Down to Sydney (28 March - 5 April 2013)

Seeing as it is now almost November, and the trip has been over for several weeks, this will be more of a trip report now, rather than a blog of our progress. I'm aware that it has been quite some time since the last update, but after running into some bandwidth issues with my mobile provider I kept notes and decided to update the blog at a later point i.e. now. As it turned out there were long periods of time where we didn't have any reception anyway. By the way, when was the last time you had your mobile phone turned off for 3 weeks? I found it very liberating and it allowed me to fully appreciate the now. From now on I think I am always going to turn my phone off on vacation. Hopefully I can convince Ness to do the same, or at least limit smartphone use to a short period each day.

From Nambucca Heads we continued on our way south towards Sydney. Packing the trailer up in the morning I had felt a little lethargic, but assumed that it was a side effect of the strong painkillers that I was taking for my shoulder. Later in the day it became apparent that I had picked up a bug of some sort. We hadn't planned exactly where we were going to stop for the evening, and as it got later and later and I was feeling worse, the temptation was there to just book into a hotel somewhere. However we made it to Hawk's Nest where there was a North Coast Holiday Park at Jimmy's Beach. It was getting quite late and it was going to be dark soon, but the thought of paying $120 for a room versus $25 for a site, made up our minds to set up camp. Although I was fast developing a condition where I would have happily paid $200 just for a toilet pass...

Even though we only pitched the main tent, and left the awning and floormat, it was completely dark by the time that the tent was up and ready for Jake to go to bed. During the trip there were several times where Ness and I commented on how fast the sun goes down - it might have been because there were several times where we were pitching camp very late in the day. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to have a couple of beers and some leftover camp oven stew at this point. That night I had to go to the loo so many times that I can still remember the lock code for the toilet door. On the bright side, my frequent trips past some of the neighbours, made us some new friends in the form of Shey and Shey, a couple from Alice Springs. They had gone out there from Sydney looking for a change and loved the remoteness of the place - we were almost convinced to change our plans and head to Alice. BTW, the beers were worth it :)

The next morning we packed up fairly quickly so that we could make it into Sydney before the traffic got too bad. With so much freedom to do what we wanted to, when we wanted to... we hadn't realised that we were heading into Sydney on a bank holiday weekend Friday afternoon.

The level of driver aggression on the roads was quite a shock to our very relaxed frame of mind. To a degree this has left a mark and has influenced some of our decisions later on.

It was great to see Ian, Steph, and baby Zara though, who put us up while we were there. Ian and I go way back, and seeing them again was one of the things that I had been looking forward to the most. Unfortunately, shortly after arriving there my bug got worse and we weren't able to do some of the things that Ian had planned for us. I did manage to pull it together enough to go for a braai (bbq) at Ted's place - you can't beat a braai with old mates! For some reason I didn't take any pics of them!? Perhaps because they are so familiar.

Another highlight of the trip was seeing some of my family again that I hadn't seen since our previous trip to Australia several years ago. Along with our mates, they would dearly like to see us settle in Sydney (while our early plans were to eventually settle in Brisbane). I particularly enjoyed going through some old photo albums of our family when I was still very young. It was also quite funny when one of the kids commented on our truck "Look! A real four ex four!" :)

While we were there I also wanted to take some time to do a bit of work on the truck. It had developed a rather worrying noise in the suspension when turning at full lock, and I wanted to sort this out before whatever it was failed entirely. I checked and double checked all the suspension and steering components, but couldn't find any play in the components or tell-tale marks in the rust and dirt anywhere. Eventually I decided that it had to be the aftermarket CV joint that I had fitted on the right when I was trying to cure another clunk noise several months before - at the time I wasn't that happy with the design of the seals on the replacement part, and now thought that maybe muddy water had gotten in there and lead to a premature failure. Rather than change the outer CV joint again like I did before, I bought an entire drive shaft which is a lot quicker to swap but requires the diff oil to be drained and replaced (not a bad thing on an offroad vehicle that has spent time driving through mud and water). Repco supplied the replacement for $300 with a 5 year warranty. It then turned out that the residents of the very affluent Maroubra street where we were staying would not take kindly to someone doing vehicle repairs on the road. Fortunately Glen (a member of the Pradopoint forum) very kindly offered for me to do the work at his place. At the very last minute just as I was about to pull the wheel and drive shaft off to do the swap, it occurred to me that this was a lot of work based on a guess... and that I wasn't entirely sure that it was the right side CV that had failed. It could also be the left one!? So we jacked the front wheels of the ground and tried to replicate the noise by turning the steering from lock to lock. This is where I formulated Et's corollary to Murphy's Law: Anything that you want to go wrong, will not go wrong when you want it to. No matter what we tried we could not replicate the noise - driving in circles, driving in circles over curbs, driving backwards in circles over curbs with the diff locks on... Eventually I gave up and decided not to change the drive shaft at that point - I ended up carrying that spare drive shaft around with us all over Australia.

