HAPPY HOMECOMINGS

Hello, hello, hello – sorry to have been gone so long! I know, it’s been a welcome relief not to be getting Steph’s Bloody Blog Reminders every other day but guess what, here I am again. The good news is that once I have ‘blogged this blog’ you won’t be getting the frequent notifications you were before. Now that we have completed (albeit prematurely) the first leg of our odyssey, I will just be blogging the more mundane day to day life events and the photos will probably be more family orientated. I will however have DD (Douglas Darling) take some nice shots of Perth and surrounds as our movements dictate so that all you poor souls who live on the East Coast can see what you are missing out on. Once we are back on track I will recommence the notifications.

If you are interested in our doings, just log on from time to time to see if there are any interesting developments. In the meantime, I felt it would be appropriate to do a little summary of the now completed first leg.


If you have not been with us from the start, we left Perth late January this year stopping overnight in Kojonup and then on to Albany. The travelogue went something like this, Kojonup, Albany, Bremer Bay, Esperance, Duke of Orleans, Fraser Range, Madura, Fowlers Bay, Smoky Bay, Elliston, Coffin Bay, Arno Bay, Whyalla, Woomera, Coober Pedy, Yulara, Kings Canyon, Alice Springs, Wauchope Wells, Daly Rivers, Mataranka, Katherine, Bachelor, Litchfield, Darwin, Jabiru, Pine Creek, Katherine, Adelaide River, Timber Creek, Lake Argyle, Kununurra, Halls Creek, Fitzroy Crossing, Derby, Broome, Eighty Mille Beach, Exmouth, Coral Bay, Carnarvon, Kalbarri, Green Head, Home (apologies for spelling errors and/or omissions). We moved in a leisurely fashion and took roughly 10 months to cover this ground.


If we had to choose a favourite spot (as we have been asked so often to do) we have decided it would be impossible as so many factors go into the enjoyment of any location. Health, prevailing weather conditions, stage of the ....moon, my mood, DD’s mood, neighbours, news from home, caravan site, you get the picture. All of that aside, I think Mataranka would be one of the favourites for both of us. The park itself was pretty different (dusty, shocking ablutions) but provided good restaurant and entertainment qualities and the wild-life was spectacular. The thermal springs where we soaked ourselves for a couple of hours each day were also a major attraction of course. Other than that, DD just loved the Eyre Peninsula and I fell in love with Kununurra. All in all, we had no bad experiences and there was nowhere we disliked. We found all the caravan parks acceptable, some more so than others. Being fairly positive folk, even when one thing was wrong with a park, we always found other positives.


The scenery up through the middle was breathtaking, but I think my favourite for sheer beauty and colour must have been the stunningly beautiful and striking Adelaide River- the morning palette there was outstanding.


We met and made some wonderful friends and people on our travels. It seems ironic that we had to leave home to meet up with 3 sets of existing mates some of whom we would rarely connect with at home. New mates were everywhere and I consider myself to be very blessed indeed to have made some friends who I know will now always be part of my life. No names, no pack drill as they say in the classics. What classics, oh well bugger me, I don’t know, that IS what they say tho’, isn’t it??


We were extremely fortunate and suffered no major set-backs with either the Land Cruiser or the van. Both held up very well. The only real problem we encountered was losing the sky-light and having to fork out something around $600+ to replace same. I have to tell you we NEVER leave the hatches fully up anymore. Ironically, we had only been back 1 week when we picked up a bolt in one of the Cruiser’s tyres and DD had a lovely time (not) getting that remedied. It turns out that when we had the beast serviced in Alice, some nice apprentice did the wrong thing with the studs on one of the wheels and they had been cross- threaded - not an easy fix apparently as the fellow at Good Year did not have the wherewithal to fix the problem and DD had to resort to Shanks Pony to traipse around Midland trying to source the studs. It has just occurred to me that we had perhaps better check them all, just in case!!! It would have been a real drama had we flattened a tyre ‘out there’ somewhere.


