Troopy Travels

Spam

Hi Folks,

Due to the large amount of spam I was getting in the comments on some of these posts. Ive decided that from now on, the first post from any person will need to be moderated, from then on you should be able to post freely.

So if your comment doesnt appear immediately, dont worry, as soon as I am able Ill approve it and you should be right thereafter.

Cheers

Stuart

Byron Bay

I had never been to Byron Bay (well I had but couldnt remember it) so we decided to call in here for a couple of days. There are no free campgrounds close by so we stopped in a caravan park this time and used the time to catch up on washing, cleaning and using the internet :)

Yesterday we dropped into a place called the Crystal Castle. Its a fairly spiritual place (which of course, comes at a cost of $8 each to enter) and has many different crystals and rocks around the place. Also some pretty spectacular statues of various beings and a maze that you can walk through to help ‘cleanse’ you.

We really enjoyed it here. Liam would have loved it since he is so big on gems and crystals.

Anneliese and I both really enjoyed the ‘Buddha Walk’ and the Celtic maze. It was all very peaceful and refreshing.

As for Byron Bay…well its pretty much what one would expect. Very commercial, full of tourists and young folk. Its nice enough, but 2 days is more than enough for me. The beach is beautiful and scenery lovely. But we havent taken any pics yet..goes to show just how much it does for us, hehe.

Here is one of the many very impressive crystal displays at Crystal Castle

Anneliese and some beautiful scenery along the Buddha walk

Om - me meditating in front of the gihugest Buddha statue

Ok, we are off to Brisbane today to catch up with some friends. See you again soon

Copmanshurst - Hall and Oates

We left Wollomombi grudgingly, we really liked it there. But we really wanted to meet up with some friends that lived near Grafton. So we took the scenic route there via Ebor (where we picked up some smoked Trout for tasting).

What a beautiful road, its very long, steep, windy and the scenery is bloody beautiful. Very dense sub tropical forests all along it. I spent many hours dreaming of riding a motorbike along this road. If you have a bike, go get on this road, you will have a ball.

At copmanshurst we followed very strict directions to get to Hally and Scooters place. The entrance road is well worn and I considered a couple of times if 4wd was needed… but that would have made it too easy, so we plodded on in 2wd. Got to the top with a big ‘phew!’ when Hally showed me his very standard 2wd ute and told me “I drive up in this all the time, gets a bit slippery when wet, but she’s right mate”.

Scooter and Hally were very gracious hosts. Scooter cooked up a bloody marvellous slap up meal, while Hally gave me tons of good advice about travelling the countryside and bush mechanics (he even gave me a special 12v drill he had made up out of an old battery drill that had bust, bloody perfect!).

Thier place has been totally built by themselves, its such a nicely homely place that is very comfortable. The gardens are lush and beautiful, like a little botanic garden all to themselves. We could easily have spent much more time here and we did promise to come back and visit at some stage.

We will miss watching the rosellas and parrots feeding at the barbeque, the dogs running around like mad things and the great entertainment provided by our hosts.

Thanks so much Hally and Scooter for allowing us to be a part of all that for a day.

Here is the barbeque area that would be host to hundreds of parrots each morning and night

Hally, Scooter and Anneliese in the kitchen all made by Hally. Hally is an excellent carpenter and craftsman and pretty much every wood product in their home was created by him.

One view of thier place (well a very small part of the 800 acre block)

Another view

And another view (this is the main living area at the moment)

The sheds (at the very back of this picture is a large place, that is thier new house being constructed…by Hally of course). You can also see the solar system Hally rigged up. This place is fully self sufficient with enough battery power to last a month or two of no sunshine.

This was our bedroom for the night. We had to use the mozzie net but it was certainly a different kind of bedroom…we even had a King Parrot come and visit us in the morning.

Just a very few of Hallys creations. He does sell to the public at times and he can make special pieces for special needs. Please contact us if you want me to pass on a request to him.

Stuart, Scooter and Hally relaxing in the kitchen - great wood stove.

Nature overcomes all man made obstacles. Scooter told us to look out for this interesting tree on our way out. Obviously the fence had been here so long that the tree had made it a part of itself.

Onto Byron Bay.

Wollomombi NP

Today we are heading towards Grafton and Byron Bay (Grafton to visit friends and Byron Bay because Ive never been there). We decided to stop at a spot near Armidale that we noticed in a brochure…its listed in our motorcycle map as a place to visit so we stopped at the Armidale information center to ask about it.

The lovely guy there pointed us to the Wollomombi National Park. The price of camping here was much more reasonable at only $3 each. The campspots were lovely and well set out…plus there was plenty of wood provided, so for the first time so far we were able to have a nice fire going.

We met some very friendly possums, Anneliese even got to pat one briefly as it tried to carry her off for food.

Wollomombi gorge is one of the deepest valleys in Australia (ravine or whatever) its bloody huge and normally when there is water around the waterfalls are meant to be very impressive. Nevertheless it was still a good place to visit, wonderful bush walks and the scenery is simply outstanding. Definitely a place worth visiting for a few days.

If you are fit a walk to the bottom of the gorge and back should get your heart going.

Here is our camping spot

Here is a picture of one part of the gorge. This place is pretty huge and the photo doesnt do it justice at all.

Tomorrow we move onto Copmanshurst (Grafton).

Warrumbungles NP

Today we travelled (through my home town - Stuart Town) to the Warrumbungles National Park.

