Updates and Port Fairy planning

Its been a long time between posts but as its winter we have not been taking the van out, rather we have been doing some great day trips out of Melbourne, on the days where the weather is mild.

With Spring here and Summer on its way we have a few outings planned to get us warmed up for the Christmas Trip.

Updates
Firstly, i have made some updates to the Fuel economy page for the Colorado, and i have updated the Colorado page with updated information on the Warranty issues we have been having, and some photos of the recent upgrades.

Trips

We have a few longer day trips planned, mostly with the Essendon Gem & Lapidary Club. The first, in late October, will be to Powelltown, were we expect to be able to fossick for Quartz and Topaz. As Powelltown is close to Melbourne we will be treating this as a day trip.

The second Fossicking trip we have planned for the last part of the year is to Stratford, which although further afield, we will also still treat as a day trip. It will be a LONG day though so we are keeping our options open :) I am not to sure what we expect to find here but there is a 4WD day planned into the hills so it should be a lot of fun.

Lastly we have booked a weekend away for Melbourne Cup weekend. For the 4 days of the long weekend we are booked into the Belfast Cove Holiday Park in Port Fairy. The park receives very good ratings on the Badgers review site and we are looking forward to getting away in the van.

Australian Travel Bloggers

I thought i might make an update detailing some of the various Blog's i have been following lately. They are all great and detail the many ways we are travelling around Australia. I find the blog's a great source of Ideas for future trips, and a way of escaping without actually heading out myself. There is no order to the pages below, and many of them have completed their Epic journeys. If you know of any other great travel blogs, feel free to leave a comment.

http://www.livinontheroad.com.au/

http://www.rednomadoz.blogspot.com.au/

http://barbanddarrylgottago.blogspot.com.au/

http://smiffy2011.wordpress.com/

http://mumfordsvswild.wordpress.com/

http://stamand4.blogspot.com.au/

http://www.touring4x4.com/blog/

http://somers1999.blogspot.com.au/

http://frostystravellingaustralia.blogspot.com.au/

http://project2014australia.blogspot.com.au/

http://woodfamilyaroundoz.blogspot.com.au/

http://aroundaustraliabycaravan.blogspot.com.au

http://cusworthcaravancapers.wordpress.com

http://gillfamilyozodyssey.blogspot.com.au

Housekeeping and Blog updates

We are now underway with the planning of the next trip. To help support the planning, i have set up an Itinerary page, as per some of the other trips we have made. It can be found here.

I also plan to update the other Itinerary pages linking to each blog post relevant to that particular trip. I should have this done over the next few days.

We are having quite a bit of fun planing this trip, especially since we now have our own 4WD. We are planing to go on a "tag along tour" whilst in Queensland, hopefully on Stradbroke Island, to learn how to drive on sand. Caitlyn is looking forward to hand feeding the Dolphins at Tin Can Bay, and of course, Sara and I cant wait to visit the Bundaberg Rum Distillery.

In Oberon we are planing to visit the Glow worms at Lithgow, the Jenolan caves and Katoomba. I cant wait to get the girls on the Scenic Railway.

As always, if you have any suggestions or comments please feel free to leave a comment here :)

Planning–Xmas 2012

Well, planning is now underway for Christmas this year. We would like to travel up to Queensland for the break and have picked Tin Can bay as our most northerly destination. We are still finalising our stops and are having some difficulties as many of the places we have chosen further south are either booked already, or are charging overly exorbitant prices for a powered caravan site.

The stops include Tin Can Bay, Surfers Paradise, Yamba and Oberon with other places in between.


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 If you have any great suggestions feel free to leave a comment.

Stay Tunned–Only 1 Week left to go…..

Just a few teaser photo’s. We leave for Adelaide on Friday 30th before we start our journey towards the Stuart Highway and Katherine. As i am not the only driver on this trip i plan on taking heaps of photos, many of which will make their way onto the Blog.

The Next post will be from the road

Trip Update

Well, Only 3 weeks left. I have updated the Katherine 2012 page with some changes to our plans, basically being Daly Waters wont be a destination on the first half of the trip now due to being full. They have a number of events planned for the weekend we were going to stay there so we now plan to stop there on the way home.

Mataranka is now looking like an alternative destination. Fingers crossed the hot springs are open when we get there as i think they close them during the wet season.

Potential Darwin Trip

Another quick update, In the new year, April to be exact, i may have the opportunity to revisit Katherine. My parents are planning a road trip from Melbourne to Katherine and at this stage i am planning on traveling with them. Unfortunately due to timing and the impact some of these trips are having on the kids schooling, Sara and the girls wont be traveling with us.

