Rumby in our Tumby...

Our really bad attempt at humour!!! Based on the fact that Mark has caught no fish yet (after having 2 very early morning fishes on the jetty) our tummies are rumbly and here we are staying at Tumby (Tumby Bay that is!!!) Pooh bear would be so proud...
(Mark wants to add here that no-one else has caught any fish either... and he did catch 2 squid, see our photos for proof).
 
Tumby Bay is a lovely little coastal town, on the Eyre Peninsula 50km north of Port Lincoln. The water here is crystal blue, sandbars lead out for many metres in the ocean leaving shallow clear stretches of water and a stunning white sandy beach. We rocked up here in the pouring rain and set up, our trakkie held up awesomely, although we looked like a couple of drowned rats! This is the first time we have actually considered how much easier a caravan would be ...how jealous we were of the grey nomads peering out their windows, snickering at us youngins !!!
 
Well we have been to Oktoberfest in Germany... Begonia Festival in Ballarat... Moomba in Melbourne but now we can claim fame that we have been to the ...Tuna-rama festival in Port Lincoln!!! As you are probably aware, Port Lincoln is very famous for its big tuna fishing industry and this festival has it all... a Miss Tunarama Quest, The Tuna toss, Prawn peeling competition (using only one hand), Keg Roll race, the list goes on. It was a great way for us to spend our Australia Day, the atmosphere was relaxed, and the entertainment was great. The 'world-renowned' tuna toss was such a way for men to test their 'male macho-ness' (Mark said he would have had a go if it wasn't for his knee...cough, cough) and the funny thing about all this macho male stuff was that was a woman managed to get the largest toss in the heats we were watching!!! Go girls!! Mind you she was obviously a discus or hammer thrower, her technique was spot on, she had a body built for power (!) and she threw her tuna a whopping 17 metres! Speaking of the tuna, up to this year they have always used real tuna to toss. The locals told us that political correctness and the greenies stood in and demanded that no fish be harmed so they resorted to a new environmentally friendlier polyurethane tuna! A quite impressive life size replica and same weight. The prize for 1st place is $1000 so not bad for throwing a fish!! We hung around for the evening fireworks, the first the kids have seen (so they informed us!) and they were awesome, well worth the wait. We all had a fabulous time.
 
And Mark turned a year older...and I am sure wiser...last Friday. The kids and I blew up some balloons and stuck them up in trakkie, we had a bacon and egg brekky, and went out for our first meal of our trip. We went to a little restaurant called 'The Little Jetty' and the food was superb, such a treat to have someone else cook!
 
Other highlights:-

• The pelicans here at Tumby are so cool! They are so graceful and weird looking and aloof and mesmerizing all in one!
• The kids and I had our first ever go at snorkelling. Mark has been before so he was our instructor as we paddled around in the shallows. The kids couldn't quite master the snorkel itself, but had fun with the masks and holding their breath. I absolutely loved it! I ordered a prescription snorkelling mask online before we left (because I am so blind without my glasses!) and I am just so glad that I did, we had these little fish swimming around us and I found the underwater world fascinating. Can't wait to get over to the west to Coral Bay and see the real reefs, you wont be able to shut me up after that I am sure!!!
• We are officially 1 month in of our holiday today! Unbelievable!

---

Find it at www.seek.com.au Your Future Starts Here. Dream it? Then be it!

Drama at Browns Beach...

Feel awful to have someones elses misfortune to be big news on our blog... but we had big dramas at Browns Beach!
 
But back to that in a minute...
 
Our last full day in Adelaide we spent the day in Hahndorf, a quaint little German village on the outskirts of the city. This place was charming and full of great little shops to explore. We sampled the local Bratswurst sausage for lunch complete with sau... that stuff like cabbage that goes on top. It was yum, even the kids enjoyed it.
 
Spent the day driving into the Yorke Peninsula, the big "leg'' of SA. We thought it would be really easy to find a spot to camp for the night but it wasn't to be. As Emshia put it ..."Mum and Dad you are so fussy when you are looking for a campsite!" The beaches round here have very little sand, mainly rocks and lots of seaweed. And we are finding our standards are being raised with every place we stop. And this makes it harder to settle for less! So this day we drove...and drove...saw some beautiful coastlines but no good camping spots. At 8.30 at night we settled at Browns Beach in the Innes National Park right at the "toe section" of the leg of the Yorke Peninsula, basically because we had no choice, the kids were hungry and it was getting dark!
 
