all by ourselves in the camp ground.  We were camped right near a cute little beach where pelicans fished in the morning, there were lots of kangaroos and emus, and we had beautiful clear nights and the stars were amazing.  Flynn loved chasing the waves and as he is telling everything and everyone to 'go away' at the moment, he was telling the waves to 'go away'.  Aidan loved crawling around in the sand and ate his fair share of sand and seaweed.  We christened our new camp oven with a roast lamb which we cooked for 3 hours in some coals, and it was delicious.  We have met a lovely family, Ross, Kristy and their three sons, and have had a chance to catch up with them at Port Lincoln and are heading to Coffin Bay and hope to see them again.

We arrived in Coffin Bay today and it is absoutlely beautiful.  It reminds me a bit of Metung in Gippsland but it has a big mountain looking over still, clear water.  There are lots of fishermen here, apparently it is good fishing.  We treated ourselves to fish and chips for dinner and the boys needed no encouragement to eat their dinner tonight, it was like feeding time at the zoo.  Aidan who had already had a big bowl of home made veggies proceeded to eat chips, some potato cake and some fish.  I don't think this is a great thing for a little bub but there is no excluding him from our dinner anymore!

Daylesford to Adelaide

Well we left Daylesford on a very cold and wet morning and it seems to be taking us so long to pack everything up still.  Poor Nick was drenched by the time we got on the road.  We were on our way to Halls Gap, but not without one more encounter with the grumpy caravan park owner.  We had somehow not hitched the van on properly (even though we both double checked) and he came to the rescue before anything untoward could happen.  Needless to say we check the hitching, pull forward a bit and check again now!  He may be grumpy but we were happy he is also observant!  The journey was otherwise uneventful, apart from Flynn inventing his way of saying 'are we there yet' which is 'play now please'.  We heard that a few times along the way.

Our first night in Halls Gap and it was my birthday, so we went to the local pub for dinner, which was lovely.  There was a big open fire burning, a kids room,  and it was a really relaxed dinner.  The next morning we had two very large kangaroos come very close to the caravan which Flynn loved.  Nick perhaps got a little close and may have got a bit of a fright when it looked like one of them was about to let him know to back off!  Always after a laugh, Nick then proceeded to impersonate a kangaroo and started hopping across the caravan park; he was still wearing his thermals from the night before- where was the camera?


We took Flynn on his first real bushwalk to Clematis Falls.  Not sure that he liked it that much as we dragged him away from playing football with some kids, and it was raining a bit!  He did seem to like the height at the top and was quite interested in the waterfall.  I also got to have some time to myself and walked up Mt Boronia, which had some really nice rocky outcrops and views over Halls Gap and in the other direction over farm land.

We took two nights to get to Adelaide, staying in Kaniva and Murray Bridge.  I drove into Adelaide and found it to be a bit hairy- such a long steep hill and to make things worse, half way down we seemed to have lost lights and blinkers.  We made it to the caravan park and fixed the problem pretty easily, but I needed a cuppa to calm my nerves!!

We had a fantastic few days in Adelaide.  Nicks mum Trish and her friend Heather met us for three nights.  We had a trip out to the Barossa, and visited three wineries and had lunch at Maggie Beers.  They were filming the day we were there, but only Heather was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of Maggie.  It was great to see her kitchen and we had one of her picnic baskets for lunch with some pheasent pie (even me being pretty unadventurous with meat found it delicious).  I was also lucky enough to have a girls day out and we went to the national art gallery and out to lunch to the Botanical Gardens.

Trish and Heather are wonderful with the boys, and it was lovely for them to be able to spend a few days with them.  On our final day, Trish offered to look after the boys while we packed up.  What she didnt realise was that Flynn also invited all of his friends at the caravan park along too.  Being a school teacher, Trish had all the children at the caravan park sitting at the table having an art class whilst Nick and I packed the van.  So the farewell was a bit teary, but we are looking forward to their next visit, wherever that may be.

Melbourne to Daylesford

First week on the road (well sort of) and as expected, things have not really gone to plan.  Packing up the house and organising everything has been pretty stressful.  We have had a bit of a shaky start, but after one week away, Nick and I are very excited to be where we are, we are all ready for the trip to begin in earnest!
But let me tell you where we began.  Monday morning and we thought we were prepared to pack the last few things into the car, finish the cleaning and off we go.  Well, the last few bits and pieces took hours!  Flynn was not a happy kid and time was ticking by before the new tenants came knocking on the door!  Tensions were high and we were both exhausted after being up late scrubbing the kitchen and bathroom.  We were about an hour late to depart, but we got there in the end.  I was in the front passenger seat with a mountain of stuff under foot, the back seat was the same, as was the caravan.  We had resorted to just throwing everything in, and we were in an absolute pickle!  We literally got into the car and looked at each other and said 'where to now'.  So a few phone calls and off we went; about 20 kms down the road to Warrandyte- thats right!  Warrandyte!  A last minute dental appointment and Nick was told he needed a root canal- 2 procedures a week apart.  So we were out of the house, but didn't want to go too far from Melbourne.  It actually was a great opportunity to test the van out properly.  And we discovered a few issues- mainly that Aidan hated his bed and Flynn was the only one having a decent sleep for a few nights until we sorted that one out.
We stayed in Warrandyte a few nights, long enough to sort out the mess we had created when we left home.  Then it was off to Daylesford.  Packing up that morning we broke the awning and luckily, we were able to have it fixed on the way, but it delayed us a little.  Then a stop to Bunnings, feed the kids and pick up some essentials that we didn't have.  Then a few other jobs- pick up my bike then to Beaurepairs to have some hub caps fitted to the caravan.  Phew!  5PM and we weren't even on the freeway yet.  So we held the boys off until Bacchus Marsh where we all needed to stop to have dinner, then off again to Daylesford with the boys soundly asleep.  We arrived at about 8 PM, to a fairly grumpy caravan park owner who wasn't impressed that we were novice caravaners, which meant he had to direct us into the spot.  Im glad Nick was driving because the instructions on which direction to steer the car were very military like.  Saying this he kindly helped us to unhitch the van.  He was very unimpressed when we couldn't find our torch and I produced a mini mag light that was almost flat about 10 minutes too late.  Luckily he had his huge, industrial strength spot light torch for us to borrow.  Ok, we have learnt that lesson!  And thank goodness we stopped at Bunnings for those few essentials- we needed them and proudly produced them when instructed by caravan park owner!
Daylesford is beautiful at this time of the year with the trees changing colour and Flynn has loved playing with the leaves that have fallen.  We have had a lovely time in Daylesford, with a visit from Matt and Jan, and two dinners with Kristy and Danny at their cosy, warm house out of town.  Nick treated me to a facial and massage for Mothers Day.  We have had a taste of meeting some lovely people who are also travelling- Hi to Mick and Jo and their two gorgeous little girls.  Flynn has played with lots of different kids already and had a fantastic day riding bikes with two older boys- he came back with mud from head to toe and in awe of the big boys!
We took a drive out to Malmsbury and had one of their famous vanilla slices- delicious.  We popped into the post office and with no one around decided to put Aidan onto the scales as he hasn't been weighed for a bit.  Our big boy- almost 9 months is 10.8 kgs (and just started proper crawling).  Of course we got sprung weighing him and the postie proceeded to quote us $15.20 for postage back to Melbourne.  So nanna Trishy, if you miss the boys there are options!  And a big thank you to Trishy for the heater and chicken soup care package!  It is very cold in Daylesford, but cosy in our little van!
Thats all for now, off we head to the Grampians for some more adventures.