Day One

Got away eventually at 9:15, after a huge-ish day yesterday getting organised, doing all the important things like cleaning the bathrooms, vacuuming, washing clothes, getting our mail redirected, suspending gym membership, completing outstanding work commitments, buying 24 bottles of suitable wine to take away, washing ironing and packing clothes, sorting out supplies and equipment, writing to all the neighbours, etc – you get the idea. It was a busy day and it was nearly midnight when we finished up and collapsed.

Great day’s travelling, though we are going to take some time to get used to the fact that we actually on eight weeks’ of holiday, have no commitments to work or anyone else, and only have to focus on enjoying ourselves and making the most of our travels… It’ll be tough but we think that, given time, we might get used to it.

Journey highlights of day one – which took us from Canberra through Yass, Boorowa, Cowra, Canowindra, Eugowra, Parkes, Narromine, Trangie, and Nevertire to Nyngan:

• Having to stop on the Barton Highway so that two ducks could cross the road. Traffic backed up for a little while and no-one complained or showed impatience.
• How good the country looks at the moment. Last time we came through this route the drought was in full flight, and it looked like a moonscape in places. This time it was green green green and wet, with chains of ponds and pools of water spilling out of the soil at several places. It’s hard to believe that it could even come back from the previous desolation, but there is clearly great resilience in this landscape…
• A couple of clever shop signs – the Deli Lama delicatessen in Canowindra and the Cobb & Dough bakery in Eugowra for starters.
• The football match in progress when we arrived here in Nyngan. Almost nobody was sitting in the stands (too cold!), but were sitting in their cars in a circle around the ground, pointing their cars front ends at the action. Whenever there was a score or something of significance happened, there would be a chorus of car horns all sounding their approval (or disapproval – it was hard to tell which). Not sure who won in the end, but it was entertaining.
• Our current home at the Riverside Camp Ground, on the edge of Nyngan and also the Bogan River (which is replete with water – but not threatening to flood as it did with devastating effect in 1994.

Bob and Anne Jolliffe own and run the camping ground here, and moved here some time ago from Toronto (NSW, that is). They are great lovers of animals in all forms, and the camping ground is a tribute this passion, and part nature park. As well as Dino the soccer-playing dog, there is Eric the white emu, several orphaned Eastern Grey joeys. Turkeys that go jogging alongside Bob when he bicycles around the park, Pepi and Thomas T the cats, possums, budgies and a catalogue of around 200 species of native birds that have been found to frequent this little riverside oasis.

In our little sunset walk along the river bank we saw magpie larks, galahs, grass parrots, purple swamp hens, coots, crows, (very large) willie-wagtails, budgies – and turkeys…

Ready to go...

Astro Boy is ready to go. He's got new shoes (well, tyres), he's been serviced and washed, he's got a full tank of petrol, and he's chomping at the bit in the driveway. Just another 12,000km and he'll be back here again.

Godzilla is waiting by the door to make sure that he doesn't get left behind. He's planning to RAAHHHHH!!! at a crocodile, but we don't know if that's really such a good idea.

Karen and John on the other hand, are nowhere near ready. Karen's catching up on ABS work before she goes, and John's struggling to sort out which camera gear to leave behind (probable answer: none of it). Minor logistics like food, clothes, camping gear are yet to get much attention.

All going well, we'll be on our way to Nyngan by 8am tomorrow, so we'd better get cracking eh?

Karen's anticipation

We're COUNTING the days until we go away. Our big adventure is only FOUR working days away – we are leaving home next Sunday (August 5) and arriving home over the October long weekend. The itinerary is likely to change as we may like to stay in some places for longer. We’ll keep you posted via the blog. The only commitments we have are dinner at Stefano’s (a destination restaurant) in Mildura on the long weekend on our way back and meeting up and maybe staying with our friends Ann and David in Darwin. We also hope to catch up with Chris, the ABS NT Regional Director – our plans to arrive there are worked around when they are in town.

We’re busily finalising preparations for the 8 weeks away. We’ve actually stayed home the last two weekends so that we can get organised. This brings our average number of weekends at home (without visitors) for the last 2 months up to 50%. A bonus was we managed to stay at home over the long weekend which was really relaxing. We had our ‘new’ neighbours, Mike and Jenny, in for afternoon drinks. I felt embarrassed that it had taken us 18 months to invite them in as we really like them.

We have even more gadgets to take with us this time. John has brought himself a new (red) laptop [ed: red ones go faster - John]. He has set it up so that we can access the Internet and developed a blog so that family and friends with Internet access will be able to see what we are up to on our trip.

We’ve been poring over the Lonely Planet NT Guide and various other brochures and books – it all looks good. I’ve been to Darwin but only for work . I went on a short day trip to Litchfield and Fogg Dam and visited the markets and watched the superb sunset on Mindil beach. John has been to the Alice on a trip with his mum Blossom.

We’re aiming to head up through Nyngan, Charleville, Longreach, Cloncurry, Borroloola, Katherine Gorge, Kakadu and Litchfield before reaching Darwin. We have the Bungle Bungles in WA in the plan (a late 6 day addition) but we’ll see how we go for time. It's looking very much like we won't get there. Then we’re keen to head to Victoria River, the Devils’ Marbles, Alice Springs and, of course spend a few days on the Larapinta Trail. Then we’re off to Kings Canyon, Uluru and home via Woomera, Port Augusta, Renmark and Mildura. Most of the time in the National Parks we’ll be walking, camping and getting up early in the morning to take advantage of the light for our photography.

We’ve both been travelling a bit for work. John is back in Melbourne this week, from Tuesday to late Thursday. He is promoting the family relationships website and speaking at a Conference. I have just returned from a 2 day work offsite in Wollongong and a one day meeting in Sydney with the ABS Regional Directors from around Australia. The offsite was my first with the Senior Executive Service staff of the ABS. It was all a bit daunting, especially with our new Australian Statistician, but I survived and made some contributions. We talked about what the ABS might look like in 15 years which was very interesting. There are a lot of challenges for us...

FIVE days and we're in heaven.

Keep in touch and hope you subscribe to the blog.

The Plan

Here's a rough outline of our planned route to the NT and back. We've got a detailed itinerary, but expect to change it pretty much as we feel like it and as circumstances dictate...

Possible variations include a diversion though Burketown and around the Gulf to Borroloola, and maybe missing out on Purnululu (the Bungle Bungles) if time gets a bit tight.

Actually the only thing we've booked for the entire eight weeks is dinner at Stefano's restaurant in Mildura on the night before we get home to Canberra!

Setting up

Here we go with our little proof-of-concept blog. The intention is to provide a simple complement to our photo web site (at http://members.iinet.net.au/~jokar1), and to enable us to post messages and photos during our imminent travels. Well, we'll see...