Bus was level enough for us to sleep alright, despite the slight heads-down angle.
When we got up, all six of the tour groups coaches – and contents – had gone. We hadn’t heard a thing.
John couldn’t hold out any longer…after some laptop research, he phoned Jims Antennas. Was told their Canberra person would contact him.
We needed some food supplies. My turn to Google – for Woolworths. No way was I just going to launch forth in Canberra and assume the required shops would magically appear. There was one in Belconnen, which did not seem too far away from Sutton. I fed that address into the GPS and forth we sallied.
GPS led us unerringly – to a major shopping complex, with the shop I wanted tucked securely away inside, along with hundreds of other retail outlets. Plus multitudes of people, and their vehicles, going every which way. Not what I’d had in mind. It always seems so hard in Canberra.
Undeterred (mostly), we parked, left dog in Terios, and walked, got the requisites. Although John still assumed we would be dining with daughter tonight and tomorrow, as we passed a butcher, I took the chance to buy meat for a couple of meals “in case”. Also got some rolls to take back for lunch.
Somewhat surprisingly, we even managed to locate car and dog again, first attempt. The place felt like one of those where you could wander forever, lost…
Back to Bus, where we lunched and just hung about, waiting for contact from the family. Mid-afternoon, John’s daughter phoned. Each of the grandsons has a soccer match tomorrow: one morning, one afternoon, on opposite sides of town, which we were welcome to go find, in order to watch. They have some arrangement for Saturday night, but we could go to Sunday lunch, which would have to be brief because they had things to do in the afternoon.
Well, that sorted out the meals…as well as our place in the overall scheme of things!
Our scruffy site
The TV antenna man also phoned. John wanted him to come today, but man was not sure he could make it. None-the-less, we waited at Bus for rest of afternoon, in case. No show.
I walked up to Reception – quite a hike. Wanted to get some tourist information from the display, since it looked like we would have more time on our hands than originally envisaged. The ladies at the desk were occupying themselves folding a mountain of pillowcases – washing from the tour groups that had departed this morning.
I dressed my leg. One wound seemed a bit smelly – not all that happy with it. These were not ideal conditions to be dealing with it as I did it outside again. John was playing games on his laptop and didn’t like me interrupting to spread all the dressing stuff around inside.
We nearly had a real disaster. Dog was pestering John for a ball throw session, so he went out and tossed the ball some distance for her. But – brain fade – she was still tethered! The resultant charge to the end of the rope and sudden stop just about broke her neck. Could have been absolutely horrible, but she seemed to sustain no lasting ill effects.
Having had a late lunch after the shopping, we only felt like a light tea: tin of soup, cheese and biscuits.
There were a lot of kangaroos grazing in the caravan park, from dusk on. I was not sure if the Canberra roos carried paralysis ticks, but gave Couey one of the new anti-tick pills today, in case. It should last a month.
In the morning and late afternoon, it was really pleasant sitting outside in the sunshine.
I got my little portable radio tuned to a local station broadcasting the AFL match of the night, so John was able to listen to his beloved Carlton take an absolute hiding. He then decided it was probably good that the TV wasn’t working, because he wouldn’t have enjoyed viewing same.
I think John was pretty disappointed at the underwhelming family reaction to our visit.
Woke to a lovely sunny, blue sky morning, after the cold night. Had been able to hear some truck noise from the highway, through the night.
I was awake at 7.45 and started the day with a lovely hot shower. That process was complicated by having to seal the bandaged leg into a waterproof shower bag…
I had to wake John up at 9.15, so he had no problems sleeping soundly.
We got away at 10am. Couey was anxious not to be left behind, and got straight onto Bus and didn’t even do her usual barking before we started moving. So hope this improvement lasts….
The road was a long, steep-ish pull up out of the town, before we got back onto the Hume.
Seen on the Hume…
By 11am it was getting grey and cloudy and the day stayed that way.