With me not feeling that well we didn't really get out much in Sydney (or take any pics), but we did take a day trip down the coast and through the Royal National Park, ending up in Kiama for lunch. While we were there we also went down to take a look at the blowhole which was well worth seeing.

On our last day there, Ian and Steph took us for breakfast down on the beach, where we bumped into the Geordie Shore crew getting to grips with their hire camper. Ness was very keen to go over and say hello, but having watched a few of their car crash telly episodes I was a bit more reluctant - I was certainly a lot more excited when I bumped into Rod Kerr from Bondi Rescue a few minutes later.

Hopefully it won't be so long before I do the next installment, and I promise there will be more pics. There is a lot of good stuff to come.

Nambucca Heads (23-27 March 2013)

After Blackrock we thought that we needed some civilisation to wash clothes and have a shower, and we were already starting to form firm ideas about what we want from a campsite. Or rather what we don't want. In many of the coastal towns there are one or more campsites right on the main beach or estuary. These will have all the amenities, but the sites are usually powered (which we would have to pay for despite having our own power), small, packed in, and occupied by large road only vans (caravans). With very few exceptions these sites hold no appeal for us. After being directed to 2 of these sites by the very kind ladies at the Namucca Heads tourist information centre, we almost paid $40/night to stay in the campsite equivalent of a sardine tin full of twin axle Jayco's. With daylight running out we decided to take a chance on the last site in town which the tourist info had advised against. As we drove up toward the North Coast Holiday Park up on the cliff, we sighed with relief. Although we thought this was by far the most suitable of the 3, there was almost nobody there (only 2 other sites occupied) and the receptionist was very friendly - she gave us the gate code to drive in and take a look around, then if we decided to stay we could sort things out in the morning as she was going to the beach for a swim :)

The beach below was a 10 minute walk down a reasonably steep path, and we had it more or less to ourselves - there were some street workers for a short while, until one of them forgot to put on his handbrake and his ute rolled back into a parked car. They must have finished the job at the same time because only the one guy was left there to find the owner of the parked car. Fortunately the parked car had a bullbar and didn't take much damage.

Some of the sunrises from the cliff were well worth getting up for.

We also found Beilby's Beach (Ness' maiden name) just around the corner.

There is only so much doing nothing that a family can (not) do, so we set off to do a bit of exploring. On our way to Yarriabini National Park we stopped to take a pic...

At Yarriabini NP we did our first bit of proper offroading, so I got out my new Gopro and made a vid. What they don't tell you on the box is that you don't just copy your clips onto Youtube when you shot the vid at 4K... My laptop (which is a decent spec) struggles to even play it back, and the file size is WAAYYYY too big. So I'm still learning how to convert and edit the vids. Just so that I don't keep you completely hanging, here is a short (converted, but unedited) clip of this national park.

Future videos will be much better quality. I promise.

A shot of our trusty steed at the lookout near the top of the mountain.

And the view from the lookout point.

We carried on to the top and I was a  little disappointed to see this at first, but when we went closer they are sort of cool in a sci-fi kind of way.

Ness had read about a picnic spot not too far away, so we carried on and in the middle of the forest came across this place.

A beautiful picnic spot with some magnificent trees that are so tall they make you a bit dizzy when you look up at them.

There is also a modern aboriginal sculpture, full of culturally significant symbols and pictures, in the garden.