What this means is that we will be traveling lighter than normal in that we will only have one car, a Holden Colorado and more than likely our Jayco Expanda. This will prove to be a very different experience to 2009 when we did this in the camper trailer. Mum and Dad did the last trip in their Toyota Kluger, sleeping in the back, so it should also be a more comfortable trip for them :)

Many of the planned stops will be familiar however we will be planning on doing some of the things we missed the first time around. We are also going to attempt some free stay stops to help reduce costs and experience something different.



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More to come on this however as always, if you have any suggestions, especially for free stay camp spots, please leave a comment.

Trip Planning

Hi Everyone,

It’s been a bit quiet on the Holiday front for us lately but we are planning a getaway over Christmas to Canberra so more to come.

 I read an article today I thought I would share regarding Trip Planning, and in particular, a web app called OnTheWay. OnTheWay is a website that links in with foursquare to help identify potential stops along your route. Stops such as fuel, accommodation and food are indicated, along with tips from foursquare when available. It’s very simple to use with you indicating a start and end location for your route and it then shows you the route in stages with a list of available stops in each stage you can select and add to an Itinerary.

Foursquare, for those of you that may not know, is a social tool that allows you to "check in" to various locations when you are out an about. You can then get access to reviews, or leave your own, on businesses and places for others to reference. Foursquare is available for all of the current Smartphone variants. Foursquare also allows you to follow friends and family and see where they have been in respect to locations they check in to.

As always, feel free to leave any comments on, or suggestions of other great planning tools. Also feel free to look me up on foursquare.

OnTheWay
http://www.onthewayapp.com/

Foursquare
https://foursquare.com/

5 Days left……

Well, the latest of our adventures is nearly upon us. We have only 5 days left before we leave. We had a look over mum and dads preparations today and noticed the new shelves in dads wardrobe in the Penguin. Not bad.

We went home and straight away removed the plastic bins we have been using and measured up for our own drawers. All the materials are now ready, after a last minute visit to Bunning's, and i will have them installed tomorrow after work. It will increase our usable storage space, in the wardrobe in the Expanda, by about double

The next post should be from Mildura, our first nights stop.

2 Weeks left – but who’s counting :)

 

Well, Only 2 weeks left to go before we head off on our next 6 week traveling holiday. The caravan has been serviced and packed, mostly. We just have to load food and clothing before we head off. Now for the long wait and the gathering of all the assorted things we have accumulated in the past 6 months that we think we need

I plan to keep this site updated, with daily photos, but that will be dependant on how we travel and if we have internet access. Leave a comment if you know of any must visit places or if you want any particular places photographed that we may be visiting.

6 weeks to go

Well, we have only 6 weeks to go before we head off on our next big trip. As per the previous post, we are off to Denham, W.A. to visit some family friends. Just as with our Darwin trip, we will be going with Mum and Dad and Mums friend Corinda.
We will be driving a Holden Commodore Omega LPG and towing our Jayco Expanda 16.49-2. Mum and Dad will be driving their Holden Colorado V6 and will be towing a Jayco Penguin.
We have spent the last week repacking the van and i am now finished a few upgrades that will hopefully make the trip more comfortable, including

• LED lights to all of internal light fittings
• Drawers installed under the bottom bunk bed
• Privacy screen for the rear bed (front bed has had one for some time)

We are all really looking forward to this trip, including some whale watching (if we are lucky) at the head of the Bight, seeing the dolphins ay Monkey Mia, the sea horse sanctuary at Kalbarri and best of all, the wide open spaces and the amazing night skies the outback allows you to see.
Keep checking back here as we plan to keep daily updates, internet access allowing.

Perth 2011

Hi All, This is my first post for this year. We are in the final planning stages now for a trip to Denham in June. It will be a 6 week trip and we are all looking forward to it. See below for a rough route.

Mildura Trip

Good news, another trip is nearly upon us. This time its a week away with Mum and Dad in Mildura and Swan Hill. We are really looking forward to this week away.


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Jervis Bay planned Route

Hi All, Well its time for another trip. This is looking like being just under 2 weeks, and the only definate for the trip is that we need to be in Jervis Bay for Robbies Graduation. We are planning on taking our time getting there and will then travel a bit further north to Sydney before making our way back home. Should be a great (Cold) trip.



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Easter 2010 Trip Plan

Well, Planning is almost complete now with only a few more bookings to go but the image below will detail our expected route..


The trip will cover approximately 3000Km and will see us visit;

Goulburn
Port Stephens
Port Macquarie
Coffs Harbour
Glen Innes
Peak Hill
Tocumwal

The Big Trip and its planned path

Hi all, the big trip is upon us with just two weeks left to go until we leave Melbourne. The image below shows the expected route and i have made a list of our expected stops. I plan to update the blog each time we stop with a review of the days activities.

Planned Stops

• Adelaide
• Port Augusta
• Coober Pedy
• Yulara (Ayers Rock)
• Alice Springs
• Katherine
• Jabiru (Kakadu)
• Darwin
• Litchfield