We had to slow for several lots of roadworks, mostly indicated well in advance by several moving warning vehicles with lit up signs. At a couple of them, there were so many advance warning vehicles that we wondered when we were ever going to encounter the actual roadworks.
It seemed no time at all before we turned off the Hume and onto the Barton Highway at Yass. This is a really pretty road to drive. Makes up for the fact that it is single lane, each way, for much of it, and fairly heavily trafficked. A rather unassuming approach to the nation’s capital city. There were the blue, distant, mountains of the Alps, autumn leaves on the poplars that were common in this region. There were the occasional more stunted eucalypts – the multi-trunked snow gum types.
Barton Highway on the way to Canberra
At one point, the Telstra Tower on Black Mountain, in Canberra, appears directly ahead and really stands out.
Arrived at the Eaglehawk Holiday Park just after midday. Had been there a couple of years ago, knew the way there, and – hooray – knew that it did not involve negotiating Canberra’s confusing circular roads and huge roundabouts.
Our en-suite site cost $43 per night. No discounts, but a surcharge for paying by credit card. However, the office staff were very pleasant and helpful.
Our allocated site was not level, so we had to mess about with putting chocks under Bus front wheels and even then, there was still a bit of a front-down lean. Took our time setting up, with the awning out and ground matting down.
It was rather a strange set up here, really. There had been no attempt to landscape or beautify these en-suite sites. It seemed the little buildings had just been plonked down an some concrete, a bit of gravel thrown around where rigs would park, and that was it. Right up the back of an otherwise highly developed park – literally and figuratively. On our last visit here, we had thought that caravanners were regarded as second class citizens in this place.
I made our lunch and appreciated having a plate of salad again.
John napped for a couple of hours. I did a leg dressing, sitting outside. Wasn’t all that happy with the way it looked.
There was a phone message from grandson – did John want to come and see him act in a play tonight? John hadn’t been clear about what we would be doing with the family members over the next few days. He phoned son-in-law, who seemed surprised we were in Canberra! He didn’t know what was happening, or when. Daughter was in Sydney for work. He thought we might be having dinner with them tomorrow night. And with that, John had to be content.
A big black cloud that formed about 4pm seemed to guarantee rain coming, but it went somewhere else. A weather check on my laptop showed another east coast low forming – more bad weather for southern Qld – and a little cyclone off Exmouth. Glad this rather late-in-the-season one was not further north, where M was cruising around the Kimberley coast.
By late afternoon, three of the four en-suite sites in this area were filled. A final van arrived about 9pm – unusual for vanners to arrive at that hour. By tea time there were six large coaches parked in the bus area near us. Presumed they were school tour groups, but didn’t see or hear any kids, thankfully.
The grey water drain that had appeared to be blocked ever since we left home was now dribbling, under the influence of the purple-bottled enzyme cleaner that I put in yesterday. John was pleased.
Tea was fresh linguine pasta (well, “fresh” from the chiller section of a supermarket, back home), with bottled stir through chargrilled vegetable sauce. The chorizo salami that John had for tea last night gave him huge indigestion through the night, so I threw out the remainder.
Message from my daughter that the young grandson was having abdominal lymph gland biopsies done next week, to rule out any cancers as being the cause of his ongoing leg issues. A worry.
Still no TV signal. I thought it was nice without it, and just the radio on – good clear sound there. But not sure I could convince John.
When John took Couey out, after dark, she saw a roo grazing in the distance and nearly pulled John’s arm off.
Last night was really cold. I slept better than I’d expected to, given the head cold and bouts of a tickly cough. Using two pillows to prop myself somewhat upright was not all that comfortable, but at least I was warm. Couey was good all through the night – not a peep from her.
I woke at 7am. There was a lot of road noise, for some reason and I didn’t think I’d get back to sleep, so got up, took Couey for her morning walk and fed her. Then cleaned the leg wounds and put on fresh dressings. Sat on my bed to do it, because leg has to be stretched out in front of me while the ulcer areas are soaked with special stuff, and also because that way I can reach it all. It was all a bit awkward and I thought it might be easier next time if I waited till John was up and used his bed to rest foot on. It was all a bit experimental still.
