Adventures of Stubby Part III

Days 27–36 – Saturday 8th – Monday 17th November 2008
WA
Our first day in Fremantle was welcomed by glorious sunshine and so we decided to take the 3km route along the notoriously beautiful western coastal beaches into town where we were overtaken by several other overzealous tourists zooming past in mini motorised scoots.
Freo, as it’s colloquially known, is an uber-trendy town that manages to attract backpackers and the too-cool-for-school Perth suburbia just south of the city. Our first stop was Cappuccino Strip, the road littered with coffee shops replete with fresh patisseries and all the weekend papers so that sitting down on the roadside tables to catch up on the world (we had been stranded in the midst of the Nullarbor during the American Presidential election and so had plenty to be filled in on) we actually ended up getting sunburnt...Gorged myself on a fabulous raspberry and white chocolate cake at the Merchant Tea Room and caught up on all the gossip from the election and then went to explore the arcades and little side streets for the rest of the afternoon. It wasn’t long before I had sniffed out the second-hand bookshop, Magpies, a true relic with creaky floorboards, books piled in haphazard columns wherever there was space and a little old white-haired lady sat in a chair in one of the nooks overseeing proceedings. Having just blown my day’s spending money on cakes and hoodies from Target I had to restrain myself to just looking before we wound our way back to the caravan site for dinner. The park congregates all the campers together into a separate unit with a brand new block of amenities including pristine bathrooms, a giant kitchen and communal area plus an outside verandah with seats, chairs and a spanking gas BBQ that we decided to get to know for our first meal. After sating ourselves we burned the calories straight off by walking back into town to test the nightlife out and were hit by a full-on Saturday night crowd, queuing around the blocks to get into the bars on Cappucino Street. Eventually we found a couple of more low-key bars that didn’t require us to be dressed up and settled into the vibe with (very expensive) scooners.
Sunday morning was spent at the newly renovated Basilica before meeting Rich’s Uncle and Aunt outside the electric bagpipe player regaled in a leather bondage outfit with pleated black kilt, giant platform boots and sporting a bleach-blond Mohican. They spent the next few days taking us around the various Shires of Western Australia visiting Perth City Centre on train, the luxurious canal town of Mandurah, the beautiful King’s Park Gardens where you can view the whole city and picnic in the beautifully maintained grounds and the trendy marina in super-cool Sorrento where we were treated to the most spectacular gelatino ice-cream. Taking a day trip to Perth by ourselves we hung out at the Western Australia Art Gallery and the Contemporary Arts Institute where outside was displayed samples from the viewfromabove.com, a collection of aerial photographs from around the world taking in natural and human sites of wonder and snapshots of daily life in its myriad geographical locations. We finished our day off with a draught beer (a rarity in Australian breweries) in Northbridge, the entertainment district of the city.
Rich’s Uncle and Aunt live in one of the many retirement villages set up in Australia where people of a certain age purchase the lease of a unit in one of the ‘villages’ that entitles them to full and exclusive access of all the amenities on offer within the complex, ranging from bowling green to swimming pool to pitch and putt golf, a community hall with a class in every possible hobby you could want to take up including separate rooms for dancing, quilting, crafts as well as a bar and kitchen where outside catering companies come in once a fortnight to provide cheap meals and a workshop for the men. The village is staffed by a full time manager and maintenance team but all the activities are organised and arranged by various committees made up solely of residents so that to all intents and purposes they maintain their independence. If they go away on holiday their units are checked daily and looked after while they’re away and should they fall ill there is an onsite nursing home to which they can be admitted as part of their contract for the eventuality that one partner may need to move into the home while the other stays in the unit but the two are located within the same grounds. The residents range from people still working wanting to safeguard their future to the very frail. Rich’s Uncle and Aunt happen to be President and Kitchen Manager respectively and subsequently involved in every level of village activities and so we were immediately integrated into village life which suited us perfectly as everywhere we went we were invited in for cups of tea and biscuits and village gossip while we could quite happily join the bowls or golf teams should we want, potter down to the workshop or take advantage of happy hour. In return we shared our computer knowledge with the technophobic generation and earned our keep moving various pieces of furniture about the complex. We integrated so well that we were invited to play the lottery with the villagers and having never played it before in my life thought it would be fun to give it a go and ended up getting three numbers and winning, albeit the princely sum of $12.30, much to the disgust of our newfound friends who have been playing for months without a win! The concept o the village is a fantastic idea and set-up for the elderly or those who want to protect against the onset of age and although fifty years younger than most of the residents, sadly fitted in all too easily!
After a week of being Grandads we decided we had to strike out as the independent young travellers we were and so checked back into the Fremantle Caravan Park in time for the weekend festival. It started off with a beach reggae party on the Saturday and culminated in a carnival parade on Sunday which then turned into a huge Bhangra street party. We made the procession just in time and had a great couple of hours watching the various local groups and communities trot by dressed up to the hilt and dipped in and out of the various street stalls which sold everything from great trilby hats to local honey. We checked into the upstairs bar at The Sail and Anchor just in time for the music to start and after much wiggling managed to wangle a prime view on the balcony above the stage. A few scooners later and we had relocated to the street and were joining in with the strange hippie dancing exhausting ourselves so that we barely had enough energy to drag ourselves back to Stubby for the night.
Our final day was spent in the Caravan Park taking advantage of the free wifi to start the dreaded job hunt...sadly, the job I had been offered on the Australian version of Who Do You Think You Are, had, due to the economic crunch been delayed indefinitely and so not wanting to hang around for what could be weeks or months made the decision to head back to the eastern states and try our luck in the more metropolitan and media-populated cities.
Day 37 – Tuesday 18th November 2008
Fremantle – Margaret River, 200km
We could easily have stayed weeks in Fremantle lounging around in our lovely caravan park, sunbathing on the beach just a stone’s throw from Stubby and wandering into town and lazing the day away in the old arcades or dining al fresco on Cappuccino Strip but we had to start the leg back to the east at some point and so reluctantly wrenched ourselves away. Instead of driving directly back to Norseman on the Freeway we decided to take the longer and more scenic coastal route through south-west Australia and our first stop was 200km south at Margaret River, a famous surfing haunt and popular with backpackers.
The town has a little high street with lots of great eateries and to our excitement a Target Country so we stopped off and had a little nose while we were checking out the Information Centre. Unsure whether to situate ourselves in the caravan park near town (so we could dine out) or near the beach (so we could surf) we took Stubby on a little recce of them both. Ending up at Prevelly Beach we watched the kite-boarders literally surfing through the breaks at Surfer’s Point where the mouth of the river hits the sea, taking on some spectacular waves that were a bit too hardcore for our liking. Moving further down the coastline to Gnarabup Beach we took out our Balinese sarongs and dozed on the beach of the tiny bay where we were sheltered from the fierce winds. When the people next to us started oohing and aahing we sat up and saw beyond the break these huge figures lurching in and out of the water and realised we had finally caught up with the whales. One mad couple took out a canoe and started paddling furiously towards the two playful whales but even from where we sat we had a fantastic view of them without any need to get closer. As we were looking out towards the break we suddenly saw what looked to be a small black fin lurking in the shallows next to an innocent bather...our minds filled with all the scare stories of shark attacks we were on the point of calling out when on further inspection we saw that we thought was a fin was actually the wing of a large stingray munching near the shoreline and so in one view we had both whales and rays to entertain us.
Owing to the signposts warning about dangerous rips we decided that the surf might be a bit too dangerous for beginners on this beach and so set up camp in the caravan park near town, managed by a cranky older lady who threatened to chuck us out of her site if we made so much as a peep after 9.30pm. As we very rarely eat out we decided to treat ourselves and splashed out on pizza and chocolate mud cake at the very swanky Goodfellas, a film buff’s cafe located on an upstairs verandah overlooking the town and still managed to keep the two course meal with drinks to budget. It was nice to have a break from cooking and even more enjoyable to leave the washing up to someone else!

Day 38 – Wednesday 19th November 2008
Margaret River – Denmark, 411km
It’s amazing what you can achieve in a single day with a well behaved Stubby! Started off with a quick dip into The Fudge Factory in Margaret River (the free samples of Cointreau and Cherry were divine!) before recovering from our gluttony with a bit of sloth, sunbathing back in the beautiful Gnarabup beach. Then it was back in the van and winding our way through the luxurious wine regions, the road carving its way through the furrowed orchards, stopping off at The Cidery in Bridgetown where we sampled the locally produced ciders and unable to decide on a favourite bought half a crate so we had a little of everything! With the clinking of glass bottles in the back we set off for Denmark but were slowed on our way by a swarm of flying ants for about 50km who in kamikaze style flung themselves against our brand new windscreen and exploded on the glass so that after just a few minutes of their onslaught we were barely able to see beyond our roo bars. Progress was slow and with the windows wound up made even more frustrating by the sticky heat inside the tin can. The persistent blighters then found a way to enter through the air vents so with wipers and washers on full blast attempting to clear a path through we also had to battle on a second front trying to block the vents and terminate the lives of those that had broken through and were attempting to feast on the reward of the fresh meat inside...Fortunately when we arrived at the beautiful caravan park in Denmark, situated on the rivermouth with colony upon colony of pelicans, the heavens opened and gave Stubby’s face a proper wash as with the heavy water restrictions we had no means of removing the ant carcasses from his eyes! This was then followed by a spectacular series of thunderbursts and lightning strikes that felt as if they were hitting the roof and managed to illuminate the whole interior of the campervan.