If you put your hand in the hand print, it is supposed to connect you with some ancestors or spirits. I didn't hear any (new) voices, so maybe someone forgot to pay the leccy...

The spot is quite magical though, and if we ever pass that way again we will definitely like to drop in again. While we were there we took advantage of the free gas plates (that seem to crop up all over Australia) and made some pancakes with cream and syrup. YUMMM!!!!

Black Rocks (20-23 March 2013)

The Beacon had been a rather cushy start to the trip, but we wanted a slightly more authentic camping experience, so we headed south to Yuraygir National Park. While Yuraygir seemed easily reachable in 1 day on paper, the reality was that we were still figuring out our packing up routine, and the Pacific Highway is not 100km/h all the way (it slows in all the towns, and there are currently lots of roadworks). We only left Tamborine after lunchtime and by 4pm we still had a long way to go. By 5pm Ness had found us a suitable overnight stop, Black Rocks Campground in Bundjalung National Park.

Black Rocks is about 20km (mostly dirt road) off the Pacific Highway, and is an unstaffed campsite. There are drop toilets to answer nature's calls but you have to take all your own water for drinking and washing (no problem I thought with our 60L tank in the camper, and 20L in the car). The site has about 30 odd pitches that are mostly hidden from each other by the thick bush, and the beach is a 2 minute walk over the dune. What more could you want!?

On most of the pitches there was a very handy fireplace, complete with cooking plate and an arm for camp ovens.

On the first night it was dark by the time we had the camper setup so we made a small fire and cooked some burgers on the plate. It must have been nearly 9pm by the time we ate, and Ness starts starving at 6:05pm (like clockwork everyday). We learnt 2 things: 1) we need to start the fire earlier, and 2) the truckload of firewood we were hauling from Tamborine was very difficult to light, and very hard to cut without a chainsaw. Chainsaws are not allowed in a National Park, and neither is collecting firewood. It seems that quite a lot of things are not allowed in National Parks, while almost anything goes in State Forests. More and more State Forests are being converted to National Parks - there are mixed opinions on whether this is a good thing or not.
The following evening we decided to add a slow chilli to our camp oven repertoire. After struggling with the fire the previous evening, and nearly losing my sight with the excessive smoke, I thought that it would be OK to take a small piece of driftwood off the beach just to get the fire going. While I was cutting the piece of driftwood into smaller pieces with the bow saw I caught a whiff of something, but it could have been me. Then, to quote Kenny when I set fire to it, "it felt like I had been hit in the head with a poo bat". With my vision still blurry from the previous evening, I managed to pick the pieces out of the fire and carried on by blowing on the smoky Tamborine logs for the next 2 hours. By the time the chilli was ready I was legally blind. The chilly tasted awesome though!

While there were no official staff at the campground, they did have a toilet attendant. Unlike the annoying staff in London clubs and bars, this one didn't pick up the soap for me, offer me deodorant, or give me a lolly... it just made sure that there were no rats.

This Diamond Python was there for a few days and in all that time Ness only saw it move once, when it was hanging over the edge in an S shape ready to dart out and catch its prey. The rest of the time it just lay there, happy for humans to use the facilities while it chilled out on the walkway. Apparently this is common behaviour for these snakes, and it will move on (a couple of hundred meters) once it thinks it has caught all the prey in the area.

After a few trips to the beach and couple of dusty walks, we all needed a shower. With no level indicator on our water tank I was reluctant to use our water supply for showers, so we decided to take a drive to the nearest campsite with showers. After driving for about 20 minutes I started wondering just how far this "nearest shower" was... A 100km round trip later we were all smelling fresh as daisies again.

The coastline in this part of the world is absolutely beautiful and I was glad that I made the effort to go and take some pictures early one morning.

There was also a vivid reminder of why you shouldn't drive a Niss... umm... of why you should always know the tides when you drive on the beach, and why it is a good idea to have a backup plan (2 vehicles, sand ladders, etc).