Had my breakfast sitting outside, the way I like. An addition to the Bus gear, before this trip, had been a two mug sized coffee plunger. No more instant coffee for me at breakfast.
Left the park at 9.55am. Another benefit of shorter day stages is less pressure to rush away in the mornings. Before we left, I put some more of the Bunnings enzyme stuff down the sink drain.
Back onto the Hume Freeway.
The day was cloudy, with a few blue sky patches.
Refuelled at BP Logic Centre, a km off the freeway, just south of Wodonga. We were getting quite low on fuel. Despite the strange name it was an easy place to go to and fuel at, and then to get back to the highway from. It was very modern and separated cars from trucks and buses. We went to the latter section and found there was only hi-flow diesel at those bowsers. Great – no room for errors there! $1.309cpl – John got a discount, not sure why. Maybe because we were in the truck/bus area?
The driver of a cattle truck filling up next to us asked me if A frame tow hitches were legal in Victoria? I thought they were accepted all over Australia…That led to some talk about travel in general. Meantime, Couey resolutely ignored the all-pervasive smell of cow…
So onwards. The new-ish Wodonga Albury bypass highway is so great – love it. The bridge it takes over the Murray is called the Spirit of Progress Bridge. I wondered if that was to commemorate the train that used to travel from Melbourne to the NSW border, where Sydney passengers would have to change to a different train to complete the trip. After the standard gauge rail was completed in 1962, they could go all the way on the Spirit of Progress which remained in service until 1986.
Crossing the Murray
The day became less cloudy and hotter as we progressed north, to the point where I swapped the windcheater I’d started out in, for a polo shirt.
Stopped for lunch at Holbrook where a slip road goes to a parking area by a bakery, housed in a former servo, so there was plenty of parking space. It featured a good choice of food at good prices. I bought a salad and cheese multi-grain roll. That’s my measure of a good bakery – that they do that sort of food. I couldn’t resist buying a couple of vanilla slices for tonight’s dessert – they looked so tempting. After I’d made my purchases and returned to John and dog, he went in and got a pepper pie and sausage roll.
We set up our camp chairs outside Bus, by a large grassed area and sat and ate, whilst throwing the ball for dog. So she got a good workout while we indulged. Civilized living…
There was a caravan park behind the bakery that looked alright – just a basic one. Worth knowing about.
The Hume in NSW
The Hume really is a great road, these days, though the cement-type surface in NSW takes a bit of getting used to, because of the peculiar road noise the joins create, which, the first time, always makes one wonder if something has gone wrong with the vehicle. I noticed that on some downhill sections, the surface was roughed up – to make them less slippery if wet or frosty, I guessed. But also even louder.
Textured road surface on a downhill stretch of the Hume
We had a taste of the “old” Hume north of Holbrook, where about 5kms of the new road was closed off for works and we were diverted onto the old single lane, two way road.
Stopped again at Tarcutta as John was getting tired. We all got out to walk around and stretch the legs. Couey did the hugest wee – went on and on. Poor thing must have had crossed legs for ages!
Looked at the Memorial to Truck Drivers who had been killed whilst driving. It was both sobering and impressive. So many names and so many relatively young ones. Really drove home the hazardous nature of that work. It was very tastefully done. The old Hume Highway used to see so many awful accidents involving trucks. Tarcutta was about half way between Melbourne and Sydney, so this seemed an appropriate place for such a memorial.
Truck drivers’ memorial Tarcutta
Our last deviation from the Hume was into Gundagai, to the Gundagai Tourist Park. Here we paid $41.40, after discount, for an en-suite site. This was an unusual park, clearly designed for overnight transit. About half the sites were en-suite – all roofed at 3.25 metres high. Believe me, I checked first!