Health-wise all was good, as long as you don’t count a couple of colds and stumbles. In retrospect, I should have had my knee ‘done’ before we left. I was fairly well restricted in what I could do and that in turn inclined me to avoid climbing up and down the caravan steps (quite high), and that in turn exacerbated the already bad weight condition. Of course none of that stopped me from noshing on during sundowners etc. and the weight did indeed go on, and on, and on!!! I have to say I was not alone in this dilemma; the extra couple of beers each night at those same sundowners have promulgated the further development of the very shady veranda DD now shelters his manly bits under. For some odd reason, DD who always had a long brisk walk every morning at home, gave up this habit completely while we were away, hasn’t touched a golf club, and like yours truly, has not subjected his bod to much physical exercise at all. Needless to say, when we met up with a good friend on our arrival home, we were greeted with “Well, you both look very well nourished!” – hmm, I don’t think it was intended as a compliment. Now that we are back and firmly enmeshed in family affairs, our feet rarely touch the ground and the excess weight will start to melt away somewhat. Of course, the good knee has now gone out in sympathy with the crook knee so my once elegant gait is now something akin to a duck waddle – oh well................! Nothing wrong with a good duck! On the subject of crook knees and such, for those of you similarly afflicted or simply suffering the inequities of having acquired a few years under the belt, before I left home I purchased a good walking stick (not one of the old lady types, but a young trendy type) and it proved to be invaluable. Any uneven surface which would normally pose a real problem was easily overcome by the wielding of the trusty stick – highly recommended.


For those of you considering taking the plunge and undertaking your own odyssey, the best thing I can say to you is that it is horses for courses. Not everyone likes the same things, but girls, I have yet to meet a woman who would turn her nose up at having her own shower and loo. From my perspective it is a must. DD doesn’t care about such things and has never used our shower and only resorts to the loo during the odd middle of the night foray. Moi, who needs about a million or so visits to the loo during the dark of the night, just love not having to stumble my way thru’ a dark caravan park. I also love not getting wet strides whilst trying to balance on one leg in wet and well bleached ablution blocks whilst wondering what the person in the shower next to me is putting in the communal drain that so often runs along the back of the shower recess. Believe me when the ankle biters are about, anything can turn up in those drains! We only have a standard loo, (not one of those up-market vacuum jobs) so we only use the loo for tinkles and still have to make the trek for anything more involved.


We managed to do all of those ks without once stopping at a ‘free-park’ – this was not a planned thing, in fact, we always intended to do some free-parking, it just never quite happened. As we travel with a pretty full freezer DD was a bit concerned about food defrosting and such. Our nice quiet little generator was only started four times and then only to make sure it was OK! We took much too much stuff with us as predicted by all and sundry, however as the original plan was to be out there for a couple of years, there is still not a lot we would have left behind. Perhaps the most notable item to remain with us, untouched, for the entire trip, was the bag of wood The Bloke insisted on carting with us everywhere (oh, and the chain saw with which to obtain more of same very important wood!).


We discovered several hitherto unknown things about ourselves. DD is much more sociable than me – he stops to talk to everyone whereas I sometimes have been guilty of skulking around to avoid talking to someone. I really value time alone, DD seems to be able to manage quite well without that commodity. We have had a couple of rather frosty times in the van when we have worn each other’s nerves a little thin, but by and large considering the confined space 24/7 we did OK. DD has become a bit of a fisherman, which bit remains to be seen! Sorry, he is quite a good fisherman, but thankfully, not obsessive as some we have seen. I have finally discovered my absolute love of writing and hope now that I have started not to quit until I have a couple of books under the belt. I have started with a Children’s’ Book which I now have to do something about (publishing that is) and plan to do a couple of grown-up ones next. Our love affair with birds has intensified and although we are by no means real ‘Twitchers’ we do sometimes do a rather good facsimile of those rare creatures.


I have just asked DD what he has learned during our journey and it appears that he is now a fisherman of legendary quality, can tow anything on wheels, park it anywhere, can set anything alight, can forage for wood in dangerous and snake infested forests, swim raging rivers, leap tall buildings and oh, why did I ask?


One thing which we really do recommend is travelling with a laptop with a Telstra modem and of course having a ‘free-hour’ on your mobile phone plan. These things have been invaluable for keeping in touch with family and friends and also of course for plotting the market etc. It seems that everyone has a horror story relating to Telstra customer service, but there is no denying they are the only ones with the coverage that counts once you are out of the metro areas.


We have met lots of lovely dogs on our travels, but have to say that if you are planning on travelling with the faithful hound do be aware that many caravan parks do not allow dogs and that you will not be able to take them into National Parks thus limiting where you can go. Having said that, we prefer to stay in dog friendly parks, so that we can indulge our canine fancy and enjoy OPs.