Day 39 – Thursday 20th November 2008
Denmark – Albany
Taking advantage of the lax enforcement of checking out we enjoyed a lazy morning before trundling into town, a shabby intersection of chic boutiques with bare-footed hippies wandering around, and pottering for a couple of hours. The Odyssey Second Hand Bookshop emptied the pockets whilst a trip to the local IGA bought several meals with the change and getting hand of the discount fuel system also provided a docket for the petrol station up the road though the enticing 4cents per litre offer only worked out at an 84cent total...
After a put together lunch in Stubby along the riverfront sheltering from the rain we set off for the Pentland Alpaca Stud Farm and turning up in the by then cascading waterfall discovered we were the only visitors for the day. We were given a free bag of pellets to share amongst Beryl the pig, Tyson the Byson, Kimba the Camel and Zabel the Donkey not to mention the herds of jumpy alpacas, greedy goats and steely-eyed kangaroos. My personal favourite however was clambering inside the guinea-pig and rabbit cage and finding myself covered in dozens of bunnies chewing at the tags on my sodden combats. It was a throwback to the golden days of Flip Flap and her many broods and I had to be forcibly stopped from buying a campervan pet. We also timed it so that we were there for the 3pm bottle feeding session and got to help distribute the milk to the guzzling two week old goat kids and were then shown into the koala enclosure where we were allowed to stroke the doped up bearsJ
Leaving the stud farm (without managing to stow away any rabbits...) we headed to Albany for the night and with the weather remaining as miserable as it had been all day contented ourselves with driving around the beachside attractions of what was a surprisingly large conurbation. Striking off for home at the Happy Days Caravan Park we made it to within 300metres of the site when the continual stop-starting in the torrential rain finally provided too much for Stubby and he ground to a halt at the roadside and refused to start. Time to take advantage of the breakdown cover we had stumped out for! Unable to define where exactly we were owing to limited maps and being told that simply saying we were on Highway 1, the circular road that runs the whole perimeter of the country, was insufficient we were pleasantly surprised by the speedy response of the local RAC. As luck would have it as soon as he turned the ignition Stubby decided to spark back into life...and so after checking the engine out, and informing us that the Z20 was the best possible motor to travel the country in, and cleaning up our squeaky fanbelt we were given the ok to go and tumbled into the park which situated on the gentle bend of the river provided one of the best locations we had yet stayed in.
The persistent rain failed to dampen the mood as I received an unexpected phone call from Kane telling me that Amanda was pregnant and then managed to get through to Auntie and congratulate her on her 99th before tucking up in the camper and turning the music up full blast to drown out the sound of the rain on the roof.

Day 40 - Friday 21st November 2008
Albany – Norseman, 902 - km
We aborted our plans to potter through The Great Southern and explore the beaches in Esperance, voted the best in the country, after a second successive day of non-stop rain...Anxious for Stubby not to falter any more the priority was to keep the engine going so that even when he began stuttering in rain that was so thick it felt like boulders smashing against the windscreen we pushed him on even if it meant revving him in second gear all the way. We had a couple of hairy moments where parts of the coastal road had flooded and we had to drive him through the deluge like a 4x4 but by the time we reached Norseman, the beginning of the Nullarbor, the climate was considerably more favourable towards our little antique. Never thought I would have welcomed a desert but after passing through that without any problems last time it almost felt like coming home after the days of torrential rain and subsequent mechanical problems. Just hope I won’t be eating my words over the next couple of days of desert crossing...!

Day 41 – Saturday 22nd November 2008
Norseman - Border Village, 743 km
Back onto the long straight drive across the treeless plain divvied up into manageable 100km legs with plenty of tea stops and conducted under the welcomed cover of the clouds that to our chagrin have been tracking us for the past couple of days but which now were welcomed for they staved off the remorseless beating of the sun. Apart from the wandering emus the only other distraction was the delightful entertainment provided at the gas stations. It must take a special kind of person to work hundreds of kilometres from civilisation and another type to undertake such work in a petrol fuelage where the only visitors are cocky backpackers and strange, introverted Aussie campervans. Our 750km of road today required three petrol stops (and $140 worth of petrol...) of which the first was manned by a young girl with slash marks up both arms and who burst into tears when the cash register failed to work for the customer before me at the till, the second plagued by a gang of bikers who were terrorising the hapless female assistant and the third staffed by another young girl who kept disappearing into the kitchen to eat in between serving the giant queue trailing out of her shop. Needless to say these pitstops are conducted with Lewis Hamilton speed with lightning toilet breaks, quick food replenishments and the minimal amount of time possible actually spent interacting with your fellow travellers and cashiers!
Today I also made the startling discovery that because this particular stretch of road is so flat, and tantamount to taking a train ride, I could actually read when I was the passenger (and arguably also when driving along the 146.6km stretch of straight road!) and so continued to devour Wilbur Smith’s Elephant Song with great gusto after finally finishing Dickens’ ‘Dombey and Son’ which was bought in Nepal and left in storage in Thailand while I wandered about the continent before finally being started on the shores of Indonesia and completed on the west coast of Australia! Bet old Charlie boy never envisaged that it would transcend so many borders with one solitary reader when he was writing it!

Day 42 – Sunday 23rd November 2008
Border Village – Kimba, 844km
Our longest day of driving so far was unremarkable until we hit Ceduna when instead of following the reverse route we had taken to Perth we took the more direct road to Adelaide and cut across the top of the Peninsular following the giant water pipe along the Freeway. As with other Sunday crossings we drove through town after town after town in which everything was closed and evidence of civilisation was non-existent. Well versed we had ample food supplies but came a cropper when using up all our petrol and reserve Gerry can and unable to find any fuel station were forced to halt our plans and camp at the token and unsightly caravan park attached to Kimba’s petrol station which was again served by that unique species of Fuel Proprietors, this time three female generations who tried their utmost not to give us, two young males, keys to the toilet block because we could not provide them with the $10 dollar cash deposit...

Day 43 – Monday 24th November 2008
Kimba – Glenelg, Adelaide, 471km
When your daily and weekly and monthly structures simply revert to packing up the bed in the back and turning it into a two-piece sofa and table dining/living area, hopping in the driver’s seat, putting your right foot on the gas pedal and keeping it there it’s very easy to lose track of time and date. This has been further complicated by the crossing of state borders and working out firstly how many hours to put your watch back and secondly whether they observe daylight savings and thirdly whether to apply the daylight savings to the time alteration. Heading west it wasn’t so much of a problem as with the clocks always going forward we found we had ‘more’ time than we thought but now going back to the east we have been caught out a few times by unexpected setting suns playing havoc with scheduled driving routes - when it gets to dusk you do not want to be driving on the roads because of the susceptibility of nervy kangaroos hopping out in front of you and writing off your twenty-five year old camper. Having ended up in the middle of nowhere at dusk the previous night and forced to drive in the dark for several more kilometres before finding somewhere to camp – with the passenger being on kangaroo spotting alert while the driver dealt with irksome road train drivers - we were again caught out by the time this morning having not adjusted our clocks and finding ourselves waking up at 11am.
A scramble to get on the road and make up time meant that after a heavy few days of driving today’s lighter route had to be tackled in one stretch in order to reach Adelaide before dark again. Rounding the corner of Port Augusta and heading south we hit civilisation again and even found we had to veer off the road onto the dust verge to avoid a convoy of police cars escorting lorries transporting houses across the country!
Treated ourselves to a quick Afternoon Tea stop off in Port Wakefield where we had enjoyed a break on our previous route through at a fantastic bakery. Choosing a fruity rock cake that reminded me of Mum’s home baking and a custard slice we did not have enough money to pay and demoralised by the prospect of having to relinquish one the kindly cashier asked if we were travellers and upon affirming were told that she had done a lot of that herself in her youth and knew what it was like and told us just to hand over what shrapnel we had and call it quits! In one fell swoop she undid all our reservations concerning previous customer service outlets on our journey!
Arrived in Adelaide by the late afternoon and decided this time to avoid the city centre and instead head to the beaches in order to experience a different area. Glenelg is a very new and flash marina that is to Adelaide what Freo is to Perth: young, cool and trendy it appeals to backpackers and the wealthy locals with its sparkling harbour, vast array of al fresco bars and restaurants and a giant sandy beach with every conceivable sport, water and sand based, being conducted. The huge jetty was filled with Asian crabbers and we enjoyed a couple of hours wandering about the town and watching the world pass by.
Our caravan site was a giant, sprawling resort just a couple of kilometres north of Glenelg with tennis courts, swimming pools, bouncy castles and every amenity you could conceive of. As part of the Big 4 chain it also held the same shower blocks being pumped with 80s music that we had loved when staying at one in Melbourne. Situated on the same glorious beachfront as Glenelg we set up Stubby for the night and went for a long barefooted walk along the coast before returning and taking advantage of the flash BBQ apparatus to enjoy a late night meat feast.

Day 44 – Tuesday 25th November 2008
Glenelg – Grampians, 547km
Turns out that driving bare-footed is not such a great idea after all...On big driving days where all you are doing is following one deserted road through desert/scrubland we had taken to driving bare-footed as your feet get very sweaty very quickly in socks and shoes and driving in ‘thongs’ is hazardous. Unfortunately, the arch of the foot required to press down on the gas pedal for hours at a time seemed to have strained the side of my foot which had been exacerbated by last night’s long walk and so I woke up not being able to put any weight on it and hobbling around. This was problematic for the driving as even with the support of shoes I could only drive for a few kilometres without being in too much pain and so poor Rich took the brunt of the driving today.
An uneventful and much shorter drive saw us arrive at the Grampians again. Even though we knew what to expect this time we were still both blown away again as seemingly out of nowhere these gigantic, gnarled mountains rose up onto our horizon and soon engulfed us in their twisting narrow roads. With hundreds of kangaroos lining the roadsides progress was slow but eventually we reached the Halls Gap Caravan Park where an invasion of flying ants at the BBQ hut forced us to finish off cooking in Stubby before heading to the one bar in the mountains and toasting a successful completion back and forth across the Nullarbor with an ice-cold beer!

Day 45 - Wednesday 26th November 2008
Grampians, 0km!
After several days of heavy driving and with the unfortunately all too imminent joys of job and flat hunting nearly upon us we decided to spend a day in the Grampians, nestled in the valley of the craggy mountains soaking up the sun and making the most of our last full day of ‘holidaying’ before the serious stuff kicks in.
Normally because we only spend one night in a place we have to check out by mid-morning so it was a luxury not to have any alarm clock and simply wake when the sun warmed Stubby’s belly! A lazy day of reading, writing and sunbathing restored our batteries and helped clear the plans for our three-pronged assault on getting work, residence and selling our beloved camper. After a hard day’s graft a little hobble took us to the ice-creamery where we indulged in a couple of Stairways To Heaven (white chocolate ice-cream with chocolate chip and caramel pieces) which did nothing for the newly self-imposed dieting. Forty days sitting in a camper eating patisseries and Allen sweets has done nothing for the figure and with hordes of exercisers getting into beach-shape everywhere we go it is time to hit the salad and running shoes (healed foot permitting...) and burn off the middle tyre. Using the excuse that I am travelling and experiencing all the culinary delights of my pursuits I no longer have a scapegoat and what with getting back to the real world decided it was best just to coincide all one’s miseries at once!

