Our Aussie Adventures

It was like a roller coaster ride this weeks, with a series of buoyant highs and depressingly low lows.

The first high was on Wednesday when the money for the Patrol came through, giving our bank balance a healthy kick, albeit for a very short time. It’s later today when I have to go into the bank and transfer it all, plus a bit more, back out of our account, into the Trucks ‘N’ Toys coffers to pay for the new truck.

Back to Wednesday though, with the money in the bank, I spent the rest of the day sitting around waiting for someone to actually come and collect the Patrol. You would have thought that having handed over the cold hard cash, that they would have been in a bit of a hurry to pick it up. But no, I waited literally all day, only for the car carrier to turn up at almost 5:30. I’d about given up. I almost shed a tear as it rolled out of the driveway for the last time. I didn’t expect it to be a sad moment, but it was. I did enjoy the Patrol and now I just have to hope I have made the right decision to replace it.

Of course, that did give me the whole day to work on further travel plans, which whilst progressing nicely, still leaves a ton of work to be done. Thus far, we have our itinerary pretty much figured out, as well as a list of Vets along our route. We are about a quarter of the way through making a list of places to park the van each night, and I haven’t even started to work out a budget. Truth be told, I’m sticking my head in the sand somewhat on that one, because I’d rather not know.

I also spent some of  Wednesday shooting emails back and forth to the guys at Trucks ‘N’ Toys, about the truck, and excitingly it will be ready to go by next week. I can’t wait to get in it and drive, which will be happening next Wednesday. My flight up to Sydney is booked for Wednesday morning, so the plan is for me to pick it up, then drive on home. I should be back by Thursday night. That means a whole week of taking to the paths on a push bike, or bumming rides from whoever will listen, until I pick the beast up.

So that was Wednesday. Thursday on the other hand was a low day. I can’t really put my finger on it. A mixture of getting too little sleep, having to work, worrying about Bethany and just letting the enormity of the tasks that still need to be completed over whelm me. When I think back now though, the most stressful tasks are the ones I don’t have a whole lot of control over. The bits and pieces that I need to rely on others for. I think that is the key. I know where I am at with my planning, but to be calling companies to get work done and being told that jobs will take 3 times longer than expected. That’s a hard pill to swallow.

We also found out that the condition from which Bethany is suffering is most likely a birth defect that may or may not be progressing. There is no way of telling until we get some comparison tests done in a couple of months time, but in any case it is not something that is able to be treated. It wasn’t terrible news, but wasn’t the best news either. So after a night of sullenness and sulking, Rebecca and I spoke over my worries and we put a few plans into place to get everything done on time. Fingers crossed now that they come to fruition how I hope.

Part of that was taking Friday out, and using it to de-stress. A round of golf with mates in the morning, where I played a great game (for me). 60, off the stick! Just don’t let on that we only played 9 holes!!! That was followed by a lovely lunch with the guys and a quiet night at home, and a great nights sleep. Was just the ticket. By Saturday I was ready to take on the world again. Or at the very least tackle Australia.

That brings us to today, Monday, which is a bit of a 50/50 day. I don’t know whether to be elated that I’m going to pay off the new truck, or scared that I’m about to withdraw the bulk of our savings to do it.

On a final note, Rebecca has at last written a little blurb to go onto the ‘Meet Rebecca’ page, which has been updated and we now have our own domain name. With, I think (hope), all of the bugs worked out, we can now be found at: myramblingtales.com

Until next time, stay safe, have fun and don’t forget to write.

One enormous hurdle was overcome this week. I’ve been chewing my finger nails for weeks, ever since I signed up for the new tow vehicle. Due to its weight, it needs to be registered as a truck, and I therefore need a truck licence to be able to drive it. So, it’s been an almost constant source of worry as to whether or not I would be successful in obtaining said licence.

Friday was the day though, and after a fair bit of study during the week, I needn’t have worried. I breezed through both the theory test and the drive test. What a relief it was to get that out of the way. I’m now a fully fledged truck drivin’ man. Well, as fully fledged as one can be with a light rigid truck licence, which only covers me for little trucks weighing up to 8 tonnes. I now just need to make arrangements to actually collect the new beast.

Oh, that reminds me, after a slight hiccup on collection, my parcel of pieces made it up to Sydney safe and sound. The bits I sent up have to be fitted before I can collect the truck, so I’m leaving my fingers and toes crossed, hoping that it’s not too long before I get the call to say that it’s ready to roll. The plan at this stage is a quick flight north and then a solo road trip home. Can’t wait!!!

Also coming along great guns this week was the necessary planning. Again, Bec has been putting in more than her fair share of the hours, spending a four day long weekend cooped up at home, looking after the pooches, pounding the keyboard and trawling the internet. She has come up with some cracker places to visit. Then, for the first time since we really began to seriously plan the trip, we sat down together today and nutted out a pretty strict itinerary. We literally spent hours, going over our intended route, planning how long we should be spending at each of the major stops, and deciding where those major stops ought to be. Surprisingly, we did this with only a very minimal amount of yelling at each other. Actually, I wouldn’t even call it yelling. More of a robust debate.

