Motorhome Travels - July 2008

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02/07/2008

It is now officially five years since we left Sydney on that cold July morning.

 

In addition to the two new articles I added to the Motorhoming section of the website last month, I have added one more...

This new article is a guide to setting up a motorhome for free camping your way around Australia.

Most will be aware that our motorhome "Hobohome" is well setup to be able to avoid the expense of caravan parks and paid camping grounds. This article discusses how it is equipped to handle extended stays away from power and water etc.

 

While we are on the subject of new things - you will see that I have added a location icon to each new blog entry. Clicking on this will display a "Google Map" overlaid with our GPS track for that month. When that map is displayed, you can zoom in on any point and move around the map to see exactly where we traveled. I am slowly working my way back through the previous blog months, adding this feature.

 

We are on a trek north in search of warmer weather - so far this has not been successful (might have something to do with our chosen route perhaps). We have had frost on the bus in the mornings for the last week or more. A few nights ago it got so cold outside, our inside/outside digital thermometer reported the outside temperature as "LLLLLL". I think that is digital talk for bloody cold.

Despite the cold, it has been an enjoyable trip up through this region of NSW. There are lots of really nice free camping areas and we always enjoy visiting small outback towns (most of whom are very pleased to welcome visitors to their community). 

 

Oh - one last new thing ... my Lenovo notebook computer died last week (RIP) after less than two years of service. So, I have a new Toshiba notebook ... lets hope this one lasts a bit longer than the Lenovo! 

 

08/07/2008

Grafton - We have just left Grafton after spending three days staying at the greyhound track with some friends of some friends. Frits and Riet are from Holland and have been travelling New Zealand in their motorhome "Bleep" (a very nice conversion by a NZ company "A-Class") where they met our friends John and Glenda. They have now moved "Bleep" across the Tasman to explore Australia for a year. Apart from being woken each morning at 4am by a chorus of singing greyhounds, it was a nice few days.

We must have crossed some magic line somewhere coz the average temperature has risen about 6 or 7 degrees in the last week. I have had to dig our my shorts again (at last).

After leaving Grafton, we stumbled across a really nice (quiet) secluded camp spot by the river. We have decided to stay here for a few days while we catch up on a bit of work.

We have restarted our Spanish lessons using a program kindly lent to us by Frits - lets see if we can keep it up!

 

Adios!

 

11/07/2008

 

Never being ones for taking the direct route, we decided to travel from Grafton to Casino via Pageville and the Mt Pikapene National Park. The road conditions varied from narrow seal to mud track and at times was almost un-passable. However it was a very interesting drive and we came across a nice camping area in the State Forest. A nearby recently cleared pine forest provided all the firewood we needed and we were able to enjoy our first camp fire in quite some months. Now that is a good indication that it is starting to warm up - until now it has been just too darn cold to sit outside no matter how good the fire is.

I have just added an RSS feed to the site (yea I know - a bit behind the times) - this means you can simply click on the RSS icon to subscribe to the feed and you will be informed each time the site is updated. The RSS icon is on the home page. (Of course you can un-subscribe at any time.)

 

21/07/2008

 

We spent over a week parked on the lawn of our friends Ty and Trish in Casino where we engaged in a bit of good old fashioned labor exchange. We completed some work on their computer network and website and they printed some of our photos on vinyl. These are now proudly displayed inside Hobohome. This is a great way to show off photos without the normal clutter of frames etc. Check out their website (yes we designed it) at www.wintersun.ws  After leaving Casino we headed north again along the road less traveled. This part of Australia seems to have escaped the drought that we have seen so much evidence of in other places. The grass in this area is so thick and green, it almost looks like it should glow in the dark.

 

We decided to head into Queensland using a small gravel road that winds it's way up into the Border Rangers and passes through a national park. We were just starting to look for a camp for the night when we passed a sign for a reserve inviting people to picnic or camp. Closer inspection revealed that it is a wonderful little camp area - located on the junction of two reasonable sized creeks. The camp is on the site of the old school and the area is managed by a trust (consisting of 6 locals). They have done a great job of turning it into a really nice camping area. There is no fixed fee for camping but a donation box is provided.

The camp is called Lynchs Creek Reserve and is about 25km from Kyogle (some gravel)  at 28 26 640S   153 00 104E.  (see the location map)

The drive over the ranges is spectacular but not for those not used to driving large vehicles on very steep winding roads. About 2km from the border there was a road sign telling us that vehicles higher than 2.8m could not cross the border. We decided to check it out anyway and found we had no problems. We crossed the border on the top of the ranges are and now in Queensland.

 

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