Roofed Gundagai sites…they don’t look that high…
The en-suites were like dividing pillars between each pair of sites, which were all cemented drive through, with a small patch of grass. It made for easy setting up – no awning needed. It was near the freeway, but the noise from this was muted – nowhere near as loud as last night’s place.
Yes, we fit under…and the car can stay hitched on
The park also had cabins and grassed powered and unpowered sites. All needs catered for?
We were told that TV reception was good there, so was no need for travellers to put up antennas, which would be hard under the roof, anyway. Couldn’t vouch for that as there was definitely something wrong with our system – no signal again.
I walked Couey on the lead on a grassy area between the cabins and a little creek.
We had a relax for a while – it had only been 2.15pm when we arrived here. Then walked to a Woolworths supermarket, only a couple of blocks away. I wanted a cheap calculator, to work out bus fuel consumption, mainly. I needed to buy some tea towels, as all but one of the Bus ones had been washed, ironed and put away neatly – in the linen cupboard at home. Can’t remember what I was thinking at the time, but it probably had something to do with leaving the ironing basket to pile high over several months, before tackling same. John had to buy a toothbrush and toothpaste – guess why!
I also bought Turkish bread rolls, salami, ham, some cheeses. John had said he didn’t fancy the pasta and sauce I’d planned for tea tonight, but he didn’t know what he did feel like. Lot of help, that. So bread, meats and cheese it was – he usually loves that sort of meal.
We’d obviously had to take Couey walking with us. She was, these days, quite happy to amble along footpaths on the lead, ignoring other people. But she got very anxious when one of us disappeared into a shop. There was no way we could leave her tied up and both go off shopping. The harness/collar/lead that she can’t get out of has not been invented yet. John minded her while I was in Woolworths, and said she fretted a bit. Then we swapped. She watched him go into Woolworths, intently, and whined a bit and paced up and down.
As we put up the new camp chairs outside Bus, earlier, John had noticed a problem with one chair leg, where a rivet hadn’t fastened properly, so he wanted to find a hardware store and get some screws. I’d walked far enough with the sore leg, so said I’d wait on a seat, with dog, by Woolworths, while he went and did that. Well, dog watched him retreating into the distance and just howled, loud and long. As in – made people turn around and stare loud. All I could do was put on my “I’m really not mistreating this animal” face and wait it out.
We’d never before stayed at or explored Gundagai. I would have loved to be fit enough to walk around more and explore. We had seen some beautiful historic buildings and on the walk read some displayed information about the town’s history. Settlement in the area dated from about 1830, so there would be much of interest. The town is beside the Murrumbidgee River, so it has experienced a number of major floods. One, in the 1800’s, killed over 70 people. There were extensive parklands alongside the river which added to the town’s attractiveness.
We vowed to return another time, stay for longer and really look around.
Back to camp where we sat outside with a beer each, relaxing. Very pleasant. Chatted with some neighbours – older than us – with an A-Van and two collie dogs.
Plenty of room to sit outside
John had a nap before tea. Again, he couldn’t get the TV to work.
Before we left, John had been in contact with daughter and arranged to be in Canberra to visit them. After that, we would decide what to do next – depending on how my leg was travelling.
Once the sun was down, it cooled down really fast. Tonight would be another very cold night.
The last two days of travel had been really pleasurable – not too far each day, and with regular stops. I was enjoying just mooching along like that.
Finalized getting ready to go. For once, we managed it all in a calm and methodical way. The only drama was that, when it came time to get on Bus, Couey baulked, slipped her harness and was loose. But she didn’t run right away, just circling around us. Then she came to John when called and the inducement of chew bone coated with peanut butter got her on board, where she settled quickly.
The day was not too warm, lots of fluffy clouds, even some blue sky.
Left home at 11.15am. God, it was good to be heading off again.
Melba Highway – crest of the Great Dividing Range
Five years ago, this was blackened trunks and white ash, no green then.
Took our normal route to Seymour, where we stopped as usual at the New Crossing Park for lunch. I’d made sandwiches before we left home. Couey got to have a ball chase, but only after she’d taken advantage of a momentary distraction on our part, and managed to lie down in a large, muddy puddle. Swamp dog!