We have lift off! The Beacon (14-19 March 2013)

The big day finally arrived and we said goodbye to the Brissie van Wyks, and headed for our first stop on Mt.Tamborine which is only a couple of hours away. The first thing that I noticed was just how heavy the trailer is behind the truck. With the extra transmission cooler that I fitted it wasn't overheating on the hills, but we soon became the people that the queue formed behind. Our setup definitely needs to go on a bit of diet as we are paying for the extra weight in fuel consumption, as well as lack of speed up hills. Hmmm... I need to rethink carrying 80L of water all the time. And maybe only one case of beers.

On our way up the mountain we took a very brief tour of the campsite at Thunderbird Park, but the place didn't feel right. I'm not sure if it was the absent campground staff, or the rocky & uneven pitches, or the mozzies dive bombing the truck, or the seemingly abandoned caravans not entirely hidden by bleached tarp quilts, or the Bonny and Clyde looking couple respraying their car a completely different colour, but we decided to check out a place that my brother had mentioned, The Beacon on Tamborine. We were very glad that we did - what a contrast.

Jake took it easy while Ness and I turned this:

Into this:

That first night we also made the most delicious beef potjie - I think I should put it on my CV, it was that good!

I must give the caretaker Tim and his wife a mention, who not only run a beautiful and clean site, but are great to have a friendly chat with. It turns out that The Beacon was also the first stop on their round Australia trip 14 months ago, but they never made it past the gate again. When Tim mentioned that they were looking for staff, Ness and I nervously laughed as we glanced at each other to make sure that we were in agreement about not getting bogged so soon (we have already discussed working on the trip to supplement our travel fund).

We hadn't actually said goodbye to the Brissie family, just see you later. And later was only 2 days later as they joined us for the weekend (while we were still only a short drive away). Waz & Lenny who live on the Gold Coast also popped in with some delicious croissants. After a satisfying lunch Waz, Marius and myself decided to try out my newly acquired chainsaw and block splitter. From now on I will always try to do any block splitting when there are some mates around. Cutting the logs with the chainsaw took 1 person 5 minutes. Splitting them into fire size pieces took 3 of us... much longer. I was still splitting logs several days later with another new block splitter (we knackered the wooden handle on the first one pretty quickly). Eventually I gave up and sawed the blocks down the middle with the chainsaw, telling myself that the wood was too wet to split, and that I would use the splitter next time... Next time I run out of gas for the chainsaw maybe.

While we had only planned to stay there until the weekend, it was more of a "we'll use this plan until we make another plan" plan. I was finally starting to relax which meant the family was relaxing too, so we decided to stay a few extra days, see the sites, and not start the trip in a rush.

Since we have arrived in Australia we have found ourselves eating way too many unhealthy lunches, partly due to running around so much to sort things out, and partly because we have felt like we're on holiday and been lazy. To remedy this was easy and simply required us to carry a few basics in the fridge which we always have with us, then all we needed to do was pick up some fresh bread/rolls and find a beautiful picnic spot.

This is our first roadside picnic...

... next to a cemetery. It was very peaceful :)

Ness, ever vigilant against ants and spiders, took about 3 seconds to find an ant "so big it could have been a cat". And in a flash Jake tried to squash it (as I had taught him), much to Ness' horror. She has a more severe view of bites and stings than me, however in a country with at least a dozen things smaller than a pound coin that can kill you, I should probably be a bit more careful with what I teach Jake too.

We spotted a 1,5km walk starting from the picnic spot, so decided to take a post lunch stroll through the forest. With it being a short walk, Ness just grabbed a bottle of water, and we didn't bother with walking shoes or Jakes carrier. This turned out to be a bit of a mistake as the walk was almost certainly longer than sign-posted, and soon became quite steep in places with boggy and slippery patches. And I found another leach between my toes. We now permanently keep our walking shoes in the car. The walk was well worth it though, with some very beautiful scenery.

Tamborine also has quite an arty community, who have created a Gallery Walk - a road full of colourful shops that sell everything from homemade fudge, to hand crafted fine jewelery, to German cuckoo clocks...

This lot sell handmade ornamental furniture for house and garden.

These guys sell... umm, actually I have no idea what this shop was selling, but I'm sure that it is good shit man.

Our last stop was for a spot of booze tasting at a local distillery with a very eccentric proprietor -  we saw this place on an episode of Poms in Paradise (a series about Brits emigrating to Australia). Over time they have managed to distill a liqueur or spirit from just about every fruit in Australia.

