15. 2015 Summary

Once again we focused the year primarily on our enjoyment of travel but we also juggled into our itinerary the attendance at a couple of 60^th birthday celebrations, an annual get together of the Bushtracker Caravan owners group, a wedding and a 60^th wedding anniversary. Unfortunately it was a year where we also had the need to include a few medical maintenance appointments.

To integrate the above functions we refined our travel strategies to incorporate areas we thought would appeal to us for exploration while still participating in our love of travel.

For the first 5 months of the year we stayed close to our home base, not travelling any further away than a distance of about 800 kilometres. We still thoroughly enjoyed our nomadic adventures which ranged from periods of a week up to nearly 6 months away at a time.

2015 was another enjoyable year for us full of highlights. We relished our time together, viewing a vast variety of different types of scenery and meeting many happy like minded people along our travels.

Great company

It seemed to be a year of itineries where we needed to maintain some form of time frames. We would have preferred no time lines, providing the opportunity to spend as much time as we felt like to explore and soak in the environments around us whenever and wherever we were.

Great scenery

Our motto: We travel with a caravan; we have plans subject to change.

We have found the weather influences the direction of your travel and contributes to the length of time spent at various places. Obviously the place itself and its appeal to you, the lovely people around you can extend your stay, and also the knowledge of fellow travelers can alter your intended plans. There are a lot of lovely people in Australia!

Brian a great bloke

Our cost summary for 2015.

This incorporates the period from January 1^st for 323 days, where we focused the best part of our time on enjoyment, exploring Australian, travelling in our caravan.

All costs have been rounded out to the nearest $100.

Food expenditure       =                                  $5800

Fuel expenditure         =                                  $5200

Accommodation expenditure           =          $3200

Other living expenditures       =                      $11500

We spent 65 nights in National Parks, 59 in caravan parks, 140 at free camping locations and 59 at showgrounds / low cost camping areas.

We travelled about 20,500 kilometres.

The average expenditure incurred whilst travelling, ~            $80 per day.

The above costs do not include our fixed costs with an example of these costs incurred such as vehicle registration, maintaining a house and insurance costs. For us this cost was around the $20,000 area per annum.

14. Final travelling days for 2015

We spent a day exploring Burra, viewing some of the old mining displays and the recently refurbished railway station where you could spend time in the station building that was set up for a bed & breakfast. We had a close up inspection of the bed & breakfast setup as it appeared that someone had left a side door wide open allowing for entry into the building for an inspection.

 

Burra Railway Station

Then it was onto Crystal Brook for a couple of days. We travelled through farming country with cropped paddocks stretching all the way to the horizon with ripening crops ready for harvesting. There was a constant flow of grain trucks making their way to the grain storage areas with freshly reaped grain.

Paddocks of various crops

Harvesting time

We explored Crystal Brook on foot and a bit further out by vehicle. The caravan was left at the Crystal Brook caravan park at a cost of $2.50 per day for storage and we drove to Port Lincoln to catch up with son Ashley and see his new home over the weekend.

Ash with Jimmy & Sam

Lunch on the front patio

We enjoyed time spent with family at Port Lincoln staying at the new house.

13. Murray River and a Wedding

We continued travelling south with an overnight stop at Wentworth where the Darling and Murray Rivers meet.

Darling River meets the Murray River

Then it was back into our home state of South Australia where we stayed at the township of Renmark in the local caravan park, for a family gathering where Mary’s brother John was getting married to partner Cindy.

Renmark Big 4 Caravan Park

Most noteworthy for us was catching up with our son Timothy and Penny from Canberra who we hadn’t had a hug since December of the previous year. 

It was good to catch up with son Ashley (it was 5 months since our last hug) who drove overnight (780 kms) from Pt Lincoln, which included one kangaroo strike, luckily only resulting with some minor scrape marks to his vehicle.

 

Our family less one overseas

We thoroughly enjoyed catching up with Mary’s family and met some lovely new people. 

The wedding and the following function was held at a large rose producing centre, (Ruston’s Roses) in a beautiful setting.

Bride & Groom leaving for their honeymoon

Leaving the caravan park we travelled about 20 minutes down the road before turning down a side road where we found a nice quiet spot next to the Murray River and we participated in a power nap for a while. 

Then it was another 20 minutes down the road to catch up with one of our grooms men at the smallish community of Winkie. We chattered the night away with John & Kath. 

The ambient temperature was predicted to rise to about 36 C, so we left John’s home early in the morning and we were stopped for the day prior to lunch time near the township of Cadell in a magnificent setting alongside the Murray River. Graeme Claxton Reserve was a nicely grassed area on the water’s edge of the Murray with a camping area and fire places adjacent. There was an excellent flushing loo, rubbish bins and the area was lit up by flood lighting in the evening. There were two other caravans and a house boat utilizing this location overnight at no cost to any of us. It certainly had a “Wow,” factor for this location.

 

Cooling off in the Murray River



 

 

12. Broken Hill

Broken Hill was quite an interesting place with plenty of promoted activities that could keep you occupied for a week or so.

We studied all the provided literature and picked out some of the highlights that most interested us. 

These included a day spent exploring the historical mining township of Silverton located about 30 kilometres from Broken Hill, visits to the Mining Minerals Museum, The Art Gallery & Mint, several art galleries including the Pro Hart gallery, the Living Desert Sculptures, the Miners Memorial and a few other attractions.

