One of the greatest delights you have when you are a traveller is the people who you meet along the way. We have met some delightfully adventurous types, as well as those content to sit back and enjoy the scenery. So many of those travellers we meet are memorable and some have become friends who we meet up with commonly in our travels while on the wallaby.
Some say that you should never go back, and there are perhaps sometimes when that is a true idiom. For The Man and me though we often have returned to the places where memories have been made, those truly special places to the heart. This is the case with the High Country of Victoria. As children (it seems that way now) we enjoyed our honeymoon in decades past, in the High Country. Continue reading
For most Aussies, the high country brings to mind brumbies, snow and beautiful gums. It is all that in the winter, but visiting the high country in the summer is a delight. While the country on the low-lands roasts under the summer sun, the high country enjoys usually mild temps’, winds… albeit that they race, and the beautiful sight of the grand old ladies of the forests shedding their coats for the new season. Continue reading
In years gone past the Australian Sundowner was a wanderer who arrived at dusk seeking work, usually the promise of work and in turn was given a meal. However when the sun rose the next day the promise of work never eventuated as the bloke had usually moved on during the early dawn. Or… another meaning was for the 5pm happy hour drinks.
One of the pleasures, or pains, of travelling is the lunchtime dilemma. Often solved on lazy days, by many travellers, with the Aussie obsession with Yankie Fast Food Outlets such as ‘Tuckey Duck or Wacca’s. We have found that these venues are all about long lunchtime lines, noisy vegemiter’s and cardboard food all of which we have come to detest. In effect they are designed for families and a cornucopia of kids. In some venues you even need to line up twice! One for adult coffee and another line for over-sweet bread delights and dry straw chips. These are not joys we seek out.
It’s approaching time to head south, its time to leave the rainforest and our safe little camp nestled into the ridge. The monsoons have arrived and the Wet season is promising to settle in. All across the inland the water is at last beginning to flow after a long drought and it is gunna get damp in FNQ. I know this because the ants are on the move and small spots of mould are starting to appear into the crevices in the van. I spend a few minutes each day spraying and cleaning these pesky reminders of living in the Wet Season in the Far North Queensland Tropics.
These handy zippered bags are the best thing since sliced bread. They are cheap as chips, readily available and great for storage and all manner of things. We store our seasonal clothes (out of season) in these and use them for dirty clothes. We prefer them to plastic when shopping or picnicking and they are great for holding ropes, cables and the like.
I wanted to do a blog purely on camping out. Mainly because we usually use the freecamps, National Parks and Forestry’s when we can and this is the true and traditional Aussie camping out experience. This is a choice of ours and a clear preference of many, although we do have a holiday every now and then in a holiday park… or caravan park, like everyone else who uses occasionally or actually prefer these ‘plug in’ settings every now and then.
We’ve completed The Lap, an Aussie dream and yes… we adored our time travelling. It was all part of our retirement plan and given 18 months we feel that we took way too little time to appreciate all our country has to show us. We planned diligently and as happens, found we had commitments to meet with family and friends all along the way as well as our many adventures. These we all very much enjoyed but there was so much to see that we had to set aside for another visit a great deal and already we have made plans to return to many of these places. We also made lots of new and great friends who we continue to run into, who we follow on Facebook and with whom we will catch up with again for sure. Plans are already afoot.
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A story of modern day adventure into the frontier Goldfields of Australia
Read about the history, the discovery and experience the adventure of one of the biggest goldfields in the world.
Come and journey with me in this tale from the ‘Around the Campfire’ series of stories in travelling around Australia, by traveller Jan Hawkins
Jan Hawkins Author 