Blog 12 – 2024
Entry 1 – 2024 – Home Time.
Our personal overview of time spent at home for about a 6-month period.
We do utilise our blog as a personal brief record of our retirement years.
More exciting “stuff,” starts in entry 2 and a planned resumption of our Australia travel descriptions, commencing with entry 3 - 2024.
For 2023, we concluded our travel lifestyle activities blog (11) a few months earlier into the second half of the year than our usual, normal.
2023, featured another change/tweak with our thoughts focusing towards our second decade of retirement years. We had thoroughly enjoyed 10 years with an emphasis, exploring the Australian landscape utilizing the comforts provided by our caravan and accessibility provided by our 4WD.
There were many different ideas/proposals discussed for future pursuits. Our conclusion, the caravan lifestyle provided us with immense pleasure. There were still many other locations we had yet to visit in the vast lands of Australia. For us, nothing else sounded as good as our current caravan lifestyle.
We were still content with our 20-year-old caravan.
Our next focus was consideration of our body needs? Yes, we were incurring more medical appointments with our bodies requiring a bit more comfort.
Our thoughts moved to consideration of utilising some of the many technology advances over the last decade helping to improve with the comforts of life. This also included many advances in caravan manufacture over recent years. We decided to splash out, upgrade to a new caravan and enjoy the luxuries and spoils provided by current caravan builds.
Early 2023 we viewed about 100 different caravans manufactured by different companies. Eventually we decided to go with a new version of our current caravan manufactured by Bushtracker Caravans.
Our new caravan wish list included an independent power supply, without a reliance for seeking out mains power or gas supplies for heating.
With some nervousness we placed an order for a new caravan. We had never owned a new caravan. There was trepidation with making a large financial commitment with the purchase of a new caravan. Even though from previous experiences, we would most likely obtain about a 75% return on our investment when it came time to sell our caravan.
Once we had signed on the dotted line, we were looking forward to a modern caravan environment with a roof covered in solar panels, harnessing energy provided by the sun and a battery storage system capable of providing for all of our power supply needs. We do enjoy travel in outback Australia. When temperatures reach the high 30’s and 40 degrees we would now be able to enjoy an airconditioned environment within the confines of our caravan, without the need to seek out a mains power supply. Yahoo and wow.
It was somewhat of an exhausting process planning the build of our new caravan. We started with consideration for our basic needs. Then deliberation over, caravan size, type of suspension, style required for external and internal fit outs. The need for decisions on colouring combinations, many little items like selection of door latch types, placement of power points throughout, etc, etc. It felt a lot like the current trend of house building reality TV shows. There was some turmoil negotiating with the caravan manufacturer, followed by cost blow outs, times when we conceded to the manufacturer’s directions and times when we dug our heals in.
Then there was the wait time for a build completion at about 12 to 18 months.
Thus our 2023 travels timeline was shortened, leaving time to return to our home base and place our current caravan on the market for sale.
We implemented some upgrades on our tow tug to cater for the new technological advances with the new caravan. It was a rather hectic period, probably normal for active retirees.
November 2023, we said goodbye to our loved caravan, handing it over for another family’s enjoyment.
Pictures of our new Bushtracker Caravan can be viewed in our next entry (2) showing similarities with the external shape of our 2003 and now 2024 model. And, some internal differences. Much of the technological advances/differences were hidden out of sight.
Christmas 2023 was spent with our son and his family in Canberra. It felt strange, driving to Canberra without a caravan in tow. It was a period without flexibility where we had to meet timelines with accommodation bookings. In Canberra we stayed in an apartment. It was comfortable but we did miss many features provided by our caravan, including having access to many appreciated bits and pieces stored within its confines. We allocated two days drive time to travel the 1,200-kilometres to Canberra and allocated three days for the return drive. Normally we would allocate about two weeks each way, leisurely, exploring different locations along the way.
It was special times with our Canberra family. Our Canberra based family members also enjoyed those “special,” times, booking another week of family catch up back in our Adelaide.
About 6 weeks later our son and his family arrived and we all spent daily time at Moana beach. Even the weather behaved during their stay.
With our current extended time at our home base, we got to enjoy time catching up with our extended family members.
Several months without the use of a caravan, provided a positive factor, it was the right decision to maintain a caravan lifestyle during our retirement years. We were missing our caravan escape time.
It was a great boost to our excitement when progressive pictures started arriving showing different stages of the build for our new caravan. It was finally happening, a bit like the first bit of soil being turned over for a house build.
We were keeping busy at home but wished we were elsewhere, enjoying our travel lifestyle out and about with our caravan. Though we do like our home base nearby environment, with some great scenery whilst out walking.
When a delivery notification date finally arrived for collection of our new caravan it was extremely difficult to contain our excitement. Collection day 11th April 2024.
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