The scenery here is fantastic. Its a very beautiful and obviously special place. Expensive though at $7 for the car per day plus $5 each for camping…$17 a day is almost as expensive as what we are paying for a caravan park here in Byron Bay (but more of that later). Because of this high price we decided to only stay for one day. Also because it was pretty busy. Obviously a lot of people like to holiday here as well.

We checked out the main camping area, but found it waay to busy for our liking (Blackmans Camp) so we moved onto a lesser camping area, that suited us just fine (and allowed us to camp away from the rabble).

We are settling nicely into the swing of things already. Only two mishaps today…I burnt my hand “hmm, I wonder if this cast iron stove that has just come off the fire is hot” and Anneliese nearly blew herself up because she didnt realise a lighter was left on the gas stove when she turned it on (made a pretty fireball though).

Here is my photographic exploits showing a panorama of the bungles

and here we managed to spot one of the rarer ‘bloody fken ugly’ koala types commonly found nowhere near here

we move on…

Conimbla NP

This first day of travelling we made it to Cowra. I wanted to check out the Japanese gardens here as Ive heard about them and never seen them. We knew there was a National Park in the area and so spoke to the information people that pointed out the places to camp in the area.

The camp we chose was one of the less popular ones, we found out why once we got there. The camp area was fairly small and right next to the dirt road, so every car that went past blew dust up everywhere. But having said that, it was a nice place, very quiet and we had a nice bushwalk the next morning.

JJJ were playing a concert in Cowra at the time, so there were young people everywhere, but it was all pretty cool.

Here is a picture of our first camp

And a pic of the Japanese Gardens in Cowra

Anneliese at the Japanese Gardens

HOME!!! I knew there was a special place for me out there somewhere and we found it on only the 2nd day out…YAY!

onto tomorrow

The Troopy

We got up especially early this morning, just so that we can get some pictures of the car as it is now, for you guys (arent we so nice)…nah not really, we slept in, had brekky in bed and are ready to checkout from the hotel, but thought we would do this first, hehe.

There you go. See ya when we see ya :)

Catchup

Okely dokely…time to catch up.

We just spent the last few days, running around, moving things to storage, cleaning the house, giving stuff to our neighbour (to sell at the markets) and preparing the car.

Obviously we didnt get away on wednesday as we had planned, but at least we got away eventually. We actually made it to the other side of Canberra tonight and are spending the night in a motel in Dickson, hehe. But at least we have moved somewhere! Yay!

Tomorrow we need to get some groceries then we are off to the Warranbungles (I probably spelt that wrong, get over it).

Im writing this now in the hotel room, Anneliese is asleep already and Im halfway there, so this wont be much. Just wanted to say that we are on our way. We had dinner tonight in a Chinese restaurant that does Sichuan cooking. If you find one whereever you are, then go eat there, the food was bloody incredible.

We went ballooning last sunday (in  between dieing from exhaustion) and had an awesome time. Its not the cheapest thrill around but is well worth the money. I recommend you try it and you wont be nervous at all, its so relaxing and nice. My only beef was that it wasnt long enough. Anneliese was disappointed that we have a smooth landing with no mishaps. hehe.

here is a pic of our pilot (who has offered me work if I can get to Alice Springs with a light rigid drivers licence…he is desperate for drivers for his ballooning business there).

 and here is one of us just after take-off. You actually rise and descend pretty quick in these balloons. We were the 3rd up and just after we lifted off a breeze blew up and the others had to wait a while, but I think they all got up eventually.

With regards the troopy. The water tank is all in and working nicely, the drawers are all good. The whole car is fully chock a  block loaded up to the hilt and until we can get to Mackay and offload some of the crap, we wont be sleeping inside. LOL its all fun…but the main thing is, we are on the road!

I probably wont write more until we are at the gold coast about April the 27th, so see ya then :)

Sorry

We are still so flat out. We wont be leaving tomorrow now (wednesday) so the plan is to be off Thursday.

Moving sucks. :(

Puff…wheeze!

Sorry for no updates the last few days. Still nothing of worth tonight either, its 9:45 and we are completely shagged.

I finished work yesterday and since then we havent stopped. The drawers are in (pic coming soon, I promise), the water tank is in (pic coming soon, I promise), we bought a box for the roof and hacked the roof rack up for the OzTent (pics…oh you know). We took the kids for thier last foray with us today, we got up at 5am went and saw the balloons and had brekky there (big thanks to my ex-employer KAZ, it was a lovely morning).

I fitted the high lift jack to the bullbar, fitted the shovel under the bullbar, fitted the ladder to the side. Anneliese made and fitted the curtains, plus Ive started pulling furniture apart as I want to move some of it tomorrow.

We have to get up at 4:30am in the morning as Anneliese and I are going on a morning balloon flight to say goodbye to Canberra (pics coming, of course) then we will be getting a trailer, moving furniture and trying to get things half sorted.

Oh….we also bought a chainsaw today (and an ice hockey mask! - hehe just kidding). It appeared to be in good nick, we got it for $130, its only a 20cc job, but should do the trick. It appears to leak a bit of oil, but hopefully it will do for the odd times we will use it. Of course the bloke raved on about how good it is and we didnt notice the oil till we got home, but ah well…its only leaking from the part that oils the chain anyway, so hopefully its not terminal.

Anyway, Im tired and am going to bed, will catch up later with pics and details and blah de blah.

G’night.