The picnic table and seats had been removed, and the old toilets were closed up. I wondered if they were trying to deter people from stopping there?
Took the Hume Freeway northwards, stopping after only 9kms at the Grass Tree Rest Area – where there were toilets! Couey got a bonus walk around too. It was a well set out rest area, with car parking separated from truck and bus parking places.
Further along we stopped again at the Balcattah Rest Area, for John to have a wake up walk. We all wandered about for a bit.
After this morning’s protest, Couey had no more reluctance to get on board Bus after stops.
Before this trip, John had bought a new Garmin GPS – a truck model with a larger screen. Because of the distance of the windscreen in Bus from the driver, he’d had trouble reading the screen on the old one. Set for truck use, it would plot routes that avoided nasties like low bridges – in theory, anyway. It seemed to take us on a slightly round about route to our caravan park in North Wangaratta. Perhaps that was because, being truck enabled, it avoided the centre of town. But it had not taken us via the Over Dimensional route at Seymour, so that didn’t make sense. There, the way we went, had we been a truck, we would have been seriously embarrassed at the very low railway bridge!
Arrived at Cedars North Wangaratta at 3.45pm. Long enough for the first day. The very nice man gave us an en-suite site where we could drive through and keep the Terios hitched to Bus. $45 after discount.
Staying hitched up at Cedars North
We were a bit slow at setting up, as we tried to remember how to do it. Both the awning and the TV aerial were stiff from disuse.
John fiddled about setting up his Blackvue dash camera, which he hadn’t done at home, for some reason.
A walking trail on part of the old highway bordered some of the park and we went walking along that, for a while. That was an unexpected benefit of the park. It was a pleasant walk with lots of interesting smells for Couey. There were some rabbits which she didn’t even see, and some cattle near a fence. These she gave a very wide berth to. Cattle dog? Who, me….nah! I even raised a sweat. walking, but then I was hopelessly unfit.
John couldn’t get the TV to acquire a signal – something was wrong, somewhere.
Tea was cold chicken marylands that I’d pre-cooked at home. I made a wombok coleslaw and a Greek salad to go with that. Dessert was passionfruit from our vines at home.
The night was rather chilly, but not quite enough to warrant getting out the heater.
My leg was hurting a bit; I would need to dress it tomorrow, probably. At least the cold was getting no worse.
In the absence of TV, we both spent some time using laptops and I wrote up the diary.
When grandson had been staying here earlier, John had the idea of taking him away for a couple of weeks, up to Lightning Ridge. Unfortunately it turned out that he had an important information night about next year’s secondary school, right in the time we would be away. Medical appointments limited our capacity to be flexible about the timing. But the idea had been sown…
The friend that John was occasionally bus driving for was a very interesting man, who had done a lot of varied occupations in his life. He had mined opal and run tours of opal fields, amongst other things. He still had a claim and camp at Lightning Ridge, and it was this that had given John the impetus for us to go visit there again.
The lovely Practice Nurse said that she was not doing anything for my leg that I couldn’t manage myself, for a while. God knows, after the past year or more, I could probably pass a qualifying exam in wound management. I stocked up on supplies needed for the regular wound cleaning and dressing I would be doing, and obtained some precautionary anti-biotics, hoping like hell I wouldn’t need to take same. My leg “stuff” filled a small suitcase!
John didn’t have the next appointment to do with skin cancer until June.
It could happen….
John wanted another chance to see his grandsons in Canberra, so lined up to visit. There was one positive to the leg problem – John accepted that long days of travel are not good for me (or him, for that matter), so I hoped we would be travelling in more sedate stages than previously. In that spirit, he agreed we could take three days to get to Canberra, rather than the usual one or two.
The day was spent packing, and preparing Bus for travel. Our forays between house and Bus were watched with interest by some of a flock of corellas that had recently taken up residence in the area. Although they were a nuisance, damaging some of the trees, they were also really funny to watch – the clowns of the bird world.