As much as we want to be able to keep our plans fluid while on the road, there are certain things that are going to have to be booked well before we leave. Thus, a laminated planner and white board marker were put to good use as we plotted our path around the country. Scarily, once completed and laid out, it didn’t look particularly epic. Sure, we’ve amassed a mountain of notes about where we want to go, what we want to see, what we can afford to miss, what we must absolutely do, but laid out on a yearly planner, it seems a little less adventurous than I had imagined.

Having the extended long weekend was a blessing for Bec, in that she was able to take care of poor Bethany, who came through her operation safely, much to our relief. We are still waiting for the results however, so are still in the dark as to what the exact problem is, but thankfully she is home, recovering well. More on that next week, but with any luck it will be good news.

Until next time, stay safe, have fun and don’t forget to write.

It feels like just yesterday I sat here and typed up my first entry, and here I am, already a day behind on post #2. How time flies! I have had a successful week on the readiness front however, although not a great deal to report.

Issues sorted this week include a number of little items on the van. You know, the ones I mentioned last week that I was putting off. Well, we can strike them out now. DONE. Of course that doesn’t include cleaning it and having it packed. My plan is still to go through all of our belongings and figure out exactly what we will need, and what we don’t. I’m sure there is a pile of gear in there that we take for a holiday.

The big ticket item for the week though was selling the Patrol. We knew that had to go to make room (and money) for the new truck, and I honestly thought we were going to be stuck with it. I had visions of us fielding phone calls while we were away, from people wanting to by it, and us not being around to show it. Or worse still, not getting any interest in it at all. That’s our regular luck when we try and sell stuff. In any case, I decided to spend the $60.00 to list it on carsales.com.au and only a matter of hours later had my first enquiry, from a dealer all the way over in WA. Being from a dealer, I had some concerns that it was a scam or maybe I’d advertised it for a bit too cheap, but I ended up going through with the deal, and got more than what I had hoped for. Not only that, but they wanted a 7 seater. So the draws had to come out of the back, which I can off load for a tidy sum at a later stage and I can cancel the rego and recoup even more.  So with a few extra dollars in our pocket, and no need to organise a road worthy, it ended up being a pretty good deal. Not to mention one less thing to worry about.

As for the replacement truck, well that is still a few weeks away, so it looks like I’ll be burning up the miles on the treadly or shanks pony for the foreseeable future. I’ll just call it a pre-trip fitness kick. There’s not much I can really do to hurry the new ride along. I’ve only just today launched a couple of boxes of bits up to Sydney that need fitting to it, and in any case, it’s not until later in the week that I do my licence test to drive it. Fingers crossed I do well. It will cause quite a headache if I fail.

On the family front, all is mostly well. We are still working with the vets to find out what is wrong with Bethany. This is the most stressful thing going at the moment, and the sooner we get a treatment plan organised the better. She goes in for a biopsy of the liver this week, and we hope that will shed further light on the problems.

Until next time, stay safe, have fun and don’t forget to write.

Welcome one and all. I’m two weeks behind schedule, but the site is finally up and running. There’s still a few bugs and glitches to be sorted, surely, but essentially, I’m putting us out there to be read and followed.

Being that this is my first post to the blog, I’ll let you know quickly what you can expect if you hang around to read about our adventures. If you haven’t already done so, check out the links on the home page. There’s a story there about how the trip came about, as well as an introduction to us all. I’ll be adding some more info up there in the near future, as well as some links to any of the good people who have helped us realise our dream.

As for the blogs, during the planning stages over the next few months, I will try to put up a brief weekly message, letting you all know how we are progressing. Once we hit the road and are on our way however is when the fun will really begin. 6 months, 180 days, 4320 hours, 259,200 minutes, 15,552,000 seconds, and I will be attempting to come to you live, on a daily basis. I’m sure there will be days where internet access is out of the question, and other days when I’m sure I’ll say it was unavailable, but apart from that, I’ll be coming to you from somewhere in the nether, nether.

Now, being that we’re going to be travelling around for some time, in a caravan with a couple of dogs, I’d be quite happy to hear from like-minded people. Those that are out there doing the same thing, drop us a line. Say G’day and offer a tip or two. You never know, we might just see you on the road sometime.

As for the planning side of things. Well we’re progressing at a slower rate than I would have liked. Our caravan is almost trip ready, but there’s a few little jobs to do that I keep finding time to put off. I have at least chosen our new tow vehicle, which I will introduce to you at later stage. Suffice to say, there is also a number of tasks that need to be completed once I collect it to get that trip ready also. My next worry is if I should be taking a satellite phone, or relying on regular mobile phone coverage.  Ideally I’d like the safety of a sat phone, but not the cost. Being that our trip will mostly follow main routes, what do others think?

Whilst I’ve been busy sorting out pre-trip stuff, Rebecca has been busy on the net researching our possible ports of call. It’s out of her comfort zone to do the holiday planning, but she has come through with aplomb. With notebooks full of places to see and things to do,  I’m sure we will be far from bored during our time away. In fact the way we are going, 6 months might not bee long enough to see all that we plan. Lets see what happens, but dare I say it, Aussie Adventure II might be in the works before we even start our first.

Until next time, stay safe, have fun and don’t forget to write.