Day 46 – Thursday 27th November 2008
Grampians – Melbourne, km
Back into the hustle and bustle of city life we headed straight to St Kilda’s for the combination of beaches and backpacker ambience. Sadly the water was not the cleanest and so we decided to have a nose around prospective living areas getting better acquainted with the patisseries on Acland Street, the coffee shops on Fitzroy Street, the beaches of Elwood and the frantic pace of Prahan’s Chapel Street.
We met up with a friend we had made on our first trip to Melbourne and sat in a coffee shop catching up when the sun disappeared under a storm of golf-ball style hail, typical of the sudden and dramatic Melbournian meteorological schizophrenia. Invited to stay the night for free in the hostel she worked in we were introduced to her room-mate who worked at a cafe called Banff and took advantage of the friends-of-friends perk with mates rates pizzas and free wine. While they went to work we checked in to the funky George Cinema and watched the new Bond film before returning to Banff and meeting the rest of the hostel crew over several pitchers and enjoying a private lock-in. The party continued back at the hostel until the wee hours of the morning with free Banff sparkling wine and where amongst many others we met a German whose campervan had exploded in Darwin and who had lost everything in the fire only a month previously and made us feel guilty for abandoning poor Stubby to the secret free-parking road outside for the first time since acquiring him.

Day 47 – Friday 28th November 2008
St Kilda’s – Greenvale (Melbourne)
After the adventures of last night it was a bleary-eyed start to the day compounded by the realisation that we had promised to host breakfast in Stubby to our newfound friends. With no-one backing down from the deal we found ourselves in the supermarket shopping for food and wondering how we would fit everyone in the campervan. With a bit of creative tidying we managed to squeeze everyone in and served up a breakfast of bacon and egg sarnies with tomato and avocado salad and an impressive range of bevies to suit everyone at the less than impressive time of 1pm...
The rest of the afternoon was spent exploring the northern suburbs as potential residential areas before meeting up again with Rich’s former Nanny and her family where as the only non-drinker of the night ended up having to drive them home from Chartreuse in their automatic 4x4!

Day 48-49 – Saturday 29th – Sunday 30th November 2008
Melbourne
A relaxing weekend spent chilling from the drive and having a celebratory BBQ in the family friend’s home that we had help move.

Day 50 – Monday 31st November 2008
Goulburn
After a lazier morning than planned we were unable to get to Sydney by the end of the day and ended up spending a night in a completely characterless caravan park devouring the precious crumbs of our last remaining stock and avoiding another supermarket splurge.

Day 51-55 – Tuesday 1st – Sunday 6th December
Forestville, Sydney
Arrived in Sydney just in time for Braedon and Tandia to open their Advent Calendars and then the following day helped Paul, reluctantly, celebrate his birthday which culminated in a family meal at the local Chinese restaurant where we provided a Warringah Mall baked chocolate cake as our contribution before retiring to Paul’s bar and becoming acquainted with his vast stock of whiskey.
Before we could plan the next stage of our adventures we had to check Stubby into Paul’s local garage as he was beginning to drag in the higher gears. We were informed that the universals on our driveshaft had gone (?) and sadly had to leave him on the operating table for the day as they fixed him and billed us with a triple figured sum that winded our well-worn wallets.
Fortunately this blow was softened slightly by the prospects of employment as after all the resumes I sent out I finally received some calls. The first one was with a lady called Shelley who is a best-selling author and travel presenter who runs her own independent production company, called Happy TV. I turned up at her house for the interview and was hit by a two-hour hurricane of Shelley-world which involved holding twenty-seven conversations at once which invariably spawned a whole host of speculative ideas that were discussed in the same haphazard style punctuated by a series of celeb anecdotes and name-droppings. To compound the bizarre nature of the interview her disabled son sat in on the ‘meeting’ grilling me about my film choices and somehow amidst this tangle of conversation, that I was unable to unravel from one breath to another, she offered me the spare room in her penthouse flat (complete with use of the multiple swimming pools, tennis courts and gyms in the complex) while I found myself a flat in the city. Eventually I managed to extricate myself from the interview where I was promptly offered the job of working for Happy TV as apparently I had secured the position simply on the phone call prior to arriving...A fledgling company with a 27 part travel series was enticing but the hyper-smiley enthusiasm was exhausting and so I managed to politely say that I would have to think about it. The second interview, on the other hand, could not have been more different. For a start the show was a home-renovation show for people in financial distress who, as part of the package, would additionally receive advice on how to climb out of their debt. Secondly it was held in the office of the Series Producer of the huge show over here called Domestic Blitz who did not smile once and whose interview technique involved probing questions that someone on the back of an eight-month jolly had forgotten how to respond to. The nail in the coffin was sealed when he delivered his parting comment that it was a “good time to be looking for jobs as the television industry was in the most commissionable state he had seen in the past five years and there were plenty of opportunities...”
Seeking an anaesthetic for this disaster we ventured out to Manly for the day where a day of sun, sea and surf would be sure to eradicate the all too non-distant memory. Unfortunately some of the negative connotations must have been picked up by Stubby as we tried to park. After suffering the horrific labyrinth of toll roads (and running up a hefty fine that we had enormous difficulty trying to pay as you have to ring up each individual toll road which as a visitor to the city is often difficult to work out where you are let alone what roads you have been on!) in the previous days of travelling to interviews he spat all of his dummies from the pram as we tried to find a parking space. In Australia you have to park facing the direction you are travelling in so after finally spotting a space on the opposite side of the road I jumped out to stand in it and hold it while Rich drove round the roundabout at the end. As he did so the passenger door flung open and because Stubby is so wide he was unable to reach across and close it and spun round the circle of wide-eyed al fresco cafe customers trying to grab everything that was flying out of the door. Once this drama had subsided, and we claimed our spot and walked down the other way of the road to avoid the accusing glares, I began to recall the days we had spent here when staying in Sydney previously in 2002: from the action of the Surf Rescue team saving a father and daughter from the rips to the invasion of bluebottle jellyfish that Mike and I got attacked by as the tannoy system boomed across the beach for all swimmers to get out of the sea. A most peaceful day was spent and followed up by a wander around the buzzing town which was reminiscent of the happy times spent in Fremantle before returning back to Forestville and the question of what to do next.
With the Domestic Blitz pilot spin-off a clear no-no and having deferred Shelley until the New Year we were suddenly faced with an unexpected free couple of weeks and a choice between sensibly spending them trawling for jobs and flats or postponing the onset of reality and continuing on in Stubby up the east coast. Strangely our decision was settled by Paul who said that if we did go off travelling again but returned by the 19th December we could house-sit for them over the Christmas period while they went on their summer holiday for a fortnight. With the prospect of having a multi-million dollar pad (complete with swimming pool, spa, bar and home theatre room) for a couple of weeks for free and as a base from which to scour the city for employment and accommodation the inner travel-bug reared its head whispering innocuously in our heads and we were soon packing Stubby up for an unexpected adventure in the east.

The Adventures of Stubby - Part II

Day 14 – Sunday 27th October 2008
Greenvale, Melbourne – Torquay, 75km
Our intention to depart on the Saturday was scuppered by an impromptu afternoon spent in the spa with the eski which turned into a BBQ party when the family decided to call in sick to the restaurant and instead spent the night on the decking around the spa with a bottle of JD and Port drinking their restaurant stock dry.
So it wasn’t until the Sunday that we actually left, tearing ourselves away from the luxury we had got accustomed to and setting back on the road where we gave up Chartreuse fry-ups, patisseries and evening dining for our two gas rings and cupboard of tinned and packaged Safeway basics.
To break ourselves back in gently to living in a two metre squared living area we only drove 75km from Melbourne to Torquay (passing through the satellite of Geelong) to where the Great Ocean Road begins. Torquay is famous as the surfing capital of the region and is well known for its great beaches as an urban escape for Melbourne residents owing to its easy commute from the city. We set up camp for the night in the Torquay Caravan Park in a site on the beachfront and immediately went to explore enjoying a walk along the sandy shores in the dusk with a cloud of pesky flies for company before easily slipping back into our routine of dinner and DVD as night set in.