So...onto the drama bit. The next morning we had just finished breakfast when this young guy runs up to our camper and says in a frantic voice, "hey can you help me my friends real sick" so off Mark ran. It is awful to think badly of anyone but my first thought was that this guy is a bit suspicious and I better go and check Mark is ok. (As if I could of protected him !!!) Like they were going to ambush him or something... so off I ran to where they were and what I see is this guy, about 19 years old, lying on the ground, frothing at the mouth and his body having big jerking movements.  We had no idea what was going on, we didn't know if he was having a really bad reaction to something, like an anaphylaxis or what was going on! So we put him in the recovery position and made sure he was breathing and had a pulse (I got Mark to do this cos I was shaking too much!!! Great nurse I am!!!) After a few more seconds I realised he was having a seizure of some description ( the guys knew of no history of epilepsy) and we got the guys to ring 000 and call for an ambulance (the first time I've ever had to do that!!) We got a small pillow to put under his head (cos this guy was banging his head on the ground) and made sure he was safe from any self harm. His fit went on what felt like about 5 minutes or so. He was non responsive and it was really scary knowing the ambulance was a good 30+ minutes away because we were in the furtherest part of the National Park. It was obvious after awhile it was an epileptic seizure, he eventually became responsive after about 10 minutes and just kept falling back to sleep and was obviously exhausted. On top of this these guys car battery was flat as a tack, so Mark had to get the Prado and give them a jump start. (These guys had come from the Adelaide area for a fish (the salmon were on the catch in this area), had left at 11pm the previous night and didnt get to camp till 4am!) I stayed by the guys side, and Mark went out to the road to guide the ambulance when it arrived. Some 40 minutes later it arrived and by then this guy was fully responsive, very embarrassed, trying to maintain the "tough guy image" and absolutely worn out. One of his friends rang his family and this guy did have a history of epilepsy but hadnt told any of his friends. These guys were so scared out of their minds over the whole thing. They told us they thought he was going to die! The ambos had a tough time in the end getting him to go to hospital, but he did finally did go. One of the guys came up to us as they were leaving so grateful for our assistance and said "its great to know there are still good people in the world". Awwww.... The worst bit for them was they'd driven 4 hours for a weekend fish, and ended up not even putting a rod in!!!
 
So by the time we had been Doctor Mark and Nurse Sharyn it was 12pm, and we set off to find a spot for the night. Typical fussy us it took us forever to find a spot but we found a great one at Port Victoria right on the ocean. Nice...Great sunset...felt real good! And a can of the local WEST END Draught went down real well...

---

Find it at www.seek.com.au Your Future Starts Here. Dream it? Then be it!

Seeing the sights in Adelaide...

What an awesome place Adelaide is! Bit like a smaller, classier version of Melbourne, less people, greater chance of getting a park, while retaining its old world charm. But boy it has its few little quirks too! Below are a few we have noticed.

• Its power poles are flat (we have round ones)
• The taxis here are white (we have yellow ones)
• Their street signage is terrible, they have little signs and few bigger green signage. We have found this all over SA so far.

But overall we have loved our time in the SA capital city. It feels like it has been a full on whirlwind stay, we have been so many places and seen so many things! We stayed in a great little central caravan park at Marion. One of the nicest parks we have been to. Lovely facilities, great campkitchen, and has a real tropical feel with palms and plants all around amongst big gum trees. And when I booked in they didn't ask me if I had any kids, so I didnt tell them, so it has been considerably cheaper than we expected which has been great! (But everytime we pass the office we get the kids to lean back in their seats and sit very still! Must be our guilty consciences!!!)
 
Highlights in Adelaide include:-

• Had a big cultural day and went to the State Library (kids learnt all about Sir Donald Bradman) and the Art Gallery and the Museum. Kids lapped it all up, and we all felt very intelligent afterwards! (For a short while anyway!)
• Hahndorf was a great day out, so many little shops to visit and things to see.
• The Central Market in town was a great place for food. We wandered up and down the aisles, drooling at the ranges of fruit and veg, cheeses, coffee, nuts, yoghurts...goes on and on
• Went to Mount Lofty and saw the beauty of Adelaide from above

We didnt meet anyone to have a drink with here. Lots of grey nomads in their superb looking vans, and others in their Britz vans who hide inside and didnt come out (we didnt think we looked that scary!) So social wise we dipped out here, and we missed the company of others our age. The kids have been fine, they managed to score a Maccas Bugs bunny and Tweety Bird toys while in Adelaide so they have been off playing quite happily.
Money wise we are still trying to balance ourselves out. When we think about how long we still have to go we are really making an effort to minimise any big spending. I was a bit naughty today and bought myself a new pair of shorts and a top...lets be honest here, i am getting very tired of my same 4 t-shirts and 1 pair of shorts!!! But they were on special so that justifies it for me!
 
