Entry 16 – Resuming our Australian travels with a caravan 2022
On returning from our Canada holiday, we were based at our home for around 6 weeks attending to all those normal life requirements. Maintenance necessities for our home, vehicles and bodies. As per normal it was a rather busy period.
Early October we resumed our time enjoying the Australian great outdoors, “living from our caravan.”
We spent 4 nights at Deep Creek Conservation Park located in South Australia’s Fleurieu Peninsula, south of its capital, Adelaide. The Fleurieu Peninsula is a great location, with enchanting scenery.
We shared our time at Deep Creek with our son and his family, helping them to acclimatise to “living in a caravan.” They were first time owners of a caravan. We assisted with advice, how best to use and enjoy the spoils their caravan could provide.
We did receive a lot of attention from our 2- and 5-year-old grandchildren whilst at Deep Creek. Let’s hope we helped to initialise a spark in their memory banks, how enjoyable the great Australian bush can be.
We all enjoyed walking along some of the bush tracks on offer. It was a delight when we spotted some wild orchard flowers. They are easily missed, being of minuscule proportions and in this instant, spotting the donkey and spider orchards, mostly appearing singularly when conditions were right.
We remembered our kids learnt to ride their push bikes whilst we were camping at one of our favourite National Parks in our younger days. Deep Creek sparked this wonderful memory for us with a - Deja vu moment - and now our granddaughter graduating to riding her bicycle solo on our second day at Deep Creek.
It’s always good sharing a campfire, especially when the weather is chilly. Though we do enjoy the treat of an ice-cream, regardless the temperature.
It was wonderful, sharing time with family and even more special out there in the beautiful Australian bush.
The following weekend we had committed to visit our other son in the Australian capital of Canberra.
For us we would usually spend a couple of weeks, meandering along making our way to Canberra, exploring various locations along the way. In this instance we were time deprived, with a time line requiring us to “just drive.” In this instance it took us a couple of days to get to Canberra. It was a huge feat for us, covering a large number of kilometres in a short time line. We were very focused on our safety, changing drivers every 1 ½ to 2 hours with stops to stretch out, walking about. And the occasional nap, if we were both feeling fatigued. Such is the advantage of travelling with a caravan with a comfortable bed. The below photograph’s show one of our walk-about stops where we exercised our bodies, along the main street in the town of Hay.
During our drive time, there was an additional consideration. A significant weather front was travelling across Australia, dumping heavy falls of rain along our route. We had our car radio tuned to radio stations providing regular updates of areas affected. We “tweaked” some of our planned strategies enroute, with consideration of predicted flooding and some actual flooding, along our planned route.
Ironically, we didn’t experience any rain during our drive time. It seemed we were following just behind the weather front. There was a lot of water about with paddocks turned to lakes alongside the road and some sections of road partially submerged.
We timed our arrival at our son’s Canberra home for 8 am on a Saturday morning when everyone would be at home.
Our 1- and 4-year-old grandchildren provided us with seemingly endless attention. In between satisfying grandchildren’s attention, we managed to socialise with our son and daughter-in-law, catching up with all their news.
Steve worked on our son’s wish list of jobs for attention around their home. The garden got some attention, internal house doors, taps and fixture needs were addressed.
Steve was presented with a home-made cake to celebrate another recent birthday.
There was time spent at the Arboretum with a snack and drinks together. Canberra’s National Arboretum is a wonderful location with 44,000 rare and culturally significant trees for viewing. On this visit the children took charge with a primary focus for some playground adventure in the Pod Playground. One 4-year-old granddaughter conned her grandpa into assisting her through the upper levels of the playground. It was a struggle for Steve’s body to contort around the bends of the slippery dip on the way down.
We spent time taking in the smells and beauty of the Australian flora at the Australian National Botanic Gardens walking trails.
Another day we stretched out with a walk around part of Lake Burley Griffin.
Once again, we enjoyed time spent with our Canberra based family. We managed to complete our son’s job wish list and a bit more.
The wet weather conditions continued across Australia, during our time in Canberra. It was approaching that time, for us to resume our Australian travels. We were hoping for a well-being fix provided by hot artesian bore baths located about a thousand kilometres north in the upper central regions of New South Wales. Unfortunately, most of that region was covered by flood waters.
Another consideration had been to experience the country side of the Snowy Mountains region not too far from Canberra. Likewise, this area was saturated making it dangerous to move off the black topped roads.
We extended our stay in Canberra by a couple of days; hopeful the rain would eventually subside.
Ironically during the later part of 2019 our travel route was affected by some of the worst bushfires on record. Now 2022 during similar time lines our travel plans have been affected by some of the worst flooding on record.
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