Day 15 - Monday 27th October 2008
Torquay – Warrnambool, 163km
Was as if we woke up in England today! The sky was grey and sullen, the winds snarling and attacking our poor flimsy pop top and our fisherman chairs had been coated in a layer of dirty mud from the rainfall through the blossom trees. We were only just able to recline the pop top when the morning rain arrived, aborting our plans to spend the day exploring the beaches and surf of Torquay, and instead hastened our embracement of the Great Ocean Road.
In spite of the British weather which lingered all day like a wet March Monday the Great Ocean Road proved to be as spectacular as everything we had heard about it. The road literally hugs the coastline from Torquay to Warrnambool, following the stitches of the golden yellow sand and turquoise foaming sea. We had to alternate the driving more frequently than usual so that we could take it in turns to ooh and aah at the scenery and taking motion pictures while the other person grappled with pulling Stubby up u-bend gradients at 25kph with a trail of angry drivers queuing up behind itching to overtake owing to his refusal to climb anything in more than third gear. It was also a novelty to find that we had entered the category of “slower” vehicles and had to pull into the purpose built lay-bys on the sides of the road to allow the nippier and younger cars to pass us by!
We stopped off in Lorne, supposedly the most chic place on the route, for a cake break at The Ovenhouse and struggled with a Blueberry Turnover, which even by my experienced patisserie standards was too big for a single eating, before passing through Apollo Bay (‘Paradise By The Sea’) and the Otway National Park marvelling at the bubbles of surf, deserted beaches and greenery that provided a stark contrast to the heavily water-restricted Melbourne.
We didn’t stop then until we reached the Twelve Apostles. It was one of the recommendations that Dad had given me before leaving and which had stuck in my mind. It was a place he had visited on his travels around Australia with Nic and said I should visit and it was strange to stand on the cliffs and think that this is what they had done when they were about my age. Owing to the awful weather we would have probably driven past it unless I had insisted we stop and it was worth braving the icy cold. The Twelve Apostles are a dozen gigantic rocks off the Port Campbell coast which stick out of the water being battered by an ocean that stretches into the horizon and gives credence to the flat-earth theory. Formerly named the Sow and Piglets they are being eroded at a rate of 2cm/year so that some of the Apostles are little more than underwater stumps, but those that remain visible are an impressive phenomenon that drew in the clouds even on the most intemperate day we had yet endured.
From the Twelve Apostles it wasn’t far winding through the Bay of Islands (littered with poor man’s Apostles) through Port Campbell and ending up in Warrnambool where it seemed impossible to find a campsite for under $30 a night until we ended up in a tiny plot that seemed to be the owner’s converted back garden with a suspiciously lush lawn!
Day 16 – Tuesday 28th October 2008
Warrnambool – Grampian Mountains, 225km
With the whale nursery being sadly out of season our explorations of Warrnambool, an industrial satellite, were confined to our two favourite shops: The Salvation Army and Aldi’s! A pit-stop at the former was required to pick up replacement bowls, the first casualty of over-manning in a confined space, while the latter saw, what was supposed to be a quick stock up on staples, us emerge with a $5 bottle of port, pack of yoghurt and apricot muesli bars and several other unforeseen luxuries...A quick, and reluctant stop at McDonalds, to use the wireless internet was the final detour before we hit the road heading north from the coast for the first time to reach the Grampian Mountains.
Lunch was one of those disappointing Australian venues which according to the map looked like a buzzing hub with plenty of potential for picnic spots but turned out to be little more than an intersection with a handful of shops, requiring us to park up on the main road and make lunch on the pavement. Suffice to say, Dunkeld, held little to captivate and only hurried up our arrival at the Grampians which we reached, by our standards, in good time, ie, turning up only five minutes after the information centre had closed but with our winning smiles persuading them to unlock the doors, let us in and advise us on where to camp.
The Grampian National Park is one of Victoria’s most outstanding natural features with its arches of rugged mountain ranges and forests full of a rich diversity of flora and fauna and was in complete contrast to the open coastal route. Poor Stubby wheezed and huffed his way up the narrow roads as taking advantage of arriving in sunlight we headed to our campsite via two spectacular lookouts. Boroka Lookout is like a real-life Pride Rock with a natural jut out ledge that soars above the valley in which Lake Wartook is sunk and provides a vista of jagged mountain tors as far as you can see whereas Reid Lookout faces the other way and sits in the perfect position to catch sunset.
Dragging ourselves away from the Lookouts we persuaded Stubby to take one more journey before allowing him to collapse in the Smith Mill campsite, a small enclosed clearing in the middle of the forest with a hole in the floor taking place as its amenities block. However, this was compensated for by the sighting of our first emu loitering in the trees surrounding the entrance to our campsite and which looked like a strange hybrid of peacock head and neck upon an ostrich’s body. It was certainly our most remote and adventurous site yet and when the sun disappeared we were cast into utter blackness with a handful of other campers that afforded a sky studded with stars and the necessity of the comedic head torch to provide the most basic of functions in or out of the camper.
Day 17 – Wednesday 29th October 2008
Grampian Mountains
Somehow we managed to sleep in so late that by the time we woke up all but one of our fellow campers had departed so that when Stubby, in protest of being dragged up innumerable vertical climbs the previous day, refused to start we were forced to push him up the incline in the clearing, let him roll and hope that he started. Fortunately, and perhaps sensing the downwards advantage of gravitational pull, he spluttered back into life and passed the seventeen kilometres back to Halls Gap, the ‘hub’ of the Grampians, without any further tantrums.
Treating ourselves to the luxury of showers and electricity we were more than happy to pass the afternoon in the bowels of the mountains enjoying our first proper day of sunshine. With the awning up and fisherman chairs out it was a chance to plough through the sheaves of reading material I had accumulated during our roadtrip and which was threatening to sink poor Stubby. The problem that has emerged is that our daily routine has followed a pretty set pattern of getting up and having breakfast before spending all day driving to our next destination and spending whatever precious daytime (and warmth) remains exploring our new home before locking ourselves back in Stubby when night falls and using the fading light of dusk to cook dinner so that by the time the washing up is done we are cast into pitch black and pass our nights watching a dvd on the laptop. With no time in the day and no light in the evening my reading has sadly fallen by the wayside and so on top of the library of accumulated books I also have an impressive array of magazines, newspapers, cut-out crosswords/su dokus and information desk freebies from three cities and several smaller towns. So it was a most enjoyable evening spent reading outdated Time magazines and The Age newspapers and working out how much my poor saved pounds are devaluing on this trip.
When the sun began to cool we set off for an evening walk doing a lovely loop around the foothills of the brilliantly named mountains (Mt Difficult, Mt Abrupt, Mt Zero) that took us through the botanic gardens, Venus Baths and Splitter Falls. Emerging at the top of the waterfall on the precipice of the black granite rock in the depths of a huge crevice surrounded by giant rising cliffs of rock it was as if setting foot in Jurassic Park such was the archaic desolation and I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a horde of velociraptors emerge out of the bush. On our return the kangaroos had come out to play in the campsite and we spotted our first joey, a fat little whippersnapper who was somehow upside down in his mother’s pouch so that at first we could only see his hoppers before he performed a well-practised 180 and obligingly popped his snout out.
Somehow during our absence our new campsite had been taken over by a horde of OAPs who had commandeered the open BBQ and sunk several gallons of wine and forced us to revert to our speciality of turning yesterday’s carefully saved leftovers into a succulent brand new meal. Sadly, we were deprived of lettuce with our tacos as during the process of removing it from its bag a black spider sprung from the heart causing mayhem in the dark as we tried to figure out where it had gone (and whether it could get back into the camper) and secondly whether it was one of the poisonous redbacks we had been shown during house removals. We also experienced our first theft when a guy passing by our camper asked for a cigarette and somehow in the dark managed to steal our saucepan, sieve and odd bits of cutlery stacked ready for washing up. When it came to do the washing up and we couldn’t find these items it wasn’t until we had hunted everywhere with the torch in the dark that we worked out what had happened and tracing the guy back to his camper to claim them back found them stacked outside his door while he was busy with his girlfriend stole them back and quickly locked ourselves away in the protection of Stubby!
Day 18 – Thursday 30th October 2008
Grampians – Mt Gambier, 243km
Realised today that I have started to develop campervan snobbery! Sat outside having breakfast this morning the comments regarding the neighbouring vans that had arrived or departed overnight just kept falling out of my mouth. Colour (Stubby is the only cream van I have seen yet!), model, accessories, cleanliness all came under surveillance though the biggest culprits were the big, glossy, spick ‘n’ span rented vehicles. After a couple of weeks under the protection of Stubby I have suddenly become contemptible of those less hardy ‘tourists’ who have opted for virtual Winnebago models with complete mechanical and breakdown cover in their hefty rental payments. In contrast we are hardcore travellers rattling around in our vintage van with various parts dropping off in each place we pass through. Commending myself on opting for the “full experience” package I received the inevitable egg on the face when Stubby once again woke up disgruntled and with a flat battery and only when we both pushed him down a hill and our mad Aussie neighbour jumped in the front did to start him did he whirr into action though for a horrible moment it looked like the driver was heading straight for the boom gate of the caravan park and only missed it with a last moment swerve that took him hurtling into the main road where fortunately there was no traffic and we were able to catch up and take over the reins.
Not wanting to stop lest our battery deflate again it was a solid journey through to Mount Gambier which was unremarkable except for crossing over the border into Southern Australia. Spotting the heavy quarantine warning signs we pulled over 2km prior to the border and taking an impromptu lunch, not wanting to waste valuable reserves, devoured all the fruit and veg we had on board except for the last remaining carrots...
Our entrance into South Australia was bizarrely paved through plantations of dark green pine trees, not something you automatically associate with the arid, scorched bushland of a desert state, and Mount Gambier being the first major town across the border we weren’t long driving. Having discovered the campers trick of getting up early and arriving at your destination early enough to make the most of the day we had a leisurely afternoon exploring the electric blue (almost purple) volcanic crater lake that is its feature point (complete with monument built to a local depressive who jumped horses up and down the crater for kicks before throwing himself off into the waters one day) and then a more ramshackled walk around the town looking at the less aesthetically grabbing, though supposedly equally infamous, caves. Overgrown and cut-off to tourists they stand as gaping caverns in the middle of high streets and residential suburbia that are neither particularly interesting to look at or well maintained. Still, it was our first proper exploration of small town Australia with its ancient high street of niche retail outlets, snail-pace atmosphere and genetically odd-looking locals. Its charm did begin to grow as we accustomed to the hum-drum ambience and nestled in a delicious cafe sampling the local beef pies before heading back to our genial caravan site for reading and yoga.