Where we are heading from Adelaide...only fate knows...cos we dont! We dont even know which road we are taking, we are so out of routine we have no idea what day it is, and if we have tea by 9.30 we are doing well! Oh and if we feed the kids lunch we are doing even better!!! Yes we are shaking our heads as well!!! Be lucky you are not our travelling companions we would be driving you crazy! (No comments from you either Mrs Rouget!!!)

---

Listen now! New music from the Rogue Traders.

A rest in Rapid Bay

There is a famous U2 song that has the line…"but I still haven't found what I'm looking for". That has been us since we left on our trip. Now I don't want that at all to sound in anyway unthankful, but we have been so exhausted after our packing up our house in Alex that we have deep down just wanted to veg out and do nothing but that's a bit hard when you are travelling!  But here at Rapid Bay we have found just what we have been looking for! A gorgeous beach, a cheap campground, a place where we can just chill and swim and play and rest! Yey!!!!

Rapid Bay is just north of Cape Jervis where you catch the ferry over to Kangaroo island. It has no general store, no petrol station, just an old quarry still in small operation and a dozen or so houses. The beach is a bay surrounded by large grassy/rocky large hills, verging on small mountains. At night you can see the lights of Adelaide hugging the coast. The campground here has toilets but no showers. Green grassy sights and norfolk pines for shade. Nothing to do here but relax!

Before we reached Rapid Bay we have had a few memorable moments:-

·         Saw Larry the Lobster at Kingston, looking a bit old, poor old Larry but the kids were impressed all the same!

·         Drove onto the beach near Kingston with our Trak Shak, stunning beach, (check out the photo on our photo page). Mark would've loved to do more beach driving but the opportunity just hasn't arisen.

·         We have learnt that you need to fully assess  a site before setting up! Planned on staying at a free campsite called 'The Granites' just north of Kingston. Rocked up there at 6.30, in gale forced like winds, the ground was a white limestone, we tried very hard to set up but the Trakkie was like a hot air balloon, billowing in the wind! Admitted defeat and ended up at a very sheltered national park bush setting!

·         At this same place (The Granites) had a couple of grey nomad males come up to us. They didn't really offer any assistance just their two bobs worth which was a tad frustrating at 7pm at night when you are fighting gale force winds, have two hungry children in the car and still have to find somewhere to set up for the night! One of them had the cheek to say to me "Can I offer you some advice…I think you have packed too much". Grinning in response at his gall I said "Yes we probably have but we do have two kids". Immediately he apologised and took it all back and said he had no idea and that our amount of gear was completely understandable! (At this time our kids were in the car being little angels, playing their gameboys so he had no actual idea they were there!)

·         We really enjoyed Victor Harbor but it was way too busy for our liking. We tend to forget it is still school holidays! We went on the horse drawn tram out to Granite Island, it was a really touristy thing but gave us a good feel  for the town.

·         About school  holidays, Emshia done a whole week of maths homework from the book her teacher gave her to do! (Emshia wrote this by the way!) We were very proud of her and hope she keeps it up!

·         At this moment Mark is actually sitting down reading a book! A guy we met who is camped nearby (who is a Jackaroo at Alice Springs) lent it to him and Mark is actually reading it! The last book Mark read was The DaVinci Code (when it was really popular) which tells you how long its been!

·         One of our aims for this trip is for the kids to learn all of their times tables. Santa bought Rory a multiplication book and CD (sung by Don Spencer from Play School)and since Monday we have been playing the 2 times table song a couple of times every day when we are in the car. So far it seems to be working (the brainwashing that is!!!) Even Rory can sing it now! And we are all eagerly anticipating the 3 x table, just for  a different song!!!

---

Listen now! New music from the Rogue Traders.

Coasting into South Australia...

