This Adventurous Age

Adventures travelling and working around Australia.

Monthly Archives: June 2023


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2017 Travels April

APRIL 2017     JUST WAITING AROUND

I succumbed to another round of the mysterious allergy that had sometimes affected me in recent times so tests and treatments were needed. As well, a new leg ulcer had developed. I was starting to think the two might be linked somehow. So medical stuff delayed us through the rest of April.

Last year, we had set out to explore some of the Victorian goldfields region, but did not get as far as we’d planned, running home ahead of the deluge that flooded some of the places we’d been heading for.

Part of that trip was to have allowed John to visit the site of the second one-teacher school he’d had in his early career – Boolite. So, we could try again for that. It would work in nicely with visiting some of the rather new phenomenon of the painted grain silos of the Wimmera region, which I was curious to see.

In my somewhat stop-start forays into researching my ancestry, had recently discovered that a hitherto – and apparently twice bigamous – great-grandfather was buried in the Wedderburn Cemetery, I wanted to visit that to see if his grave could be found. It might throw some light on his life subsequent to totally disappearing from Tasmania around the time of grandfather’s birth, about 1865. His use of two different surnames had obscured the facts for a while, too.

A middle name that could double as a surname was useful!

So there were the bones of a short swing through the Wimmera and our first trip for 2017. It would also be the first outing of Bus since the new clutch was installed, late last year.

Later in the year,  we would probably need to revisit Canberra and John’s family there – maybe even get in a couple of visits, as they would be off overseas on another posting, next year.

The north coast of NSW beckoned, too. The area around Coffs Harbour was a favourite two-week school holiday destination, in our working days. There was so much of that coast, from Newcastle north, that we had not really explored.

So, still no shortage of ideas about where to go.

We issued an invite for friend M, recently back from a few weeks exploring New Zealand, to accompany us. But she thought she’d be too busy planning her coming jaunt to Paris and England.


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2017 Travels March

MARCH 2017     WHERE WILL WE GO THIS YEAR?

With autumn’s onset, our thoughts – well, mine – turned seriously to this year’s travels.

Back in summer, we’d talked about doing a 3 or 4 month trip this year, to be away through the worst of the Melbourne winter.

A friend, actually former boss from one of our working holidays, was now based at Dimbulah in Far North Qld. We had been reading his latest book – Camp 64 – the story of his 2011-2012 solo walk from Camooweal to Birdsville following the Georgina River system, and using goats as pack animals. This sparked the idea of heading north again, visiting some places we had yet to see, and maybe calling in to have a yarn at Dimbulah.

The cover of Owen’s latest book

With that in mind, I had started a serious hunt for house sitters. The length of time was too great for the as-hoc arrangements we’d had for the past few years.

I e-mail contacted some fifteen sitters advertising on the housesitters site we’d used years before. To no avail. Some were already booked but had not updated their ads. Others really did not want to be in Victoria in winter. Couldn’t blame them for that.  So I put in my own ad for house sitters wanted, specifying a mature-aged couple, with no pets. I already knew, from past experience, that we would get replies from any number of younger, single people, often with both children and pets. And thus it proved.

We are not as prejudiced as people might think, from the above. Although our swimming pool is fenced, we simply do not want to take the risk of having children living here that we are not supervising ourselves. Some of our carpets never fully recovered from the less than house trained dog that our home minding son had, years ago. So – no pets, no kids.

After replying “Thanks, but no thanks” in effect, to a number of people, I was left with three possibilities. All had the added benefit that they were already around Melbourne, so we could meet in person to discuss the role. Theoretically, anyway. One lot proved very difficult to pin down, with several broken appointment times, and in the end I jettisoned that one as too unreliable to bother with.

Then, I thought we’d found a very suitable couple. We’d met here, they had seen the place and were keen. We arranged the date for them to move in here and thus for us to be away on our travels. Then came the news that the owners of their current sit wanted to stay overseas for another three months, so they would not be available after all. Damn.

Then, the final possible phoned to say they had just accepted a sit that started earlier and went longer than ours, which suited them better. That phone call came an hour after we were due to meet here for afternoon tea. The scones went into the freezer.

I couldn’t face starting the whole rigmarole all over again. So North Qld was off the agenda. It was more my idea than John’s anyway. It would just have to be more of the shorter trips, where leaving the house wouldn’t be an issue.

We started to make tentative plans for the first of these to be after the Easter school holidays, in mid-April this year. Threw some destination ideas around.


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2016 Travels November 29

NOVEMBER – LATER

Bus repair place was organized. RACV sent an experienced operator and truck to move Bus there.

John managed to get the clutch to work just enough to back Bus off the grass, for the tow truck. But it wouldn’t work at all at the other end – Bus had to be pushed into the workshop bay.

A too-common sight for us…

The repair place does the servicing and fleet maintenance work for one of the large bus fleets of the eastern region. John reported that this included several Coasters.

The burnt-out clutch would be replaced and the flywheel machined as part of the repair. Didn’t mean anything to me, but John seemed to think this was good.

M decided the Yorke Peninsula was too wet and windy and came straight home. So maybe we wouldn’t have had a great time there, anyway.

The Bus repairs cost us $2,500. John decided he’d take it to that place for routine servicing, from now on, so that was one benefit to come out of the saga. The other was that he didn’t miss any Saturday bowls, after all.

And the 2016 wet weather continued…