Day 19 – Friday 31st October 2008
Mt Gambier – Adelaide, 450km
Stubby might have cracked the egg on my face yesterday but today he bought a baker’s dozen and smeared them all over until the yolk was pouring back out of my eyes...For the third successive day he refused to start and once again calling upon the unqualified helpfulness of our fellow campers had to push him down a hill to get going. When he finally did decide to start it was with a big red warning light around the brake sign...Concerned about our imminent crossing of the Nullarbor Desert we decided we couldn’t keep risking it and pulled into the garage on the opposite side of the road to get it checked out. A top up of brake fluid banished the red light but while we were there we decided to test the battery: the reading came back a quarter of the strength it should be and so a week after replacing the weekend we had to kit Stubby out with a new battery (which fortunately was on super special offer and didn’t dent our pockets too much).
Two and a half hours and 200metres since we left the caravan site we were able to get on the road. The 450km journey was the longest we had undertaken yet and required multiple swapping overs of driver and passenger to prevent boredom on the long Roman roads cut straight through the Coorong National Park. Lunch was endured by the pelican observatory just past Salt Creek with no pelicans and an overpowering salty-swamp smell that permeated the van even with all the doors and windows closed. In fact little remarkable can be said about this particular route boring through miles and miles of scrubland spruced up with the occasional roadkill carcasses at various states of decomposition providing an detailed anatomy of the kangaroo and explicit governmental (road signs warning against drowsy driving with a myriad slogans, fonts and pictures to put you off ever wanting to drive with the slightest fatigue. As with all Australian campaigns (smoking, obesity etc) the advertisements are overzealous in both their graphic depiction and warmongering attitude which is leant a bit of humour by the unusual sponsorship – a tad hypocritical that McDonalds fund warnings about roadkill whilst pumping people full of cholesterol packed, artery choking goodness...?
The only other point of note was the unseemly weather. I will never tolerate listening to an Aussie criticise the British weather again after weeks of miserable, cold, wet days since leaving Sydney. Back in the full regalia of trousers, hoody and hat with the heating turned up it could easily have been a typical winter day back in the UK. Where yesterday the cross winds were so powerful that every time a lorry passed on the opposite side Stubby got sucked in and then spat back out by the vacuum effect today it was the perpetual showers that burst out of nowhere and smeared the windscreen and were especially problematic while trying to change the battery in the garage forecourt.
It was a relief to get to Adelaide and fortunately having rung ahead to book a spot, the last site, in the city’s most central caravan park we avoided the frustration of having to find somewhere to spend the night. It meant we had plenty of time to unwind and make dinner before having a night out in north Adelaide on the buzzy Melbourne Street strip. Taking advantage of the special offer $5 schooners in a deserted sports bar we then headed to a chic and trendy bar at the other end of the strip gaining an insight into both ends of the spectrum.
Day 20 - Saturday 1st November 2008
Adelaide
Warnings from the scary woman at the Adelaide Caravan Park had us up and early and raring to go without even taking into account the extra half hour gained by crossing a state border that we had been oblivious to. Parking in the city we set out on foot to explore, rummaging around Rundell Mall, the main shopping precinct, snoozing in the afternoon sun (which after all my grumblings yesterday was shining in full bloom) and stopping for lunch in the bustling Central Market where I sampled my first “delight” – fruit juice served with natural yoghurt.
My only knowledge of Adelaide prior to visiting it was that it is the birthplace of the indomitable Lleyton Hewitt but a night and a day spent and I had fallen in love with it, gaining a homely attachment that I hadn’t yet felt in Australia. I don’t quite know why that was but a combination of warm sun, quirky shops and cafes with student prices and a good balance of concrete and greenery probably had something to do with it. Such was the attachment that we aborted our plans to depart today and instead returned to the caravan park to linger for another night.
Dinner was hand on the swanky Gouger Street in a fantastic little Chinese restaurant with giant portions for dwarfish prices and a cheap and cheerful selection of wine carafes. Trying to find some of the live music that the city is renowned for we ended up stumbling into a student packed night at The Astral where there were generous servings of beer pitchers and club remixes. Because of its compact size we were able to walk everywhere throughout the night taking in the different sectors and discovering that Adelaide is a city without the big city frustrations.
Day 21 - Sunday 2nd November 2008
Adelaide – Port Augusta, 325km
Mass in the St Francis Xavier Cathedral was replete with the Viennese Choral Society which was a pleasant start to the day before packing back into the Stubster and heading north-west although only after having had the unique privilege of discovering that private newsagents add an extra fee onto the sale of newspapers; buying a $2 The Australian Weekend I was charged $2.40 and when I pointed to the printed fee on the front page strapline the woman simply shrugged her shoulders and said they had to make their money somewhere!
Arrived at Port Augusta in the evening and were duly entertained by a pair of kite-surfers with their combi van on the lake outside our site. Sadly this was all by way of entertainment that the campsite, lauded in our guide book, could provide as even the Great Flying Doctors base seemed to have disappeared since it was last updated. Having read up about the great BBQ facilities we treated ourselves to Coles’ finest selection of reduced meats before closing time, our latest budget-saving lightbulb, only to find ourselves cooking in a swath of swirling red dust blown up by the vicious winds in a dodgy BBQ machine that only took one dollar pieces and ate our last one without even turning the sausages brown. Finishing off the meal in the frying pan back in Stubby we were forced inside by a combination of the weather and the screaming couple next door having a domestic through the wafer-thin canvas of their tent.

Day 22 - Monday 3rd November 2008
Port Augusta – Mikkira Station, 393km
Given the impending crossing of the Nullarbor which will require relentless driving we decided to treat ourselves to a few more days grace and pootle up and down the Eyre Peninsula rather than cut across the top and hit the desert directly. Named after the 1841 expedition by John Eyre who completed the first overland crossing between south and west Australia it is aAtriangular mass of National Parks, rugged landscapes, gorgeous beaches and the whole caboodle of Australian flora and fauna the Peninsular combined everything we were looking for in our roadtrip.
Our first stop was at Whyalla, the state’s second biggest town, which isn’t saying much as apart from its hideous steelworks it had all the buzz of Oaklands Grandstand on a Tuesday night though it did give us a taste of what to expect crossing the desert as the farmland gave way to a landscape as afar as the eye could see of red dust broken up only by the occasional stubborn small bush. This was more than compensated for by a lunchbreak at Port Neill, a true smalltown Australian village in every sense. With a long jetty jutting out over the white sand and turquoise sea and a scattering of bungalows along the coast it was both picturesque and relaxing.
Following the coast all the way down to the tip we reached the more bustling Port Lincoln which is famous for its annual January Tunarama festival where locals do everything possible to the abundant shoal of tuna from caber-style tossing to fancy dress... We only stopped for chocolate gateaux and coffee before heading to the Mikkira Koala Sanctuary to camp. Our plan had been to spend the night in the National Park but this was advised against by the friendly Sheila in the Tourist Information Shop as the Park is designed for 4x4 rather than twenty-five year old collectible campervans...So instead we opted for the far more intriguing prospect of sleeping with the koalas! Not knowing what to expect we had to follow a run of unsignposted dirt tracks leading away from the Park and into the ubiquitous scrubland so that for kilometres we were unsure whether we were even lost or heading in the right direction. All of a sudden a signpost popped out from behind a gum tree and letting ourselves in through the gates we entered the sanctuary. Formerly a homestead for the shepherds to look after the land’s sheep the area has been privately owned by the Theakstone family since the 1920s who in the late 1960s took in two koalas from Kangaroo Island and now have a thriving wild population of 150 which acts as a massive tourist attraction for those people who want to see them in a wild and natural environment and be able to camp amongst them. With no-one being in the tiny little office we signed ourselves into the permit book, left our money and took the map to try and find where we could camp. As we entered further and further into the sanctuary we realised that we were the only residents that night and ended up, somewhat eerily, parking Stubby in the middle of a grassy field surrounded by gum trees. Fortunately, the current owner, a glamorous granny called Bett, was on her way back from the sheep pens with her dog Emma lolling on the back of her truck and stopped to have a chat and advise us. As soon as we had set up camp we went for a stroll and within minutes had spotted our first dozy koala. Once you knew where to look you seemed to find them in every tree; from grumpy Grandads annoyed at being photographed to greedy guzzlers propped up on the flimsiest of boughs stretching out for the eucalypt leaves not yet munched to mothers with babies clinging to their backs. We completely lost track of the time wandering around the field, following the nature trail and walking down to the old homestead and windmill and not once losing enthusiasm for the spotting of every koala. Having spent all day driving it made every minute of the journey worthwhile and completely vindicated our choice of route. There was something magical about this forest of gum trees with their guardian bears with tufty ears, stick-on noses and big fat bottoms nestled in crooks of trees in the fading light. Combined with the olde worlde feel of the sanctuary, which was an antidote to the polished cities we have mainly spent our time in and the fantastic Bett who single handedly manages the whole sanctuary it was one of the best days I had enjoyed yet since touching down in Australia.

Day 23 - Tuesday 4th November
Mikkira – Streaky Bay, 363km
The cuteness of the koalas had slightly lost its appeal after their pig-like grunting throughout the night had made us feel like we had spent a night surrounded by wild rutting boars but jumping back out in the daylight and going on another koala watch they were soon redeemed. The weather had changed and rough winds picked up so that the poor things were clinging on for dear life in the nippy gusts.
It was sad to have to say goodbye to Bett and her sanctuary but continuing our Attenborough pursuits we were aiming to drive up the west coast of the Peninsular to where the only Australian sealion colony lives.
This route wound up the opposite coastline and unfortunately our planned lunchbreak in the tiny little village of Elliston was marred by a gigantic thunderstorm. Venturing out only to the bakery for dessert we were suitably scared by the strange spaced out look of all the locals who eyed us warily and quickly carried on our way. As we took the turn-off to Point Labatt, home of the sealions, we left behind the tarmac and vague notion of traffic for gravel dirt tracks and only the occasional squashed lizard for company. Stopping off to visit the spectacular 1500 million years old Ingelstone rocks hewn out of pink granite we found ourselves plunging further down the off-piste paths as a full tropical storm broke out with bolts of lightning crashing down seemingly on top of poor Stubby. As we reached the crossroads that divided us between Port Labatt and Streaky Bay, our intended night stop, we realised we had less than a sixth of a tank full of petrol with no spare canister on board. With the storms still threatening and evening catching up we reluctantly had to give the sealions a miss and hope we had enough fuel left to get us to the nearest town. Gambling on taking a small detour to Sceala Bay where a pump was listed in the guide book our hearts fell when we turned up to see an ‘Out of Service’ sign nailed above it. With no other choice but to head back into the maze of dirt paths and try and navigate our way back to Streaky Bay we turned poor Stubby around. As mobile network failed to appear and the constant hammering of the uneven roads bounced various screws out of their holdings (so that I spent 20km holding onto the clock that fell out of the ceiling and was smashing against the windscreen by its dangling bare wires) we were prepared to have to sleep the night out in the middle of nowhere and hope to hail down a friendly local the following day when with the last ounces of petrol we rolled into Streaky Bay!
Sadly we had arrived so late that the famous streaks of seaweed for which it is named weren’t apparent though the appearance of a flock of pelicans helped compensate for the absence of sealions and we enjoyed a lovely evening walk along the beach under the stars before turning in for a well earned rest!