They also make absinthe, and sell these absinthe fountains.

While driving around I noticed that some of my newly installed electrical equipment wasn't behaving as it should (the VSR wasn't linking the batteries while driving in the early evening). After calling a friend (thanks Dane) we figured out that the alternator had gone. It may have happened a few days earlier, but the solar array on my roofrack has been doing such a good job that I hadn't noticed before. This means that my car was actually solar powered for a while - cool! I sourced a quality higher output alternator as a replacement, and fitted it myself under the blue gums (or widow makers as one elderly observer commented) in the campsite.

A bit of a family landmark has been Jake starting to happily play on his own, freeing up mum and dad to read books or have a relaxing chat, or just listen to the birds. Pure bliss.

After almost a week we said goodbye to Tim and his family and headed south.

Final Prep

Since the last update we have been trying to get all the remaining prep and mods done, while still feeling like we are already on holiday. This has been surprisingly difficult. Apparently time passes much quicker when you are trying to fit a tricky bullbar, than when you are waiting for someone to finish fitting a tricky bullbar so that you can go to the beach.  Both can be frustrating. For those that are planning to fit a bullbar and winch yourself (as opposed to paying a sucker to do it for you), be warned that it is only similar to building Meccano, not exactly like it. The main differences are that not all the parts are provided (you have to fabricate some yourself) and some of the bits are rather heavy which requires an assistant (preferably one who knows how to fit bullbars and/or winches). Here is my lovely assistant... errr... sitting down, drinking a beer...

The truth is that there is no way that I would have been able to do this job without Marius. Thanks boet!

I also mounted a pair of Hella HID spotlights (1 pencil and 1 spread beam) that are remarkably bright! They are so bright that when I switch back to dipped beam it feels like I have two dirty oil lamps lighting the way, rather than the upgraded high wattage H4 Philips bulbs that are in there.

Next I fitted a UHF Radio and bullbar mounted antenna good buddies. At first I was very disappointed by the performance of the radio, over. Somehow Ness managed to translate some of the static that it was producing, over. In convoy I would hear "ggggggghhhhrrrrrrr, pfffffffttt, sssssssss....." and Ness would interpret, "they are stopping for pineapples", over. The solution was to fit an external speaker in the dash, over and out.

Here is what the truck looks like now.

You may have spotted that Jake has a new do. He was starting to grow a bit of a mullet so we took him for his first haircut. With every trick in the book employed we still had a pretty rough start.

But the lady was very good with him, and voila! Jake went from toddler to little boy.

Hear ye, hear ye! Etienne has finished the truck electrics! After almost 2 years of thinking and planning I finally plugged in the solar panels and everything is working as it should. We have 3 different types of power outlets at the back (Anderson 50A, Anderson Powerpole 30A & cigarette 20A) to power/charge all the appliances (cameras, laptop, tablets, lights, etc). I decided not to fit the 2kW inverter as we don't really have a need for it on this trip and I don't have time to get comfortable with AC power which can bite hard if I get it wrong. As I have already mentioned the 370W of solar panels are working perfectly with the 40A MPPT controller, and as a bonus they are acting like a mobile carport which is keeping the black truck surprisingly cool in the full Aussie sun. The panels even seem to be keeping up with the fridge (80 litre Engel fridge/freezer) on cloudy days too, so I am a very happy camper :)

Here is a pic of some of the power outlets, distribution blocks, cut-off switch and solar controller, mounted in the rear body trim.

The camper has also been getting some love. All the rust has been removed and treated with rust converter. On the underside this was followed with a coating of fish oil to prevent (or at least slow down) further rust. Tip: if you ever want to spray fish oil on anything, do it in the street or a noisy neighbour's lawn.
All the visible paintwork has been touched up with matching paint  and the camper is looking like new again. The electric trailer brakes were about as effective as dragging a hanky on the rear wiper, so I replaced both units. They are slightly better but still won't lock on full power. When I replaced the trailer plug, I noticed that the copper wire was black so I will rewire them next to see if that is the problem.
The matching Landcruiser wheels have been fitted too, so now it would take some very bad luck for us to get stuck with a flat somewhere - we have 2 spares, and can use the trailer wheels as another 2 spares, and I have a puncture repair kit and compressor... Hopefully we won't need them though.

After spending about $20 a bag for firewood at Gordon Country I decided that I am going to collect my own wood from now on. Over here the problem is not so much finding it, but rather cutting and transporting it. For transport I have fitted some chequer plate and tie down loops to the toolbox on the trailer's drawbar so that I can strap logs onto it.

To cut the logs I have a very good axe that Ness got me for my birthday, but this isn't really suitable for cutting lots of firewood. I also tried a bow saw, but with my dodgy shoulder we would end up having marshmallows over a very modest fire every night. After doing a bit of research I bought my first 2-stroke. I was obviously always hoping that it would be a CRM500 powered motard, but this is pretty cool too.

Sawing with it can be quite addictive. A bit like pressure washing a very dirty driveway (if you have done this, you will know what I mean).

OK, everything above this was written a few weeks ago and we are now on the road already, so to move things on a bit: there was a lot more prep to the LC, equipment and trailer. I'll get on with  trip posts from now on.

Blood suckers, floods & turning 40 (24 Jan - 2 Feb 2013)

For our inaugural trip in our camper trailer, my brother booked us in at GORDON COUNTRY on the Australia Day weekend. A fortunate coincidence is that our wedding anniversary is on Australia Day, so as long as we live in Australia we will always have the day off on our anniversary :)

As our Landcruiser hadn't cleared the docks yet, we were still wondering how we would get both camper trailers to the site which was a couple of hours away, when out of the blue St.Waz emails me offering us the use of his Delica for the weekend - a HUGE THANK YOU to Waz and Lenny for their generosity! For those that are not familiar with the Delica (not sure if it is pronounced De-leeca, or Deli-kuh...), it is a 4X4 minibus style vehicle built on the same chassis as a Mitsubishi Pajero. Here it is parked up next to my brother's GU Patrol.

To get to Gordon Country from Brisbane we drove through Cunninghams Gap which is a reasonably steep pass over the Great Dividing Range, and a major transport route. Going up the pass I may have been a little enthusiastic to start with, and about halfway up I noticed that the temp gauge on the Delica had started climbing. Not wanting to have a rather uncomfortable conversation with Waz about why I cooked his car, I pulled over at the first opportunity. It turned out that this was a small car park at the crest of the pass that is the start/finish for the Cunninghams Gap walking tracks, and also where we had planned to stop for lunch and take in the views. Once pulled over the Delica rapidly cooled down, so we set off on one of the shorter walks (with the 3 children under 4 years old) to the lookout point.

After lunch we carried on around the loop and took some pics inside a very large tree. Here is Ness posing with Jake and Alecia (our 3 year old niece).

Here is Marius noticing several very large spiders also (taking pics?) in the tree, and Alecia not needing a second look.

Then the walk went from interesting/beautiful/peaceful to... memorable. Ness was the first to notice a leach in her shoe. Yip, a leach. It took a while for everyone in our little expedition party to be convinced that there actually was a leach, but when Bridgette spotted another one in her shoe, we suddenly found ourselves deep in the jungle. While Marius and I would have continued like men (calm, but wary of danger), the girls proceeded at near-panic evacuation pace. Obviously we could not leave them alone, so we followed. On the way back to the parking lot we passed a very mystic looking Indian yogi type fellow, at the same time as we found another leach in one of the shoes. It's hard to describe how funny a panicked holy man (with small towel around his waist, long walking stick, weathered expression, the works) looks when he is miming "kill it, kill it". Back at the cars we all did a foot inspection, and both Marius and I had blood on our feet. Here is the little sucker that got me.

The bite on my heel was tiny, but with the anticoagulant that it injected into me, I bled for ages.


When we arrived at Gordon country we chose to camp in the 4WD area. The entrance was down a short steep bank and through a rocky stream that was about a foot deep and flowing gently. The camp area is beautiful and there was only one other family there, so we could pitch anywhere we wanted to.

We chose a spot on the bank of the river which flowed past about 2 meters below us.

The first job was to get a fire started, and then everyone got stuck in putting up the 2 campers for the first time (although my brother had set ours up a couple of times before we got to Australia).

