It is a sad day today, as we’ve just said goodbye to our motorhome 🙁 . Precisely 1 year after we picked it up – to the day. So many good times, and think of all the places it took us! The vehicle may go, but fortunately the memories stay with us (see further down for a series of photos).

It took us a while to empty, clean up and get her on the market, what with settling back into work and school, then buying a house and moving in. It was advertised on Gumtree for just over a week, and I’d had a few inquiries from guys more interested in a bargain rather than the motorhome itself, but then Cliff and Liz came to inspect it Sunday. Like my parents (and of similar age) they already had a motorhome, an older Winnebago on a truck, and fell in love with the more modern layout & interior and the relative car like performance and acceleration (hint hint). Their daughter and her husband and the grandkids (including a slightly younger Jonathan!) all came to inspect it shortly after, and after a couple of hours of looking and a couple of test drives a deposit was put down. We are told it makes the decision a lot easier when buying from a lovely family like us! 😉

Sale price ended up being exactly what we paid for it, which is what I was wanting, so happy with that! Though it has an extra year and 32,000 km’s on it, we did spend money improving it – solar system, inverter, bike rack etc.

And so the next phase in our life has begun. Continue reading →

Back in the big smoke! Well, OK, Perth isn’t that bad – quite a nice place actually. But it is full of housing estate after housing estate, roads clogged with cars all wanting to get somewhere in a hurry, and all the busyness typically seen in a city of almost 2 million people. Having spent a month traveling through the remote areas of WA, you kind of get used to a quiet relaxed lifestyle!

Our time in Perth was based in a couple of different caravan parks – the first 3 nights at Karrinyup Waters Resort, which is on the north side of town. Whilst here we did some of the more practical necessities, such as getting 3 new tyres put on the motorhome, and getting it serviced (to my surprise a lot cheaper than at Darwin). When it was in for the service, we took the train into the CBD, and had a good look around.

We spent most of that morning at the Perth Mint, which used to mint legal tender for Australia (but is now all handled by the mint in Canberra). However, they still do a lot of gold and silver coins, for collectors and the like around the world. We did the tour, where we got to see a demonstration gold pour (the $40k gold bar was real!), and the stamping of silver coins. There are various information and displays to review, or handle, as in the 100oz gold bar that you can pick up (heavily secured!)! There is a large $1,000,000 face value pure gold coin on display, I’d estimate about 80cm diameter, and perhaps 150mm thick! The actual gold value of this coin is around $44 million! Interestingly, it is not secured or screened off at all – would be easy to jump onto the display and grab it! I guess they rely on people not being able to carry over a ton away, lol, as well as being in the guts of a solid building that is crawling with security staff!

The boys got to mint their own custom coins! Real gold plating, with there own design on one side (helped by the staff), and the Perth Mint logo on the other. Continue reading →

Well we’ve had a good chance to look around Darwin. Not a bad city – don’t mind the place actually! It’s been longer than expected, as the motorhome is going in to Ford tomorrow for analysis.

What have we been doing? We started our Darwin activities at Crocodylus park, as mentioned in the last post. Saturday we went to a RAAF Open Day at Darwin International Airport, as exercise ‘Pitch Black’ is on at the moment. Defense feel like they need to compensate for shaking and deafening the whole city (military jets are really loud!!), by letting the community in to have a look at the planes! So we looked at a few displays (boys looked in a Bushmaster), and of course the planes including FA18 Hornets and Super Hornets, Tiger helicopter, an EAW&C plane, various transport planes, quite a few Singaporean fighter jets (F15 etc), and some planes from a few other countries participating.

Jonathan in an Air Force Cadet training plane. He’d actually be old enough to learn to fly it in a years time!