Entry 1 – 2025 – Yorke Peninsula with some different Home Time.
A primary bonus with retirement is to have greater control over your life.
But.
Aging can be a bugger at times.
We were in need to hold up, at our home base for a period, providing Steve with a comfortable environment to recover from major surgery, after a cancer diagnosis and the stitch up of a hernia.
An interesting statistic for this period showed between us, we had incurred around 41 different medical appointments. The health industry had gained quite the financial benefit from our age-related ailments.
There was a visit to Mary’s family farm with our son’s and family in attendance.
We had a gathering of our family.
There was a gathering of Steve’s family.
There was a New Year’s Eve group catch up with our 30 years plus friends.
We maintained a positive outlook, planning to resume our “feel good,” Australian travels as soon as possible. Though we thought it to be pertinent to stay close (about 1,000 kilometres) from our home base with consideration of Steve’s immediate ongoing health needs.
Mary participated in a school class reunion. She had attended a small country school. There were enough of them born around the same time to fill a class and they stayed together from year 1 to year 12. Some moved away during this time and some stayed for a period before moving on. It was an exceptionally good experience, catching up with some old friends and listening to one another’s life story. Of interest two of them had retired over the last two years, with the rest still participating in the working life cycle.
Mid-February we were delighted to get away with our caravan.
We travelled to our favourite nearby location of Yorke Peninsula, spending a couple of nights at one of the local councils provided bush camps. It was a rugged, beautiful setting with a constant background noise of crashing waves.
On our departure day a solo lady camper approached us in a distressed state. Her Jack Russell dog had wandered off the previous night and not returned. She thought she could hear it whining nearby at times. We located the dog wedged upside down about 2 ½ metres down a crevice near the ocean cliff edge.
Steve secured a tent peg to a telescopic pole we carry attempting to hook onto the dog’s collar. The dog still had plenty of fight left in it pushing the pole away with its front paws and biting onto the pole. The lady became rather distressed and called for more help.
Police arrived, coming from about 75 kilometres away. Then a country fire service crew arrived. Eventually the dog was extracted with a happy outcome.
Down the road a bit we set camp at Dhilba Guuranda-Innes National Park. It is another grand location with a beautiful rugged coast line and a scattering of superb accessible beaches.
It was time to move on after five wonderful nights at Pondalowie Bay camp ground in Innes National Park. We were feeling content and rather chilled, charmed by our wonderful surrounds. We thought a few more nights in this vicinity of Yorke Peninsula to be appreciably beneficial for our well-being.
We were in need to consider our water needs. We had miscalculated the volume of water we were in need of during our time line away. Possibly due to the provided luxuries within the build of our new caravan. Great showering facilities and a washing machine, keeping the volume of dirty washing to a minimum.
We were down to around half a tank of water. It would have been over a hundred-kilometre deviation to the nearest public access water point. Nearby at Marion Bay there was a toilet where we thought we could obtain water from a wash hand basin. We had four, two litre containers and a small jug out ready to gain some water, to see us by for a couple of days. Just some of the items we carry for those unforeseen circumstances like this.
Accidently, we turned down one side street too early on our way to the public toilets. We spotted a sign post pointing to a desalination facility. We drove into the desalination facility to see potable water available via a payment machine.
At great expense of $1 and 90 litres of water to fill one of our water tanks, we were all smiles. No more water worries.
We were casually ambling along considering driving into a couple of different camp grounds for a look. Previously we have camped at most of the campgrounds in this area. In the end we decided to return directly to our favourite location and bypass the other areas.
Yes, the road in to our chosen camp ground was a bit on the rugged side, the camp ground is rocky, open to the windy elements, looked uninviting, deterring most people. = Just how we like it!
And the extended weather forecast was looking promising.
From the confines of our caravan, we could see the nearby point of our beautiful sandy beach, enticing us to take the walk along the beach of around two kilometres to the next rocky point.
It was more relaxation time with pleasing views. A great reset for our bodies.
Our primary focus for this getaway had been to assess how Steve’s body coped with time in our caravan. It was all positive. Though he still had a way to go. Still with limited stamina. It was looking like some predictions of up to three years for a best-case recovery time line, were looking a possibility.
After twelve days out and about we decided to head home for a bit.