Day 24 – Wednesday 5th November 2008
Streaky Bay – Border Village, 611km
Stubby embarked on his most gruelling test yet as not only did we tackle our longest kilometrage yet but we also left behind the Eyre Peninsula and with it all semblance of civilisation, amenities and aid as we set out into the Nullarbor Plains.
The first leg to Ceduna was still within the remit of the Eyre Peninsula and was a good chance to test Stubby out as in spite of his new battery he had refused to start again in the morning... Stopping off to stock on all the essentials for crossing the desert (including a brand new petrol cap as Rich had somehow forgotten to put it back on at the last petrol station...) it was a relief to hear him start without a grumble and so with tyres pumped, water tank filled and petrol tank full, plus a jerry can containing a spare 20 litres of petrol, we set out.
On our way out of the koala sanctuary we met a seasoned Aussie caravaner who, admittedly in his super-duper deluxe caravan with extension, 4x4 and boat, advised us not to rush the Nullarbor as it was a beautiful attraction in its own right. This was in stark contrast to every comment from other Aussies we had received when mentioning our plan to drive across it and as we started out we realised he had been right. Known as the treeless plain (null arbors) the landscape suddenly gave way to a flat plain of scrubland with a tarmac road running straight through towards the horizon. To be able to look as far as the eye can see in every possible direction is an incredible opportunity, especially compared to the claustrophobia of London, and instead of being bored by the route we both found that it passed much quicker than anticipated and were astonished that when we stopped for the night we had travelled over 600km. Just before we reached our nightstop we pulled over to the clifftops running almost parallel to the road and picking our way through the dusky thickets of gorse-like bushes almost fell down onto the beach. It was one of the most spectacular views I have ever experienced. As we looked towards the setting sun we could see it drowning in a plume of magenta nestling against the silhouetted bays and crashing seas. I felt as if I was seeing a land that no human had ever touched such was its perfection as looking in one direction provided this incredible sunset the other stretched out across the acres of flat blue sea stretching to the seeming end of the world.
It was a lovely way to finish our first day which instead of being the trial and danger everyone had scared us into believing had actually afforded a beautiful panorama of a unique landscape that in itself offered that rare opportunity to think without distraction. Pulling up into Border Village (marking the boundary between South and Western states) we set about making a gigantic burritos mix of all our vegetables before quarantine confiscates them tomorrow that will also fuel us for day two of the crossing!

Day 25 – Thursday 6th November 2008
Border Village – Norseman, 741km
Stubby made it! We made it! After nearly 750km of driving through the barren scrubland of the desert we emerged back into civilisation unscathed and actually having quite enjoyed this part of the journey.
It began early in the morning as we hopped from the Border Village campsite to quarantine where we passed with flying colours and a bellyful of fresh fruit salad breakfast and then sallied on into the plains. I thought we had encountered some straight roads on our travels but they really aren’t joking when they say that the crossing to Western Australia is one big road across the desert. With barely a deviation of curvature to break the seemingly neverending stretch of tarmac we relied instead upon the creative entertainments provided by previous travellers in the form of dead roadside trees decorated with either various garments of underwear or bric-a-brac. We also adopted the Nullarbor road of etiquette by madly waving at every other vehicle passing by in the opposite direction and being particularly pleased by reciprocate gestures from Ironman cyclists crossing the plains with their haversacks strapped across the back wheel. Our adventures could have been spiced up by picking up the over-bearded hitch-hiker found at various points along the road as we overtook and were overtaken by him on his innumerable carriages but sadly I’ve watched far too many horror slash-flicks to indulge in such generosity and so our amusement came instead from the smalltown Australian banter experienced at the roadside pitstops we made. Stranded in the absolute middle of nowhere the attendants all verged on the edge of eccentric from the unfortunate appearance of being inbred to the desperation at seeing new faces outside of their regular passing-through truckkies. Suffice to say two random British guys pulling up seemed to be the highlight of their day and without knowing they also acted as a much welcomed distraction.
The actual journey itself was one of those incredible once-in-a-lifetime opportunities where your surroundings are so unbelievable that you cannot quite believe what you are seeing and experiencing. It felt as if the $36 million road was an insignificant tributary traced onto the sprawling red rock and scorched gorse scenery that at times looked hallucinogenic or like the landscape of a video game such was its surreal quality. This was enhanced by the mirage effect of the heat which at times turned the end of the visible road into the same colour as the sky so that it felt if we continued we were going to soar into the sky a la Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Factor in a couple of gigantic eagles feasting on kangaroo steak and the bulbous kamikaze lizards dragging themselves across the road and the day had ended before we had even realised it had begun. Even my leg, which included the indomitable 150km line of tarmac that proudly announces itself as the country’s longest straight road, seemed to defuse the physics of time and space continuums as the vast swathes of the fearsome Nullarbor were soon behind us and we were tucked up into the Norseman Caravan Park making the most of the extra hour and a half sleep gained by crossing the state border.

Day 26 – Friday 7th November 2008
Norseman – Fremantle, 763
Twenty-six days after leaving Sydney we completed our coast to coast route with one final gruelling leg of driving taking us all the way to the setting sun just south of Perth. We left the desert behind for lusher climates though the warnings about wild camels crossing the road prevailed. The camels were brought over by the Afghans during the goldmining rush and when they realised they were too expensive to take back home set them wild in the desert so that they now serve as hazards for motor vehicles droning down the highways. We stopped off in Southern Cross which was typical of one of the many ghost towns built up during the gold craze and now stands desolate with only its archaic mine shafts providing any point of focus for drivers passing through.
In the car all day for the third day in a road by the end of the afternoon we had become a bit blasé about it all to the extent that when we pulled off after an exchange of drivers we drove for several minutes down the highway before realising the side door was wide open and all our worldly belongings perilously close to tipping out onto the road! Suffice to say, landing in Fremantle couldn’t arrive sooner and so when we finally reached the Fremantle Village caravan park it was a relief to finally stop and even the office’s failure to register our prior booking by phone didn’t matter as we collapsed into our swanky campervan site.

The Adventures of Stubby!

The “second half” of my adventures began in style with a trip on the new double decker A380 plane courtesy of Singapore Airlines to Sydney. The plane was so gigantic that it didn’t even bear thinking how it might get off the ground so I immersed myself in the library entertainment system catching up on some good old British classics that passed the night journey.
We arrived at 6am having not had much sleep and encountered our first obstacle when hauled up at customs for our dodgy looking spice collection that was summarily confiscated but met Rich’s uncle without any problems and were soon catching up on sleep in their house in Kensington.
As we were homeless, jobless and penniless upon arrival the first couple of weeks in Sydney were spent putting in the elbow grease to find flats, jobs and a campervan to begin the first leg of our travels around the country.
In spite of this we managed to explore the city taking in the typical tourist attractions of the Opera House, Darling Harbour (which was far too smart to accept my traveller scruff attire in the evenings), Coogee and Bondi beaches (where the water was colder than Hythe beachfront), National Gallery (attending a brilliant Tibetan film exhibition), Cathedral, shopping malls, The Great British Sweet Shop, casino and theatre to see the hilarious ‘Priscilla: Queen of the Desert ‘ musical which was an ominous introduction to driving across Australia!
In between we managed to suss out a few potential areas to live and fired our CVs to every prospective channel but the main emphasis of our efforts was directed to finding a campervan as we had reversed our decision to work before travelling owing to the disinclination to drive across 40 degree Australia in a can over the height of summer. This required strict monitoring of gumtree and the skulky lower basement Kings Cross Car Market where shabby travellers returning from months in the outback were desperate to flog their clapped out vans at extortionate prices. After much searching we found a beautiful specimen called Daisy who had just carried a family around the east coast and so was in much better condition than the backpacker equivalents and came equipped with every luxury you could need. Making a gentelman’s deal with the Kiwi owner we thought we could relax until we got the money to him but in the interim his mother-in-law fell down a bus, cracked her hip and then suffered severe complications during the emergency operation and so we had to start all over again.
Eventually we managed to track down another van we both agreed on in the town of Wollongong, about 100km south of the city and took the train along the coast to inspect it. Stubby is a 1983 cream Nissan Urvan poptop campervan owned by Gordon Blow, a 75 year old man who was only the second owner of the vehicle and had bought Stubby as a retirement treat so he and his wife could travel the country. As a consequence it was immaculately looked after and the cleanest car we had seen throughout our trawling; it also had a long rego (which helped us get round the extremely difficult problem of registering a vehicle when you are not a resident), personalised numberplate and a reliable motoring history backed up with the paperwork. On the flipside it lacked most of the necessary interior extras , was at the very top of our budget and hadn’t been on a long drive for eighteen years – Gordon having just ticked over the necessary mileage per year to keep it roadworthy – which left us dubious about whether it would survive our epic plans!
Whilst not our preferred choice, with time running out and reaching the end of our tether with the gruelling daily search process, we compromised and knocking a $1000 dollars off the asking price (and also gaining some bedding courtesy of pandering to the wife) found ourselves the proud owner of a new van. With a two ring gas stove and grill, large fridge, pull out awning with fisherman chairs, two man tent, storage box on the back, sink with pumped water and two sofas that pulled out into a giant double bed we had everything on board, it was just a question of working out how it all fitted. The irony should not be lost that I have never owned or bought a car in my life and all of a sudden found myself the father of an ancient campervan on the other side of the world...
Without insurance or a map our first adventure required us managing to drive back to Sydney from Wollongong, tackling the highways and city centre! Whilst getting heavily lost once in the CBD sector of town Stubby passed every test and was soon parked outside Rich’s uncle’s house without any mechanical problems. A thorough spring clean, quick shop to the Salvation Army to kit Stubby out with all the kitchen and living accessories and personalisation with Buddhist prayer flags and Balinese sarongs and it felt less like an old Grandpa’s van and more like our home on wheels for the next couple of months!
Before we could set out from Sydney I had to go and pick up my new bank card that mum had posted to Paul and Sindy which saw Stubby traverse the Sydney Harbour Bridge and enter the northern suburbs. Arriving at Forestville later than planned and chinwagging over a pile of chocolate muffins and hobnobs Paul and Sindy invited us to stay the night and ended up finding themselves submerged by a mound of secondhand crockery to be put through the dishwasher, a pile of dirty washing for laundry and a gigantic Nissan Urvan in their driveway whose faulty tail lights perplexed even Paul’s garage of gadgets.
We were thoroughly spoiled during our stay while Paul was in his element tinkering around with the mechanics in his workshop garage (ie, showing us how it worked!) while Sindy was more than happy to empty her old linen cupboard into the van. It gave us a couple of days to ransack the Warringah Mall for ipod adaptor, laptop, fridge and inverter to properly kit Stubby out for the long haul though this wasn’t without its problems as my card having not been used for over a month was suddenly stopped as I attempted to pay for our electronic goods because of suspected fraud! Only ringing Nationwide for the millionth time was I able to convince them that I was the purchaser though this took so long to authorise that the shop had closed by the time I came off the phone and we were sadly forced to spend another night in Paul’s bar/cinema.
It was lovely to see Tandia and Braedon, though their method of waking us up in the morning by throwing their entire collection of stuffed animals until we got out of bed was less desirable. Went to watch Braedon play a football match and was eerily taken aback by the uncanny similarities to Dom at that age; the nippy speediness, fearlessness in tackling boys twice his size and complete obsession with the ball to the exclusion of absolutely everything else.
Dropping Tandia and Braedon off at school on the Monday we continued back to the Warringah Shopping Mall and completed our shopping. Dropping into the NRMA store to buy our insurance and road assistance policy we were served by the indomitable Christine who in between setting up our details relayed her life story, argued with her bank over the phone about their poor customer service, gossiped about her regular customers who popped in to say hello and pulled her poor colleague Leisha into every conversation. She informed us that she was sorry to say that since the shop had installed CCTV cameras she was no longer able to give away freebies like she used to do (freebies being camp books worth $80!) but then disappeared into the back office and emerged with a couple of drinks bottles and $70 of maps saying it was “all she could find.” She rounded off our experience by then taking advantage of a loophole in her computer system to guarantee us a way of not having to pay the cancellation fee should we wish to stop our yearly insurance policy!
By the time we got back to Paul and Sindy’s laden with shopping and sorted out my laptop it was mid-afternoon. Paul, having just had an operation and restricted to crutches, was more than happy to let us stay for as long as we wanted as we were able to help out with the more mobile tasks around the house but before we could get too comfy we knew we had to force ourselves to get on the road and so reluctantly bade them farewell to begin our adventures!


