Kalbarri

Finding our balance

/ lynnie57 / Leave a comment

Before we could take off for real, we had a few important things to attend to. Of course, top of the list was seeing our children, grandchildren and friends to say cheerio. We used our visits to them as more practice trips and a way of getting to know more about our van. Someone said that it must be sad to say bye to everyone but it wasn’t; in these days of mobile phones and Zoom, we will still see them and chat regularly. Everyone is busy with their own life too, and they are all very happy for us to be going off to do this trip. (When I first came to Australia on a working holiday in 1979, I had to wait a month to receive a letter from my family and vice versa. It was very expensive to call home in those days. The world is a much smaller place in 2021).

The second thing we had to take care of was having our Emu serviced after 1000kms. Living about 350kms from Perth, it didn’t take us long to log the distance. We took the van back to Eagle Outdoors and they were incredibly efficient in carrying out the service and fixing up minor issues.

The last thing we had to do before leaving civilisation was have our caravan and car weighed. We had previously watched Youtube videos on how to distribute weight and we had tried to think it through as we packed. There was a weighbridge close to Eagle Outdoors and we were relieved to find that we were well underweight.

So having caught up with those around Mandurah, we headed for Kalbarri to see more family and friends. Six weeks or so after Cyclone Seroja hit, it was nice to hear stories of how the community had come together to help each other. Although there was a lot of damage still evident, the recovery process was well underway. We love Kalbarri and enjoyed a couple of nights there before heading off on our trip.

One of the few signs still standing around Kalbarri after Cyclone Seroja

Crawling – planning our trip

/ lynnie57 / 4 Comments

Some years ago my husband, John, and I took off with our Jayco Dove from our home in Kalbarri in Western Australia across the Nullarbor to explore the eastern side of the country and Tasmania. We had a wonderful three months and I suggested we start planning for the big lap around Australia. Unfortunately, John wasn’t interested.

Fast forward a few years and, thankfully, he has changed his mind. At that time, our grandchildren were very young and it was hard to think of leaving them. But they have grown up and are busy doing their own thing. And….more grandchildren keep coming.

This is the first night of our big adventure, travelling Australia, and I am thinking back to how our idea became a reality.

How can we afford to travel Australia for twelve months?

We first had to work out how we could afford to spend a year travelling around Australia. I am 64 and a high school teacher, John is 76 and retired, so we are not really keen on backpacking and picking fruit. Luckily we had an investment property in Kalbarri, which was rented out. We decided to put it on the market to help finance our trip. It took nearly 18 months for the house to sell but that gave us time to put other things in place. In fact, we started to think it would never sell so, on a whim, we also put our home on the market! To be able to make our dream of travel a reality, we had to sell one of them. Our preference was to sell our Kalbarri house and rent out our home in Dongara.

The investment property eventually sold – two weeks before Cyclone Seroja almost flattened the town. We were lucky although we felt for the new owners. The sale of the Kalbarri house financed the purchase of a caravan plus some money in the bank for our ‘holiday fund’.

We were busy planning and minimising so we could rent out our home in Dongara – in fact, we were filling in the paperwork to get a tenant and filling up a local storage unit with our personal belongings (two weeks before our leaving date) when a lady knocked on the door and asked to look around the house. Although every room was full of packing boxes and the place was a mess, she told us she wanted to buy it! This was not what we had planned – to be homeless – but we had already discussed the fact that we did not want to return to a house with stairs and a garden, so we ended up selling both houses! I thought John would hate the idea as he has always been the sensible one who likes to have his base, while I am the one who gets bored and wants to move or travel. I usually have to drag him along or, sometimes, I go with my children or friends and leave him at home. However, he was quite happy to live dangerously for a change!