Now just to bring you up to date on what brought us back to Perth – my son Brett and his lovely madcap wife Naomi are now the proud parents of new baby Jack, brother to almost 4yo Daniel. For anyone who hasn’t heard, we very nearly lost Naomi in the process as she had major probs with her immune system and her platelet count dropped way down – this situation was further complicated by severe gestational diabetes and general ill-health. All of this culminated in early hospitalisation and then a very close thing indeed on the operating table. Nom continues to improve now almost 2 weeks after the birth of Jack having had a couple of sever set- backs in the meantime. Jack was born at 36 weeks and weighed just over 6lb in the old weight and I think it was 3.2 ks in the ‘new’ language. He also gave us a fright when he had a regurgitation problem and turned a lovely blue colour much to the consternation of all concerned. He appears to have weathered that storm well and although still a little under his birth weight, is now doing quite nicely. Nom is still in hospital and poor old Brett is doing it pretty tough looking after Daniel (the ferocious almost 4yo) and traipsing in and out to the hospital which is a bit of a drive from their home. We have of course been involved in helping with the minding of Daniel, but in truth, probably not nearly enough to make a real difference. Sorry to say we have no photos of Jack as yet as each time we have been to the hospital it has been a problem of some sort and we just haven’t thought to take a camera with us. For those of you who love those baby photos I promise I will get some soon.


The other over-riding reason we came back to Perth early was the seeming decline of my mother’s health. It ‘s very hard to tell from phone calls just how bad someone really is, but certainly from the tone of the calls we made to mum, it did seem that she was on a downward spiral. Once we arrived home and advised her that we would only be travelling to Tasmania and then returning she was overwhelmed with relief. Since then we have had to revise even the trip to Tassie and now will wait to see just how she is before we move on.


Mother in her own inimitable style has informed me that this will be her last Christmas and that if we were to go to Tassie, we would need to be back before May 26th (her birthday) as she “will be dead by then”! This certainty has been fed by a year of very ordinary health and then by the disembodied voice of her Aunt Mary telling her that “they are waiting for her”! Hmmm, when she told me, all the hairs on the back of my neck stood to attention. I am not one to scoff at this type of thing and am more inclined to believe that than her own self diagnosed health probs.


It’s a tough call folks – mum and I have had our differences over the years, as have most mothers and daughters but I do cherish and love her very much and am not about to allow her to spend the last part of her life alone and frightened. Oh, my mother would never admit to fear of any kind, but realistically there must be fear of dying alone, even for mum. Anyway, all of that aside, I just simply won’t let her do it alone. So for the immediate duration at least, we are back in Perth. The very loose plan right now is to stay here in this park until the end of Jan/Feb and then to look for a rental still closer to mum’s. That way we can get our stuff out of storage (never should have put it there in the first place) and sort thru’ it discarding anything that we cannot put to good use.


So, as much as we yearn for the open roads and wide vistas, we are going to have to wait awhile for the next episode. We are making the best of it I have now tossed enough tinsel around the van to make it look like Christmas, even to the extreme of having DD hang some coloured lights around the van and slowly but surely we are catching up with friends and family. As the world has pretty much revolved around Nom and little Jack for the last few weeks (feels like so much longer) we are now looking around us in mild wonder that the world has continued to spin on its axis. We have managed to see my other son Troy, his wife Shelly and the two kids once since we arrived back and yesterday finally caught up with Trent (DD’s son) and his wife Dani. As Trent and Dani are less than 1 k from the van it really has taken us an inordinately long time to do this.


Oh just before I leave you all to your respective celebrations, I have a confession to make – I am really embarrassed at the quality of WA caravan parks. When we returned to Perth, we stayed initially at the Banksia CP in Hazelmere – they were charging roughly $40 per night for a powered site (and not much less for a tent site!) and really the park simply was not that good. It was looking very sad indeed maintenance wise and the ablutions were really very sad. The sites were very good, but very difficult to access as the roadways were narrow and cluttered with permanent park homes. In fact, it really was more retirement village than Caravan Park. The only real upsides were that it was dog friendly and the birdlife there was quite exceptional. From there we moved over here to the Big 4 Vineyards CP in Caversham. The park is more our style being open with plenty of grass. Once again a high proportion of chalets and park-homes, all interspersed amongst the caravan sites. We find that by doing this they manage to destroy to a large degree the lovely social aspect that permeates good caravan parks. This park is fine and the ablutions are really quite good, but they have a power problem. That is to say, when you want to boil the kettle or run the microwave, you have to turn off the aircon otherwise risk blowing the switches which can then only be reset by park management. Remember this is in the Perth metro area and to our way of thinking really inexcusable. Obviously the capital expenditure to remedy the matter has not been undertaken for whatever reason. As we are going to be here during Perth’s hottest months it should prove interesting. Other than that it seems fine here and we are close to most of the family and on the fringe of my beloved Swan Valley. The vineyards next door bring back some wonderful childhood memories.


SO................deep breath.....................................WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS, WE WISH Y...................................................... Please have a wonderful Christmas and a safe healthy happy and prosperous New Year. Lots and lots of Love, Steph & Doug.