We’ve made it – our amazing trip is over! After 6 months having an absolutely awesome time travelling around Australia we are back home. Wow, back to ‘normal’ life! Well kinda of, we don’t actually have our own home to go back to yet… but we’re back in Brissy!

Happy to be on holidays, and now happy to be home!

the motorhome looks a little more ‘used’ now!

As expected we took 3 days to travel from Canberra, arriving in Brisbane Tuesday afternoon, 23/12/2014. That gives us one day to relax and catch up with some family (and do some washing…) before our Christmas festivities start on Christmas eve; Christmas dinner with my Mums side of the family. Continue reading →

Our travels over the Victorian Alps brought us to Bairnsdale, in the middle of the Gippsland region (well, the western edge of eastern Gippsland….). The question now was, where to go next? We’d always planned to go east along and up the coastline, but did we have time for some backtracking westwards into the central/southern (and perhaps even western) Gippsland regions first?

Yes, we’ve noticed that time is getting away on us. I’m sure family is going to be thrilled to hear that we’re planning to be back in Brisbane for Christmas (what would Christmas be like without us??)! That’s in about two weeks time (less as I actually write/post this)!! The boys really want to be there (you know, play with cousins, get presents and the like….), and it isn’t that often that families get together like they do at Christmas so it is a great way for us all to catch up.

Despite the limited time remaining in this travelling holiday, we decided to do a quick detour into the central/southern Gippsland region. We spent Tues night at one of the Golden Beach campgrounds that form part of the Gippsland Lakes Coastal Park. Not sure how Golden Beach got its name, but I suspect it is a grandiose interpretation of the yellow sanded beach! Unfortunately the surf was no good, and a pretty heavy invasion of seaweed would have discouraged any water entry regardless. Still, a nice spot to spend the night.

Golden Beach

It was tempting to detour just a little further west, and visit Wilsons Promontory NP, and perhaps even Phillip Island. However Nicole and I have visited both places previously, and the now looming deadline of being back for Christmas caused us to decided against doing so.

We did however detour slightly further, to visit Tarra-Bulga National park which we’d been told is a must see. The whole Gippsland area is pretty & green, so it was no surprise to find that we were entering a lovely moist green rainforest type environment. We came in through the south, and the lower reaches of Tarra Valley road heading in were beautiful. The narrow road and surrounding hillsides were lined with tree ferns, sometimes with only just enough room for the motorhome to drive between the fern fronds. Please excuse the quality of these pics; taken thru the windscreen from a moving vehicle….

Ferns lining Tarra Valley Road

Bit of an odd week to choose, week 17, but it aligns with us leaving WA on Wed 29/10/2014 after precisely 2 months and 1 day in the state! We had a great time, and as mentioned in our 3 month video review, WA is well set-up for travellers. There is a great range in the type of country out here, and it is mostly different to what we’re used to back in QLD. The Kimberleys, the Pilbara, the beaches and coastline, the southern forests and related tourists areas are all great places. And very different from the QLD outback, rainforests etc. We’ve enjoyed doing so much here – I think we’ve forgotten a lot of the earlier stuff already! Lucky we have the blog and diaries to look back on…

One thing I have not mentioned so far is that WA is way ahead when it comes to mobile networks. The major interstate hwys have very good mobile coverage (not complete, but close) around the whole state. They have obviously taken a much better approach than QLD and NT, who have very limited coverage and are still stuck with those UHF radio repeater towers in remote areas!! It is mostly Telstra only of course (until you get to the populated areas), but that’s a lot better than nothing! I was however surprised that the main interstate hwy in the north of the state (going into NT) actually go down to just one lane in quite a few bridge crossings (10 or more!). I don’t mean one lane each way, but one lane altogether! Traffic density is rather low, so perhaps that justifies it – there is a lot more traffic heading across the Nullarbor to SA than across the top into NT.

Not the whole of WA is as open to campers as what we encountered in the first month in the remoter north part of the state. Continue reading →

No, I’m not going back to work… tomorrow we are off on a cruise to Great Keppel Island! We’ll get to spend the day snorkeling, boom netting, looking through a glass bottomed boat and laze around on nice sandy beaches! So just in case, the alarm is now set for shock…horror… an 8am start!

As you may have gathered, today we made the great distance (not) into Rockhampton, then Emu Point and Yeppoon. It’s a beautiful coastline here at Rocky, and the weather has been perfect – sunny, warm enough during the day, and not much wind. We did a bit of shopping at Yeppoon, and have set up camp for the night on the beach just south of Rosslyn Harbour.

View to Rosslyn Harbour