The departure preparations

Well this plan to travel Australia with caravan started a couple of years back. It was all planned for May 2020 where we were to follow the Grey Nomads into Queensland, Northen Territory, then into the vastness of Western Australia to be back to NZ for Christmas. But this world got a bit crazy and locked us all down for a while. We were very lucky to be able to spend 6 months working in NZ from October til April this year. But now it looks like our opportunity is about to happen, fingers crossed. We of course have plans in place but we have also learnt that we always run with backup plans which can give us some excitement in the unknown.

With less than a week before we finish our employment we have been slowly selling and giving away any possessions that won't fit in a caravan and ute. We moved out of our apartment 2 days ago so a lot of accumulated stuff has already left us with almost everything else having found homes. A lot of donations to Salvos and luckily they are now open again after lockdown.We were supposed to have been in NZ for last weekend but once again covid blocked us so instead of taking a few kilos of stuff home by plane, we have had it all picked up last week to be shipped. (yet another PlanB which we prepare for)

We spent a couple of nights with friends and then set up the caravan at the local caravan park for our last week of work. This will be the biggest test to see if what we have left will actually fit in the caravan and if the total weight of the rig with all our possessions is legal. If not we will once again trim down and donate.

Once work is finished it's a few days with the kids and grandchildren then depending on state border rules we will head to the Big Red Bash in Birdsville. Just 2200km with about 300km of gravel at the end. This will take quite a few days for us. We are always amazed at the Australian attitude to long distance travel. Most people are quite happy to drive long days.

Hopefully we will post again soon but the next week is going to be full-on living and working from caravan, and also saying our good-byes to our workmates,Read more