Well, we kicked the New Year off with a BANG!
A few fireworks here, a few fireworks there and another Border Crossing!
AND
After about 3 weeks of living the hotel life, at my brother’s place, we are back on the road!
Well, it wouldn’t be us back on the road if it wasn’t raining and without something going wrong or breaking.
CURRENT STATE OF PLAY
Tell you wot my friends, it’s been a bit of an adjustment getting back into things. I’m not really talking about being back on the road, that we have loved! I’m more talking about getting back onto the old laptop and phone for content creation.
If you hadn’t realised, we took a week or 2 off from sharing our travel lives and just in general, we decompressed.
Ha - I think I can hear the sweet cacophony of huffing and puffing from everyone being like, decompress?!? You’re on one giant holiday?!
I can’t argue with that, but I can say that jumping back onto the old laptop on Monday the 8th of January 2024 feels like I’ve gone back to the office - the office being a park bench with a view of some sweet coastline 😉.
In all seriousness though. It has taken us both by surprise how much time, effort and well, effort the whole socials thing has required. I haven’t counted the hours or anything, but most weeks when we’re driving to places, setting up to film, produce and edit a YouTube Video, Reel or shooting photos for the Newsletter and other things we have planned, I would say we easily put in about 30-40 hours a week each. Very sporadic hours, but I would say it would accumulate to that.
The argument comes in, and this is one we’ve been wrestling with - is it work?
Gen Z says YES!
Baby Boomers say NO!
The Urban Dictionary references ‘Work’ as:
“work:
doing something you hate in a place you hate with people you grow to hate for the majority of your day for the majority of your life. we're not born to spend our lives at work, f*ck this shit”
Cannot argue with that definition can we.
To me, what we do isn’t work, it’s a passion project.
If you were to get me 7 Watermalone Cruisers deep and quizzed me on this - I would happily give you a very detailed sermon on what it means. Otherwise, I am happy for you to let me know your thoughts and opinions on the matter.
Fast forward to the 09th of January 2024 and we are perched in the cute coastal town of Eden.
50kms North of the Victorian / NSW border, 6 hours and 40 minutes south of Sydney and 2 days walk South-East from Canberra.
What a spot this is.
For the last 2 days we’ve bounced around between here and Merimbula and have quickly figured it would be one of our favourite coastal spots yet.
Eden is famous for its whaling history - they used to ping Orcas, how’s that for work eh. The wee bay is also, or was also, home to the largest Blue Whale ever recorded - 29m long. It’s actually crazy trying to fathom an animal that large.
Why do we like it so much?
There are surf beaches for dayz. The biking / mountain biking culture is huge. The amount of forestry tracks which Frodo can sink her stubby legs into is too much to handle. Kosciuszko (this is a ridiculously hard name to memorise to spell) National Park is a 2-3 hour drive away AND the Alpine NP is 4-5 hours away. Essentially all the outdoor activities you can dream of are within a days drive in any direction.
It is an unfortunate thing to say we have decided on not heading to either of Kosciuszko or the Alpine NP. KL has rolled her foot whilst jogging in Melbourne and we think she has badly sprained or a slight tear in a ligament. Meaning hiking is out of the question. This is why we are following the coast all the way back up into Brisbane.
Bit of a shame, but it is what it is and it means we don’t have to antagonise over the age old questions in our life - do we hike? do we 4wd? do we surf?
The adventure gods have answered and it’s to be surfing!
Just wish the weather gods would play ball.
Obviously if we’re back on the road you can be sure to count on rain of some kind.
The day we left Melbourne - rain.
The day we drove from Vic into NSW - rain.
The day we got here - RAIN.
Like all great stories. It isn’t all doom and gloom.
We managed to sneak into Wilsons Promontory NP, just after leaving Melbourne, and the weather was flippin’ primo.
That place is all time.
I would have to say up there in top 5, or even 3, National Parks for us - and we didn’t even do any hiking! We just drove around and lounged on a few beaches.
Driving in, it really took us by surprise. There is only one main road, with a few side shoots to a lookout here and there. To experience the rest of the park, you would have to do it on foot. The park is so much bigger than we expected (30-40min drive from the beginning of the park to the main camp - not even at the most southern point) and the mountains too. I was expecting rolling hills that seems to be the norm for that part of the country, but they just loomed up over you, all cloud covered and dramatic like. We both had another one of those Jurassic Park moments.
Unfortunately, being NY’s ’n school holidays ’n all that, all the accommodations were full. It was an hour drive in from camp and an hour drive back to camp. Usually we would be salty as doing this, limiting our visitation rights to only the one day. However, Wilsons was too good not to go back for day 2 AND Doug (me wee bro 😆) decided to join us for the second day as well - sick ezz cuzz.
As with all good things, we live it for a moment in time and then move on.
It is during the moving on that the travel gods gave us a fresh slap in the face – tell ya wot. They have tested us this trip. Lucky our faith is strong 💪!
We pulled into Lakes Entrance (another fabulous coastal town) to fill up on food and fuel. Most little towns tend to have only an IGA or Foodworks dwelling within them. When we stumble upon a Coles or a Woolies, we go ham.
Can confirm we went ham in Lakes Entrance.
Burgers, rissoles, sausages, chicken and lamb. Man we hadn’t eaten this well since we stole dear old mamma’s credit card. 5 hours later, our Bushman’s Fridge decided to stop doing the one sole purpose it exists for - making things cold.
After multiples of hours fiddling with connections, wires, changing battery inputs and speaking to various “experts” - being camping store clerks and one grizzly Bushman Company Rep - we established the lack of cooling situation may be due to one of 2 issues. Issue 1 being electrical. Whereby the fridge isn’t getting enough current to properly run and so it would live in a constant state of turning on and turning off but not cooling. This may be stemming from our battery, or, a shonky wire within the system somewhere. Issue 2, the thermostat has snuffed it. Thermostat being the ultimate cooling madgiggy.
As is usual with these things, everyone is pointing fingers at the other and people are either too busy or want to sell you something over offering/providing you with real assistance. Unfortunately, we didn’t buy the fridge direct from the Bushman manufacturer and got it through a distributor. Said distributor only has one store in QLD and another in SA. Meaning the old warranty check-in has to occur in store within a State we’re not currently in.
Rookie errors.
Anyway, we’re going to try and talk to a refrigeration expert as we travel up the coast towards Sydney, but at this stage it’s been allocated to the “too hard basket” and will be dealt with once back in Brisvegas. Going forward, it’ll be Noodles, Coles Pizza Bread and the odd Halal Snack Pack for us 💪.
LOOKAHEAD
We are on the road to home as of now.
Happy and sad face all at once.
We expect to be back in Brisbane by no later than 03 February 2024.
Between now and then shall be a lot of beach.
Here’s to February being a good weather month for us….. LOL.
Anyways, keep on keepin’ on, and, as always;
Thanks for reading 🙂
Love KL & GL.
Key Travel Stats:
Distance travelled: 31,303kms
Wild animal of the week: Douglas
Current Map posi:
