Home SWEET Home

HOME SWEET HOME 🥴🤣 And it’s raining heavy … 🫤 Seriously we do love getting home after a trip, we quickly fall back into our home life with seperate lounges and seperate TV’s 😂🤣 … As we do , we were kept busy stripping out everything not needed or used on our recent trip, we still make the mistake of taking far to many clothes and the Chev was chock full with everything we did take, plus the electric roller cover and drawers I removed so a Smart Cap canopy and full set of Decked Drawers fitted.

They were not intended changes when we left home but seeing as how we were close by and saved heaps on freight costs we decided to inconvenience ourselves for a while and create a lot of work. 🥴🙄🫤 Now we’re home and everything is cleaned and emptied we can start reorganising ‘stuff’ to go back in. New tyres fitted to the Chev, wow these round black things are expensive!! Probably be the 1st and only set I fit 🙄🤔 Yokohama Geolander X AT 285/65/20 on the factory rims. I had to source a 5th 20” alloy rim as the factory spare is a 18” steel with different profile tyre so it’s not compatible with the new sizes. At some stage a portable power station and some internal lights in the canopy to get fitted.

Madura Pass

Stayed the night in the bush at Madura Pass, had a lovely evening chatting with Tom and Katy, a couple from Sydney off on their Big Lap of Oz in a Mercedes Sprinter motor home 4WD. Wake up to another stunning Sunrise, life is good.

Walgett - Peterborough

We have left Bingara after 3 nights, rain was coming down quite steady and we didn’t feel like a day in the van so we headed off to Moree with the intention of visiting the Tilpa Hotel … We stayed a night at Walgett where we have stayed before, very busy with other vans but we scored a spot someone had recently left.

The next day we drove through Bourke following the Apple Map where we stayed the night in a pleasant bush setting at Louth near a river that appeared to be flowing mud .. certainly not the clear water of the Gwydir we had been camped next to.

Leaving Louth we followed the blue line on the Apple Maps 🙄🤔 and the Nelyambo Bridge Road turned into dirt, or more like stone and rocks .. this continued for 50/70klms and we came upon an intersection with the road to Tilpa having a ROAD CLOSED sign 😳 We had a choice of turning left to Cobar or continuing on .. another 250k of dirt road. We came across a Mazda BT50 looking very sad as it had rolled over and sat on its roof, it looked a recent crash so we stopped to check no one was inside, fortunately for them they weren’t but the amount of damage and squashed roof it didn’t look good for the occupants.

Driving on the dirt road was quite good but the fine powder grey dust kicked up for hundreds of metres behind us, we had turned the 12v Dust ‘blower’ on in the van and all was good inside when we stopped. Eventually the dirt turned to bitumen and we arrived at Willcania, fueled up and moved on. We have stopped the night at Peterborough and a sunny afternoon certainly changed to a cold night, it was zero degrees outside and 1.1 degrees by the time we got out of bed. Glad we have the Truma Gas Heater, it works a treat. The Horse is heading for home so it’s another drive, we expect to reach Kimba this afternoon.

Bingara - Walgett - Again

We left Bingara this morning after 3 nights stay, the rain was falling consistently during the night and looked to be settling in for the day so a decision was made to move on.

It rained until we got to Moree and the sun started to break through the clouds. We have stopped for the night at Walgett, this is the 3rd time we have stayed here and it’s the busiest we’ve seen, luckily for us we moved into a site that had just recently been vacated. Tomorrow we head further South West to Broken Hill if we get that far.

Inverell - Bingara AGAIN

We had good reason to call in at Inverell again as our new Honda Generator woukd mot start, the mob we bought it off 'Motor Mecca' spun us the story that the carburettor was dirty, which it could well have been as it had not been used once since we bought it off them last July. $90 to 'clean" the Carby and when i phoned them a few days later to tell them it still wouldnt stsrt they gave me another story the fuel pump is faulty and they had no parts and gave it back to me as we 'needed it' what a load of BS !!! It wasnt until we got home and had it looked at by another Honda dealer who took photos and showed me proof that Motor Mecca did NOT clean the carby, also an O ring was missing and the float bowl was bent ANOTHER $173 to get it working. A call to Honda Customer Care has produced no results ... Anyhow here we are back at Bingara and life surely can’t get any better than this now 😁😁 … we are again at the Gwydir River after a hectic few days getting the Smart Cap canopy and Decked Drawers fitted around the Gold Coast. ( ORI Electric Tub Cover & a set of ARB drawers for sale ) DECKED Australia RSi SmartCap Australia

Kilcoy - Burleigh Heads

We left our mates at Nanango and the ‘plan’ was to base ourselves at Woodford Showground so I could take the Chev into PID diesel Engineering at Kunda Park but a phone call to the Showgrounds told us they were closed due to flooding. So our next choice was Kilcoy Showground, this was open and at $19 per night for power & water it is good value, only criticism at all was the lush green grass was long and needed a good mow, but we understood its not the easiest when everything is wet.

We chilled for a few days, drove to Woodford for some shopping and on Monday I took the Chev into Heath at PID. Jodi drove me to the Sunshine Plaza where I had a riveting exciting time walking around the many glitzy shops … Goord I dislike Shopping centres 🙄😣

3 Hours later Jodi picked me up and the Chev was ready to go, everything done and checked over for a very reasonable price. I would not hesitate to use PID again. Back to Kilcoy and the next day it was a move to Burleigh Heads where ‘SHOCK HORROR’ we were booked in at the BH Tourist Park. Have I mentioned I dislike Van Parks !!! To be fair the location was perfect, directly opposite the Beach with some surfers enjoying the waves but the sites are cramped and not the easiest to reverse the van and Chev into our site. But we succeeded and we were only there for two nights so we could get some DECKED Drawers installed and a RSI Smart Cap Canopy fitted. Both companies were excellent to deal with and were fitted on the Wednesday and apart from the huge effort on my part in removing the electric tub cover, and everything else we had in the Ute and then having to put it all back in my spine had given up and was giving me extreme grief … even the ‘good’ drugs didn’t help … worse when laying down so keep moving and it’s tolerable.

A quick visit to Vickie’s Brother Frapper and Curls at Banora Point that night and Thursday we were thankfully back on the road getting away from the Gold Coast …Yuk !!!! With a destination of Bingara again we headed up through Grafton and Glenn Innes, the road took us up into the Gibraltar Range, a very steep, windy road with spectacular views, some of the rivers we either went over or saw were flowing very wide and fast due to all the recent floods closer to the NSW Coast. We came the closest to running out of fuel on this drive, we made it to Inverell and filled the 130lt tank with 132 litres, fuel consumption was 19lph which is excellent considering the Hills we had just driven up plus the extra weight of the drawers and canopy plus all the stuff we were also carrying. We have stopped a couple of nights at the Inverell Showgrounds, mainly to get the Honda Generator we bought from here last year checked over as it won’t start, the mechanic tells me the carb and fuel bowl is dirty, it’s never been used apart from the initial start when sold to us. 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️ ORI Electric Roller Shutter to be sold along with a set of Outback Accessories Roller drawers when we get home. 😁