Day 1 – Monday 13th October 2008
Forestville, Sydney to Mittagong – 100km
Having survived the test run from Wollongong back to the city without any apparent mishaps Stubby was deemed roadworthy and began his adventures in true style by making his first proper journey over the Sydney Harbour Bridge as we departed Kensington to find Paul and Sindy (and retrieve my new bank card) with a little detour via the vast warehouse stock of the Salvation Army to kit out our new abode with an artillery of kitchen utensils!
Coming back over the Bridge into central Sydney our first task was to navigate the e-tagging system of bridge and motorway tolls whilst negotiating the post-work rush hour traffic. Circumnavigating the airport we finally hit the Hume Freeway and with an hour of daylight left drove as far as we could south towards Canberra before having to pull over. Heading for one of the many campsites signed on the freeway we found ourselves in a caravan park inhabited by permanent scowled residents complete with their nightly bottles of whisky and making as swift a u-turn as possible in a 5 metre van disappeared down an avenue of trees before popping out in the town of Mittengong. It took the services of the friendly petrol station cashier to direct us to the town’s campsite and arriving out of hours we had to buzz for someone to show us how to pitch our virginal first night. Erecting our awning, hooking up our electricity to the mains and cooking on our two ring gas stove were all groundbreaking experiences that even the swirling wind could not prevent us from enjoying as we sat in our fisherman chairs outside Stubby washing our tuna pasta down with vats of tea. The only slight imposition on our night was the intrusion of one of the park’s “residents” who invited himself under our awning with his laundry and in spite of much awkward polite chit chat and less than polite hints for him to leave seemed to have lodged himself for the night. It was only when we both physically retreated into the van itself that he eventually left and we quickly snook out to do our washing up and made a hasty return before we could be caught again.


Day 2 – Tuesday 14th October 2008
Mittagong to Canberra- 180km
Our first full day in the campervan was, to everyone’s surprise, a triumph. This was largely in part to the fact that navigation was reduced to finding our way back onto the Hume Freeway and following it directly to Canberra. There had been a bit of umming and ahhing about whether we should take the prettier, more winding coastal route and avoid the capital but was decided against by a combination of anticipating similar sights on the Great Ocean Road and a desire to visit a city that seemed in our small experience to have been castigated by an overwhelming majority of its country’s inhabitants.
In fact the only excitement saw me take the wheel of Stubby and begin to learn how to manoeuvre our beast on wheels which involved some hairy attempts at hitting third gear and general cultural difficulties in encountering a gear stick on the side of the steering wheel, indicators on the right hand side of the wheel and a wiper button virtually in the passenger’s glove compartment. I felt like I was driving a truck, albeit one with the horsepower of a Shetland Pony, and fifth gear is so far out of my reach that I physically have to clamber over the steering wheel to slot it into place. My first foray was not helped by the epidemic of bright yellow signposts indicating a whole host of kangaroos, wombats and “native wildlife” were preparing kamikaze rushes in front of me for 20km stretches at a time.
Irrespective of these obstacles, literary and literal, we arrived in Canberra by mid afternoon affording ourselves the luxury of exploring the capital while tearfully leaving Stubby on his own for the first time. Our plans were thwarted by the architectural aesthetics of Walter Burley Griffin, the designer who won the lucrative prize to design the capital, as we discovered Canberra is a city not accessible to the pedestrian especially in consideration of the geography of its principal tourist attractions. Venturing out from the car park at the University we had to duck across motorways and clamber over walls in order to reach the pretty lakeside path, replete with blossom floating in the breeze and an army of KiKi cockatoos, that wound around to the National Museum positioned on the peninsular of land tantalisingly close to Capital Hill but frustratingly on the wrong side of the water inlet forcing us to have to trace our footsteps back around the lake towards parliament. The circular road system that surrounds Capital Hill requiring continual dodging of rush hour traffic across the highways meant that we eventually abandoned our attempts to reach the parliament buildings by foot and return to Stubby. The exploration was a not complete waste however as the National Museum provided plenty of entertainment with its revolving postmodern fractured theatre screen and bizarre multicoloured tarmaced Garden of Dreams. Though as far as I could make out from the museum’s hagiography Australia has only four segments of history: the arrival of convicts from England in the eighteenth century, the Gold Rush in the nineteenth century, the establishment of independence at the turn of the twentieth century and then the appalling travesty of the fight for equal rights for the indigenous Aborigines. But the resounding message from the museum seemed to be who needs a history when your country has spawned the world’s greatest and most eclectic collection of animals?! And this was backed up by the giant collection of stuffed platypuses, kangaroos, possums, wombats, koala’s and the world’s last Tasmanian tiger.
Stopping off at the over-friendly Information Centre we were directed to a campsite in the fading dusk and it was only once we had set the van up for the night that we realised we were sandwiched between a race course and the outer perimeter fence of the Canberra Juvenile Prison...So instead of lurking about outside Stubby it was tacos night with a DVD run off the laptop newly charged by our swanky inverter!

Day 3 – Wednesday 15th October 2008
Canberra to Cann River – 293km
Resolved to visit the impressive parliament buildings before we left Canberra we combined our departure through the city with a stop-off at Capital Hill and were glad we hadn’t been deterred by the previous day’s frustration as the building, though an ugly pillared grey from the outside, was a revelation inside. From the Aboriginal 90 000 piece mosaic outside the entrance (symbolising the original meaning of ‘Kamberra’ as ”meeting place”) to the rooftop lawn with double-decker bus sized national flag to one of only four copies of the Magna Carta the building was the perfect combination of old and new, mixing regal stateliness with the traditional Aussie relaxed atmosphere. We were able to access the building for free and it was championed by a militia of staff keen to enable every query thrown at them and even the politicians conducted their wheeling and dealing at the bottom of the staircase without batting an eye as to who was listening. The best find was however the Queen Terrace with to my now finely honed budget eyes Australia’s cheapest food, though sadly we could only scrape together our collective shrapnel to afford a solitary apple and cinnamon muffin which was impossibly light. Well versed in the Forsdike camping tradition of helping oneself to “free” sacheted condiments it was also a coup to pocket a couple of government stamped salts and peppers that sit so well with the Supabarn meals in our twenty-five year old van...
As a consequence of our parliamentarian dalliance it was an afternoon on the road as we aimed for the south coast. The Monaro Highway is fortunately a gorgeous route ploughing through the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales and over the border to the forest-lined valleys of Victoria. The problem with the perennial straight roads and unwavering flat gas pedal is that when you do come across a road marking you either forget completely what it means, ignore it or are thrown into such a panic by its sudden appearance that you tend to overrun any danger it signifies. But the counter blessing of these roads is that the sparseness of traffic means that even when this happens there’s virtually no chance of it being witnessed by anyone else and you can easily conduct your ninety-point turn and get back on track!
Having congratulated ourselves on the brilliance of our navigation and speed we ambitiously decided that once we hit Cann River we would continue on through the Peachtree Creek Reserve to the little campsite perched on the end of the inlet at Furnell Landing. Stubby withstood an additional 20km of winding hairpin bends through the peachtree-less Creek but when we took a wrong turning and ended up on a dirt track designed for 4x4 he began to whimper and with night fast approaching we sheepishly had to head back to the petrol station we had stopped off at on the main road to ask the same attendant where the nearest campsite was and have it pointed out to us a whopping 400m down the road...Delighted to be back in civilisation we even welcomed the usual redneck permanent residents with out-stretched arms as we were finally able to pitch for the night, safe from any Wolf Creek style scenarios...

Day 4 – Thursday 16th October 2008
Cann River to Wilson’s Promontory – 410km
Designated driving day...left Cann River at midday and drove continuously along the Princes Highway taking it in legs with a stop in the clapped out shopping centre of Sale to buy sausages for a simple bangers ‘n’ mash dinner. A pretty drive through the Lakes Entrance with its sparkling blue creeks and waterways and we had emerged into Wilson’s Promontory National Park, Australia’s most popular National Park. We arrived just before dusk and managed to set up the van at Yanakie Caravan Park and enjoy a stroll along the wetlands of the Tidal River entrance where the black swans were sailing along the edges before settling down to our hearty English tea.

