Motorhome Travels - Sept 2015

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01/09/2015

OK, I know it has been a long time since we last posted here. Lots of things have happened and there has been many changes. Where to start ... well it all started when we stopped off at Halls Creek and bought a loto ticket - something we NEVER do. That ticket was put in a draw and sort of forgotten about as we continued east towards Mt Perry.

After camping on the Fitzroy River for a week and getting lots of great photos of crocs and birds we visited the Bungle Bungles (where I came close to crashing the quadcopter). With lost of photos and video of the amazing Bungle Bungles we again started heading east towards our property inland from Bundaberg. Just to recap - we built a shed house on our 75 acre property in 2012. It was finished to a very basic standard ... which is to say, not really finished at all. The plan was to set the place up as a home base and somewhere to hide when we are not travelling in Hobohome. The shed portion is large enough to accommodate the bus for maintenance and the house section is just the right size for the two of us.

We found that the closer we got to Mt Perry, the more we felt the pull of the desire to get the place properly set up. There was a lot to do...

As we are some way from the town, there is no power nearby, so the plan was to install a stand-alone solar array. We also have an interest is growing our own food, so water is going to be required in quantities beyond rainwater. A bore would have to be drilled. We wanted to build a covered outdoor area and as there was no real kitchen installed, we would have to design and build a practical kitchen for the place.

To cut a long story short, we drove east quite quickly and arrived at Mt Perry before the end of June 2014. 

It was very strange to start calling Mt Perry "Home" - for so many years Hobohome has been home. We relaxed for about 8 minutes before stating work on the to-do list...

• Sink a bore - we are going to need lots of water
• Design and install a large solar power plant - we are going to need lots of power
• Design and build a large covered deck - we need lots of oudoor space
• Plant more fruit trees - ya can't have too many fruit trees
• Concrete the floor of the shed section
• Build a storage area
• Build a propagation area (Tracey wants to grow seedlings)
• Tile the floor in the house
• Design and build a kitchen

The solar bore pushed the first liter of water 300m up the hill and into our tanks in July 2014. The submersible pump and 400w of solar is capable of delivering 14,000 ltrs of water every (sunny) day. 20 additional fruit trees were planted at the same time, and a large scale irrigation system was designed, built and installed.

Digging the foundations for the deck

Tirrian helps with the tiling of the deck

The deck is finished

The concrete for the deck and shed floor was poured in September and the roof over the deck was completed and certified in October. Also in October we installed and commissioned a 5kw solar off-grid power system.

We built a mezzanine floor over part of the shed in November (and immediately started filling it with junk ... as ya do!).

We started tiling the deck area (150 sqm) in December and finished it (along with our knees) in March 2015 (it was a big job) - the indoor house tiles were completed in April.

I crashed the quadcopter (spectacularly) in May and we began designing the Kitchen in April (we hope it will be installed THIS WEEK!).

We have planted lawns, landscaped areas, irrigated large areas of the property, added fences, designed and installed security and camera systems, had cyclone Marcia visit, lost Tivoli (the cat), got two new kittens, installed air conditioning systems, had our daughter and two grandchildren stay for a month, been on a south pacific cruise and consumed a lot of apple cider. As you can see, it has been a very very busy year.

As I write this, we are still living in the bus (parked beside the shouse) but spend most of our days in and around the shouse. We have a well setup office and make good use of that for our Imageworkx web business. The plan is to move into the house once the kitchen has been installed. Hobohome needs some maintenance work done before our next trip so she will live in the shed for a few weeks. We think we will stay here at least until early next year ... then we think we will head back west again. The call of the clear blue water and WA fishing is getting stronger.

So, there you have it, a year of Hobohome updates in one go. Oh, I forgot to tell you about that lotto ticket we bought in Halls Creek ... well we discovered it in the draw just a few months go. We check it out and guess what ... it was a dud, what a waste of money that was! :-)

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