We’ve started!

Willie Nelson is the traditional way to start a trip in this family.  Something about being good luck.

Little sleep was had, despite a good start. Kel & I were both up at 5am fussing around. Kids got up around 6:30 and we got stuck into the final packing and locking up the house.

We actually got away right on 8am which was pretty good really. First day is always going to be the hardest.

First stop was Torquay to grab Blake’s geocoin. Kel snagged the opportunity to snatch the first photo of the rig all rearing to go. Its quite surreal and hasn’t sunk in yet that we are actually doing this. I suspect the Mount Gambier evening may sharpen up my senses somewhat. It was dropping below 9 at sunset and I shudder (damn straight I’ll be shuddering) to think of what the minimum will be.

Good progress was made during the day and we got a loaf of bread at Camperdown. We’d planned to stop at Warrnambool for lunch in the great park there, but the whole town was transformed for their kids festival and I thought better of trying to navigate the place with the van on the back. We settled on a little spot just out of town and had our first lunch in the van .. how cliche.

It was at this time that Blake started on the day by getting on the stupid comments register 3 times.

The Prado doesn’t seem too happy about the concept, just yet. It rebooted itself twice during the day, which is a little scary, but happens pretty quick. The whole dash resets, radio restarts, etc … the engine keeps on truckin’ but there’s something going on. We later figured out that this was due to corrupted MP3’s on the ipod.

Speed was all over the joint due to some serious headwinds in places, funnily enough near the wind farms, and the odd hill.  Somewhere between 90-100 seems to be the sweet spot though.

After lunch there was only about 2 hours left to go and we got to Limestone Coast Tourist Park, Mount Gambier at 3:20 local time. A basic setup was done on the van and we ducked out to see the sights. The Blue Lake that is never blue when we’re here and a couple of sinkholes. Interesting, but a bit rushed due to the fading light. I think that might be a recurring theme of this trip. The solution may be to start out earlier each day. Today was a big day though, one of the longest we’ve got planned. We should be right.

 

Mount Gambier’s Blue Lake.   Never Blue when we’re here.  Mainly due to us never being here in November.

This was taken up at the Blue Lake lookout.  We’re all pretty happy to finally be doing this for real instead of just talking about it around the dinner table.

Looks like somebodies been here before???

There’s at least 2 sinkhole gardens in Mount Gambier.  This one is right in the centre of town.  Kinda makes ya feel all warm and fuzzy knowing that you’re next door to a volcano and the ground could give way at anytime too.

Life on the road

Thus far its been a good start. All the gadgets seem to be working … mostly. The tyre sensors seem to have an issue with the van tyres, but I’ll figure it out. All the GPS’s are all behaving beautifully. There’s 4 going in the car at the same time and I’d previously had issue with doing that as they would interfere with each other and no GPS would work … usually just when ya really needed that next instruction.

Blake currently is in the lead on silly sayings and I doubt anyone else will catch him.
1) “I hate pretzels. They’re just tiny breadrolls, covered in salt … and shaped like pretzels.” … from out of the blue. No pretzels were harmed during the course of this.
2) “This bread is yum! Is it white bread?”. “No”, says mum, “It’s multigrain”. “Oh, so that explains the birdseed in it…”
3) “Look! Missiles!! … hang on, they’re planes! … Oh … they’re cars….”. On viewing a distant road while eating lunch. What goes on in this boys head?

During setup we saw that the kids bed was wet. Not really sure how that happened. It was made up yesterday and it hasn’t rained since … although Kel did some ‘maintenance’ to the porta potti, so who knows?

Dinner time here. Catch ya’s all later…

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