 
Cant believe we are one week in today! We have done and seen so much we could just about come home now and say we've had an amazing time away! But we still have 25 weeks approx. left so we had better see what else Australia has to offer!
 
Biggest highlight of our trip to date is meeting other travellers on the road. We meet a lovely family in Mt Gambier who come from Geraldton in WA and we hit it off great. They had an 8 year old daughter and 6 year old son so the kids were in seventh heaven. They were heading off to Tassie for 2 weeks and pity they were going the opposite way to us, but we are going to visit them when we get to WA so we are looking forward to that. Another couple we met in Mt Gambier were also from Perth and were travelling in a huge old coach converted to mobile home. They were heading to the Gold Coast and had great stories of how their bus has broken down so many times in so many different places. They got stuck on the Nullabor in 65 degree temp for a fatality on the road and lucky for them they had a generator and airconditioner! We are so looking forward to having our own stories in the many weeks to come.
 
The kids are going awesomely well. They are making friends as we go and also amusing each other really well. We have had a few moments with the kids getting a bit niggly in the 45 degree in the shade heat (he he) but they are great little travellers and adapters to the changing environments. That is one of the big things for us. when we set up in a new place it feels foreign for a short while and then feels like normality. Then we pack up and do it all again. Takes some getting used to but already we are just going with the flow and taking it all in our stride. Thankful I have my portable loo, my little touch of home!
 
Highlights so far:

• Seeing the Blue Lake at Mt Gambier - it really is soooo blue!!!
• Realising why they call this area the Limestone coast - that stuff is everywhere!!!! (yes i am really a blonde underneath!!!)
• Meeting a family from Alexandra in Mt Gambier at a nighttime possum feeding at a cave in town, couldnt believe our eyes!
• Going to Glencoe - those who know us from the past will know Mark & I got engaged in Glencoe Scotland, and we just had to see Glencoe in SA!
• Going to the Naracoorte Caves World Heritage Fossil Site - and going into Alexandra Cave - felt just like home!!! (Yes it was named after Princess Alexandra just like our Alex)
• Playing Pokemon Monopoly with the kids (bought it on ebay about 4 months ago and wouldnt let them play it till we came away!! Mean mother i am!)
• Going boogie boarding at Beachport - The kids are little naturals, I had my very first go yesterday, kept losing balance for the first hour and finally managed to stay on for a couple of waves...but I was so sore! Especially my ribs! Give me a bit more practice and I'm sure I'll be at least 50% as good as Mark!!!
• Loved Beachport - relaxing, nice beach, quaint town.
• Going to a salt lake yesterday where the salt concentration was 7xthe ocean, quite an experience!

 
 

---

Sell your car for just $30 at CarPoint.com.au. It's simple!
 

---

Check our comprehensive Salary Centre Overpaid or Underpaid?

The Journey has begun...

So hard to believe after all the planning and packing that we were finally doing it! The dream was
becoming a reality! Well, no really to be honest it just feels like we are off on a little 2 week trip and we'll be
heading back home soon! Dont really know how to comprehend it all, so we're not really, we are just
taking each day as we find it.

Headed off around lunchtime on Day 1 - we left so late because we had so much trouble finding space for all
our stuff. Everyone says you always take too much, we've heard it many a time, but both of us feel that what
we have packed is really necessary so we shall see in a few months time if we are right or not! Lucky for us,
a good friend of ours loaned us his basket for storage on the boat rack of the camper, as the trailer and back
of the Prado are both filled to the brim!

First couple of night we stayed at a little town called Dartmoor, North of Nelson, still in Victoria. This campsite was a freebie
that we found in our Camps 4 Australia Book. It had a pit toilet and no other amenities but was shady and next
to the Glenelg River. Downfall was the constant attack by mosquitoes (reminder to self not to camp next to
water in future!) and bullants. Emshia and I both got bitten on the toes and boy do they sting! The other
dampener on our stay here was the heat! We recorded 45 degrees in the shade of our camper! It was unbearable!
We headed out in our air conditioned car for some relief and ended up at the Princess Margaret Rose Cave.
These were awesome. The first cave any of us had seen. We all know now about Stalactites and Stalacmites
and Helictites! And the best bit was the temperature! A cool 18 degrees was a godsend! Then it was off to
Nelson for a quick swim. We were so hot we stayed submerged up to our necks in water to get some relief!
Boy we would have killed to have been back under our air conditioner back home!!!!

---

Listen now! New music from the Rogue Traders.