 

One of Pro Hart's Rolls Royce's

It was a rather busy period fitting in as much as we could during our short allocated time line.



Lookout viewing of Broken Hill

Ore - some looking

Living Sculptures

On the run

Camp at Broken Hill Racecourse

11. Roadside stops

We had decided to head west to Broken Hill for a few days which had been another one of those places we have been talking about visiting for a long time.

Talking with Brian & Anne showed that they were also planning to travel the exact route we had planned so we were pleased to have their company whilst travelling.

Our first night stop over was at a free roadside stopping area about 50 kilometres east of Cobar and we parked a bit away from the other occupants. We had both placed some of our washing in a bucket of water to be agitated whilst travelling from the rocking of the caravan. Our washing was strung out between both caravans and then some storm clouds started to move in.
 

Washing time on the road

It wasn’t long before there was a lot of lightning and thunder around us, followed by heavy rain. We had to scamper into the caravan where we spent a couple of hours playing rummy cub and Jenga. There was quite a lot of water flowing through our camp. When we inspected our washing it was covered in mud splashed up by the heavy rain and we had to rewash our clothing before turning in to bed for the night.

The sky’s opened up again in the morning and we hurried to get off the clay surface. Brian & Anne made it ok but as soon as we started to move we sunk steadfast.
 

Well and truly stuck in the mud

The car is out, now for the caravan

It was a long wet morning. We tried lots of different strategies without any progress. Brian disconnected his 4wd from their caravan and we had several attempts to snatch strap us out.  We finally started to get some forward movement then the caravan wheels sunk down into the wheel ruts left by the 4wd stopping our forward motion and it was back to the digging again. Try and try again until we finally had success. It was 11.30 am by the time we started travelling again. Many thanks Brian and Anne!!!

Gee it's hard work, all this digging!!

It doesn't look too bad, but this spot sure caused a few headaches

 

10. Warrumbungle NP

 

Next on our wish list was the Warrumbungle National Park located near Coonabarabran and this is another one of those “wow” places with beautiful rugged mountain scenery and plenty of walking tracks. 

In January 2013, 90 percent of the national park was destroyed by a major bush fire which also destroyed most of the infrastructure including the visitor information centre, staff accommodation, walking tracks, camping areas including most of the parks loos along with the loss of the flora and fauna. A very short time later this was followed by major flooding where a large amount of the top soil was washed away. 

Due to the extent of damage sustained from the fire and flooding it was categorized as a 1 in a 10,000 year event.

 

One of many peaks with burnt tree skeletons in foreground

It was quite interesting to view the different stages of regeneration of the flora in amongst the burnt trees which were so prevalent.

Look no sticks for added balance

Hundreds of bird boxes had been placed in amongst the burnt trees providing accommodation to attract the return of the birds. We saw plenty of kangaroos, one goanna, crows, one king parrot, apostle and noisy minor birds, while participating in some to the walks around the national park. Of interest we only saw one kookaburra in comparison of our regular kookaburra sightings.

 

Great walks amongst beautiful scenery

This was such an attractive place that we stretched our stay out again.

 

Spectacular back grounds

 

We also enjoyed the company of a couple we met early September (Brian & Anne) who showed up and set camp alongside of us.

 

 

Our setting with Brian & Anne's caravan in foreground

 

 

9. Apsley Falls

We had been putting it off for too long. It was now time to start clocking up some kilometres. The alarm was set at 7 am for a 7.30 am get away. Well we woke to the noise of chattering birds at 5.45 am and we were travelling by 6.15 am. 

We had decided to head inland to the Warrumbungle National Park located near Coonabarabran, about 500 kilometres east of Port Macquarie. 

Our departure just happened to be a Sunday and we had heard that our chosen route was very windy which was also popular with motor cyclists adding another travelling hazard for consideration. 

We were delighted by the spectacle of the magnificent scenery travelling through thick forested terrain. Patches of low hanging cloud just added to the view. Yes there seemed to be an endless amount of recommended 25 & 35 kilometre speed limited corners keeping our travelling speed down at a slow rate, even more so with a caravan in tow.

 

Some cold looking air early mornings

For the first two and a half hours of travel the roads were reasonably quiet, and then the motor bikes started to appear travelling in both directions, at a very fast rate of speed in comparison to our rate of speed. 

We were starting to feel weary from the long period of driving (an hour is usually plenty for us these days) and we thought it might be a good time to remove ourselves from the road. At 9.30 am we pulled into the Apsley Falls camping ground in the Oxley Wild Rivers National Park. 

It was time for breakfast with a cuppa, followed by a power nap on our very comfortable caravan bed. We opened our eyes at 1 pm feeling much better.

Deep Gorges

A walk along some of the paths at Apsley Falls was very rewarding, with spectacular views of deep gorges way below with plenty of lookout platforms provided. The water falls were quite spectacular, even with what seemed to be a light flow of water.

 

Apsley Falls

We could have spent several days at this location and also time at several other locations we had passed along our day’s route.

A few steps to another falls viewing platform

Huge suspension bridge

Camp ground

NSW national parks supply the campground location, bench table & seats, fire place with BBQ plate, the fire wood, flushing loos, scenic setting and we supply our accommodation.


Campground to the left