Day 5 – Friday 17th October 2008
Wilson’s Promontory National Park
After four days on the road and having covered over 400km yesterday we were both in agreement that we needed a stop-off day out of the van just to explore the country that we were hurtling through (at all of 55mph...) I had particularly suffered with the long driving as prior to Stubby I had probably completed about five two-hour drives in my life and to suddenly find myself tearing up 200km a day was beginning to take its toll. It also meant we could set up the van with the pop-top and awning and establish it as our “home” rather than just our mode of transport. The plan was thwarted first by a flat battery, we presume caused by putting the headlights on to do a spot of midnight washing up, and then secondly by a dwindling of petrol which forced us to detour back towards Foster in order to pick up some more fuel. Finally we made our way into the park and set up base along the beachfront in the organically partitioned individual camp sites. Our first port of call in exploring the park was Norman Beach, one of only a handful of places East Australians can see the sunset, which was only a hop, step and a skip from our van. Sharing the plains of white golden sand in a bay frowned upon by craggy mountain ranges with only two other tourists we were more than spoiled and followed the shore round to the Lilly Pilly Gully walk which wound us through the wetlands and hills up to the Tidal River lookout tor affording an incredible vista of the whole park. On our way up to the vantage point we also came across our first live (and wild) kangaroo who looked most perturbed to have been disturbed but posed eloquently for photos before disappearing off into the scrubland. On descending the viewpoint we continued the walk round to the neighbouring bay of Squeaky Beach, so named for the sound produced by walking on the sand barefoot. Another gorgeous, and eerily desolated beach, was spoiled only by the sounding of the emergency siren which caused us to quicken our pace away from potential bushfires towards the water before it stopped almost as inexplicably as it had begun.
Back to Stubby before dark we cooked up a feast of chicken in tomato, onion, mushroom and garlic sauce with sautéed potatoes, pushing the limits of our kitchen and culinary skills as well as racing against nightfall as we were pitched in a non-powered site so that as soon as the sun set our light (and heat) sources disappeared. As we were hurriedly clearing away the debris to go to bed we noticed a wombat snuffling about just feet from our tent doubling our tally of native wildlife spotted.

Day 6 - Saturday 18th October 2008
Wilson’s Promontory to Melbourne – 250km
Our hallowed spot of isolation became invaded overnight by cars full of families taking advantage of the unseasonably hot weather for a weekend break so while we were reluctant to leave the Park in such good weather the influx of visitors reassured us we had made the right decision as we hit the Princes Highway again. Apart from a brief lunchbreak at a petrol station it was another heavy drive all the way into Melbourne where we managed to drive straight into the centre to find directions to a campsite at Federation Square and then straight back out to the Big 4 Caravan Park in Coburn just in time to shower and change into less sweaty clothes for dinner with Rich’s former nanny at her cafe, Chartreuse, where we ate and drank like kings as their guests!
Day 7-15: Sunday 19th – Sunday 26th October 2008
Greenvale, Melbourne
Under the strict instructions of Rich’s Nanny we were ordered to leave the caravan park and settle ourselves into their guest room where we ended up basing ourselves for a week while we explored Melbourne and continued the job hunt as we spread our baskets of eggs around the television world. The family were lovely and we were made to feel like extended relatives as we joined them for the youngest son’s 17th birthday and helped their best friend move into her brand new house in an attempt to earn our keep alongside helping them open the cafe in the morning for which we were treated to full English breakfasts! We also went to visit the customs office where the daughter works and trains the dogs and were allowed to go into the puppies pens and play with puppies ranging from a few days to a few months old.
Melbourne has far more character than Sydney and is also shabbier and more homely and it was fun enough just to potter about the streets sampling the hundreds of coffee houses (and their mountains of pastries!) and catching postmodern film exhibitions on the moat or wandering through the casino and watching the OAPs flicking the handles or the Vietnamese screaming in the poker room! The foyer also contained an incredible dancing water fountain that spat globules and fans of water out in time to the music.
It would have been rude whilst in Melbourne not to have visited the home of Neighbours and in true clichéd British style we drove Stubby to Pinoak Court aka, Ramsey Street, pulled up outside the Kennedys, put the kettle on the gas ring and sat down for a cup of tea and biscuit with the Ramsey Street cat and security guard before posing for the most ridiculous photos we could muster. Sadly we didn’t manage to make it to the Neighbours themed night where various cast members turn up to an organised club night and allow you to take their photo for vast cover fees and will have to make do with the Busted jump in front of the Bishops’.

The Adventures of Stubby

The “second half” of my adventures began in style with a trip on the new double decker A380 plane courtesy of Singapore Airlines to Sydney. The plane was so gigantic that it didn’t even bear thinking how it might get off the ground so I immersed myself in the library entertainment system catching up on some good old British classics that passed the night journey.
We arrived at 6am having not had much sleep and encountered our first obstacle when hauled up at customs for our dodgy looking spice collection that was summarily confiscated but met Rich’s uncle without any problems and were soon catching up on sleep in their house in Kensington.
As we were homeless, jobless and penniless upon arrival the first couple of weeks in Sydney were spent putting in the elbow grease to find flats, jobs and a campervan to begin the first leg of our travels around the country.
In spite of this we managed to explore the city taking in the typical tourist attractions of the Opera House, Darling Harbour (which was far too smart to accept my traveller scruff attire in the evenings), Coogee and Bondi beaches (where the water was colder than Hythe beachfront), National Gallery (attending a brilliant Tibetan film exhibition), Cathedral, shopping malls, The Great British Sweet Shop, casino and theatre to see the hilarious ‘Priscilla: Queen of the Desert ‘ musical which was an ominous introduction to driving across Australia!
In between we managed to suss out a few potential areas to live and fired our CVs to every prospective channel but the main emphasis of our efforts was directed to finding a campervan as we had reversed our decision to work before travelling owing to the disinclination to drive across 40 degree Australia in a can over the height of summer. This required strict monitoring of gumtree and the skulky lower basement Kings Cross Car Market where shabby travellers returning from months in the outback were desperate to flog their clapped out vans at extortionate prices. After much searching we found a beautiful specimen called Daisy who had just carried a family around the east coast and so was in much better condition than the backpacker equivalents and came equipped with every luxury you could need. Making a gentelman’s deal with the Kiwi owner we thought we could relax until we got the money to him but in the interim his mother-in-law fell down a bus, cracked her hip and then suffered severe complications during the emergency operation and so we had to start all over again.
Eventually we managed to track down another van we both agreed on in the town of Wollongong, about 100km south of the city and took the train along the coast to inspect it. Stubby is a 1983 cream Nissan Urvan poptop campervan owned by Gordon Blow, a 75 year old man who was only the second owner of the vehicle and had bought Stubby as a retirement treat so he and his wife could travel the country. As a consequence it was immaculately looked after and the cleanest car we had seen throughout our trawling; it also had a long rego (which helped us get round the extremely difficult problem of registering a vehicle when you are not a resident), personalised numberplate and a reliable motoring history backed up with the paperwork. On the flipside it lacked most of the necessary interior extras , was at the very top of our budget and hadn’t been on a long drive for eighteen years – Gordon having just ticked over the necessary mileage per year to keep it roadworthy – which left us dubious about whether it would survive our epic plans!
Whilst not our preferred choice, with time running out and reaching the end of our tether with the gruelling daily search process, we compromised and knocking a $1000 dollars off the asking price (and also gaining some bedding courtesy of pandering to the wife) found ourselves the proud owner of a new van. With a two ring gas stove and grill, large fridge, pull out awning with fisherman chairs, two man tent, storage box on the back, sink with pumped water and two sofas that pulled out into a giant double bed we had everything on board, it was just a question of working out how it all fitted. The irony should not be lost that I have never owned or bought a car in my life and all of a sudden found myself the father of an ancient campervan on the other side of the world...
Without insurance or a map our first adventure required us managing to drive back to Sydney from Wollongong, tackling the highways and city centre! Whilst getting heavily lost once in the CBD sector of town Stubby passed every test and was soon parked outside Rich’s uncle’s house without any mechanical problems. A thorough spring clean, quick shop to the Salvation Army to kit Stubby out with all the kitchen and living accessories and personalisation with Buddhist prayer flags and Balinese sarongs and it felt less like an old Grandpa’s van and more like our home on wheels for the next couple of months!
Before we could set out from Sydney I had to go and pick up my new bank card that mum had posted to Paul and Sindy which saw Stubby traverse the Sydney Harbour Bridge and enter the northern suburbs. Arriving at Forestville later than planned and chinwagging over a pile of chocolate muffins and hobnobs Paul and Sindy invited us to stay the night and ended up finding themselves submerged by a mound of secondhand crockery to be put through the dishwasher, a pile of dirty washing for laundry and a gigantic Nissan Urvan in their driveway whose faulty tail lights perplexed even Paul’s garage of gadgets.
We were thoroughly spoiled during our stay while Paul was in his element tinkering around with the mechanics in his workshop garage (ie, showing us how it worked!) while Sindy was more than happy to empty her old linen cupboard into the van. It gave us a couple of days to ransack the Warringah Mall for ipod adaptor, laptop, fridge and inverter to properly kit Stubby out for the long haul though this wasn’t without its problems as my card having not been used for over a month was suddenly stopped as I attempted to pay for our electronic goods because of suspected fraud! Only ringing Nationwide for the millionth time was I able to convince them that I was the purchaser though this took so long to authorise that the shop had closed by the time I came off the phone and we were sadly forced to spend another night in Paul’s bar/cinema.
It was lovely to see Tandia and Braedon, though their method of waking us up in the morning by throwing their entire collection of stuffed animals until we got out of bed was less desirable. Went to watch Braedon play a football match and was eerily taken aback by the uncanny similarities to Dom at that age; the nippy speediness, fearlessness in tackling boys twice his size and complete obsession with the ball to the exclusion of absolutely everything else.
Dropping Tandia and Braedon off at school on the Monday we continued back to the Warringah Shopping Mall and completed our shopping. Dropping into the NRMA store to buy our insurance and road assistance policy we were served by the indomitable Christine who in between setting up our details relayed her life story, argued with her bank over the phone about their poor customer service, gossiped about her regular customers who popped in to say hello and pulled her poor colleague Leisha into every conversation. She informed us that she was sorry to say that since the shop had installed CCTV cameras she was no longer able to give away freebies like she used to do (freebies being camp books worth $80!) but then disappeared into the back office and emerged with a couple of drinks bottles and $70 of maps saying it was “all she could find.” She rounded off our experience by then taking advantage of a loophole in her computer system to guarantee us a way of not having to pay the cancellation fee should we wish to stop our yearly insurance policy!
By the time we got back to Paul and Sindy’s laden with shopping and sorted out my laptop it was mid-afternoon. Paul, having just had an operation and restricted to crutches, was more than happy to let us stay for as long as we wanted as we were able to help out with the more mobile tasks around the house but before we could get too comfy we knew we had to force ourselves to get on the road and so reluctantly bade them farewell to begin our adventures!