I was very impressed with how quickly it all went up - maybe an hour and a half including the awning. With a bit of practice I think we will be able to do this in half that time, and even less (maybe 20 minutes) if we don't put up the awning on short stops.

With the campers setup, it was time to make our first POTJIE (little pot in Afrikaans). Life was good!

We treated ourselves to a decent coffee setup, and over the course of the weekend we got to love this more and more. There is nothing like a fresh forest morning and an excellent cup of coffee.

A light drizzle blew in early that morning, and someone mentioned that the weather report was for sunshine and showers, so it should brighten up later. Actually, it didn't brighten up at all. Instead, it started raining slightly harder as the morning went on. By mid-morning we noticed that the stream had come up a bit.

Half an hour later it was looking like a river, and we were glad that we were so high up the bank. We should have paid more attention to how fast it was coming up though.

This was the only way in and out of the campsite. At this point it didn't look too deep, so my brother ferried the girls across in his Patrol for a shower on the other side.



Shortly after we saw them on the opposite bank waving at us, so we smiled and waved back. By this point the river was making enough noise that we couldn't hear what they were shouting out to us. Then we remembered the handheld radio that he had left with us. After having made it across to the other side, my brother was not at all confident that he could get back again, so we were now stuck on opposite sides of the river. On their side there was him, his wife Bridgette, his daughter Alecia, and baby Liezl. On our side was Ness, Jake, me and Liezl's baby food...

At the same time Ness noticed that another family who had arrived that morning were packing up and getting ready to leave again. Earlier that morning, Marius and I had commented on how brave he was to take his twin axle caravan down the steep bank and through the creek. The creek that was by now a roaring river. Ness ran over and shared Marius' thoughts on the current with them, but the chap was determined to leave despite his wife's pleas to wait. To be fair he did have a pretty pimped out GQ Patrol. As expected, the current was too strong and as soon as the water hit the van, it got pulled down stream. His only option was to give it gas and he almost made it across, but then the van got stuck on some rocks on the exit side. I didn't take many pics as his wife was standing next to me crying as she watched the caravan, first getting bashed on the rocks, and then filling with water. By this point my brother had become aware of what was happening and had rushed to the top of the exit with his Patrol to try and winch him out - with the sharp turn snatching wasn't possible.

Eventually the chap did manage to winch himself and the caravan out of the river, but it was a very expensive escape. Caravan interiors are not made to get soaked, and I suspect that the caravan may have been a write-off. What must have been even more gutting, was that shortly after it stopped raining and the river started dropping again. It dropped enough for him to come back over to fetch his family, and bring Marius' family with him to the "baby food" side.

It only stopped for a short while though, and before we could make a lunch fire, the rain was back and the river started swelling again.

And again we were thankful that we had chosen a high site. Here you can see how high we were from the river at this point.

Marius was the only one who had remembered to bring his umbrella.

Ok, let's see what happened next... oh yes! It rained some more... and more... and more... and by early afternoon, our site had turned into Lake van Wyk. When the water started coming through the mesh floor under the awning and crept towards the tent, we got digging. The idea was to divert the water down the bank and into the river.

With only 1 shovel and 1 axe to dig with, we never really stood a chance against Cyclone Oswald. Sunshine and showers my arse! The decision was made to retreat to (even) higher ground. This presented us with a fresh challenge in the relentless rain - how do we get the 2 campers through the soft soaked tracks and up a slippery slope to higher ground, with the Patrol (and its mud boots) on the other side of the river. None of us thought that it was a good idea to risk getting the Delica stuck. Some boga... loud young people.. had arrived in the middle of the previous night, and we even considered asking them for help, but by the time we had packed up the first camper I decided that the Delica would be fine if we dropped the tyre pressures (I wasn't sure about this in the mud), locked the centre diff and drove up the slippery hill in low range - when I say "we would be fine", I was making the best of a grim situation. However, when the Delica did make it up, it felt like we had summit-ed Everest! We got the tent set up again quick as a flash, and left the wives and children while we went back for the second camper. The one with the beer in it. Well we deserved a beer didn't we ;)

Here is the new site. Note that even up here the water had started pooling on the flat bits (bottom left) as the ground could not absorb any more rain.

Another group of well equipped campers that must also have arrived that morning (or late the previous evening) , had come to the same decision as us and also decided to move to the spot next to us. One other family with a camper trailer was still on the lower bit, but through some very bad luck had managed to get their ute stuck in some very slippery black mud, and the river had come up while the father (Daine) was on the other side looking for someone to help. Ness checked that they were OK, and offered for us to help if they wanted it. They said that they were OK for the time being, but we were still a bit worried about them so kept an eye out for the water level where they were (we had a good view from where we were). At 6am the next morning Jackie came and asked for help as the water had pooled on the canvas roof and she could not get it off - it sounded odd, but when we got there, we saw that the sagging roof was holding enough water to fill a bath tub. Their poor family (Jackie and 2 young children) had not slept all night trying to keep the tent lashed down and the water out in the driving wind and rain. By morning their tent was also floating in a lake of water, so we decided to get their gear moved up to our spot as well. At this point Joe, Blake, Andy, Liberty and Emily (our new neighbours) mucked in as well, and we got the camper moved up in no time at all. I did feel a bit bad because you could see that the setup had been done with great care, and here we were just pulling it apart as fast as possible. It was too wet and cold to take our time though. As strange as it might sound, this was one of the highlights of the weekend, because it was great to see how everyone just did what needed to be done, completely selflessly and without complaining. Later in the day we found out that Joe and his group had also had their beds washed out and that their communal kitchen tent had collapsed during the night - the weight of the water on their kitchen tent had bent the tent poles. Seeing as we had loads of dry room in our campers/awnings, we all got together and Andy knocked up a gourmet breakfast for everyone - turns out Andy is a chef :)

This is Liberty, Joe and Andy drying out and making breakfast.

Here is Jackie (I hope I am spelling this correctly), with Levi and Zoe, trying to dry out under the awning.

For the next 2 days it rained and rained and rained, and I thought that I would christen our camper Et's Ark as we all took shelter in it. By this time we were starting to get a little bit worried by 2 things. Firstly, as we had only planned to camp for 4 days we did not have enough food, baby formula and baby/toddler bum kit. And secondly, with the strong winds several large trees had been blown over that could easily have flattened the camper. When the bigger ones snapped it sounded a bit like a small cannon going off. A lot of branches were also falling, and even though they might not bury the camper, they could seriously injure someone. The camp site care taker was getting in touch twice a day via HF radio to make sure that we were OK, and warned us that we should expect some very strong winds overnight. Although we tried to prepare for this (I swapped all my regular pegs for the much longer sand pegs), everyone was a little nervous as Joe's Troopie had already suffered a direct hit on the cab roof. That night the winds apparently got up to 120kph - it certainly sounded like it from inside the tent.

When we got up there was a break in the wind and rain, so we all went out to inspect the river level and took a walk down to our abandoned sites. The river was even higher and we could see by the debris that it had come up and flooded our first pitches. We we were VERY glad that we had done the sensible thing and moved to higher ground. There were also lots of fallen branches all over the place.

The sign asks visitors not to damage the grass.

Eventually the sun did come out though, and we had the whole place to ourselves. The river started dropping  and Daine managed to get back over and was reunited with his family. The bog... other young campers who had only brought beer and no food, were in a big hurry to get out of there, but we figured we may as well stay another few days and enjoy the beautiful campsite, and some wildlife.

Now we were at least able to go back and forth across the creek to the toilets and showers, but we were still cut-off from getting home as some of the roads back to Brisbane had been damaged. We did have access to the nearest town (Allora) though, so we were able to re-supply with nappies and beer. And food.

Our new friends had jobs to get back to so we said farewell. We will definitely be looking them up again when we set off on our trip.

We also managed to get Daine's ute pulled out with the Patrol, which incidentally had a fridge full of cold beer on it - what we would have given for that bit of info just 24 hours before!

Eventually we headed home too (back to my brother's place), just in time for my 40th birthday. Funny how 40 doesn't seem that old when you are 40.

What a week! This "shakedown" trip has certainly set the bar very high in the excitement stakes, and if this is anything to go by we are in for an awesome adventure this year.