Corellas watching us work…and showing off
John found he needed a special gauge to measure Bus tyre pressures, because of the dual wheels on back, so went off and bought one of those. The Coaster is still a discovery in progress.
M texted from Wyndham that sandflies really liked C. He hadn’t ever encountered them before.
I’d come down with a nasty head cold a couple of days ago, but was determined not to let that change our plans, even if it meant that I had to sleep sitting up!
The year started in a similar way to last year, with ongoing health issues.
The first few months were a battle to find treatments that would: 1: heal my leg, which now also featured dermatitis caused by previous creams and potions; 2: control the pain from same; and 3: bring down the spiked blood pressure caused by treatments for the previous two. Aaargh…..
Some rare but welcome good news was that special scans of the arteries and veins in the problem leg showed no impairment of circulation at all, so the leg ulcers did not result from issues there.
John started doing some bus driving – a Coaster – for a friend who was running a small local bus hire company. This was done as a favour, not because he really wanted to do it – or enjoyed ferrying partying groups to the football or stags’ nights!
Summer literally ended with a bang – a massive thunderstorm directly overhead that saw Couey barking at the noise.
Bendigo grandson spent some time staying with us. He enjoys spending time with John, and of course, loves the pool in the warmer months. Good that someone can get some pleasure from it…
Early in March, John spent a night in hospital after having five significant skin cancers removed from one leg. According to the plastic surgeon he will be a “work in progress”, and this will probably be a regular occurrence. Fun times!
Cleaning out the used peanut butter jar…
Later in March, the three year old Bendigo grandson spent time in the Childrens’ Hospital with a mysterious swelling in a knee that eventually, after a couple of hospital stays, turned out to be some obscure condition I’d never heard of. He gave them quite a scare for a while there, as well as much expenditure of time and fuel as one or other of his mums commuted back and forth from home each day, so there was always someone with him. We had the older grandson, now twelve, to stay for some of the time.
Making a new letterbox
This was the year of turning seventy. M had her celebratory party mid-April, a little early in order to accommodate her planned trip to WA. This would be a genuine outback experience for her friend C. Hopefully, it would go more smoothly than last year’s one where he suffered injury and illness. Or the one before that, come to think of it. M’s Troopy boiled going up the Moonbi Range near Tamworth. In playing the knight rescuer heading off to a nearby dam to get some water, C straddled a fence, which he found out, via a tender part of his anatomy, was electrified…..Then the dog at the house sit M was going to, bit him. One had to say the man was nothing if not game, to go adventuring again this year.
The trip would take them quickly through SA and the NT, across the Tanami Track to WA and on to Broome. A small ship cruise along the Kimberly coast, between Broome and Wyndham would be a real highlight – one I was most envious of. After that, they would explore parts like the Gibb River Road, before making their way back home after about five months away.
Things do not always go according to plan, though. The Troopy broke down on the Tanami Track and the travellers spent a couple of nights camped there, before help arrived. All part of the travel experience, as far as M was concerned, but apparently C was much less sanguine about the experience. Troopy was eventually trucked to Broome for major repairs, like a new engine, and the cruise was wonderful. The stress of it all appeared to affect C’s health, though, and he returned home rather than venture into more wilderness along the Gibb. M met up with friends, as previously planned. One of these was a solo lady traveller with a motorhome tough enough to tackle the Gibb, so M teamed up with her to do that, whilst waiting for the Troopy to be repaired.
The mysterious allergy/immune system disorder flared up again. I was getting so sick of myself.
M and friend had a stay on Stradbroke Island and M had experimented with sand driving, apparently scaring herself as well as him. She doesn’t scare easily, either…
A little window of opportunity appeared to present in early December. I was free of appointments for a couple of weeks. Driver could spare five days between his bowls and medical appointments. Yessss…
The Plan was to head off on a Sunday morning, after the previous day’s bowls, and head to Castlemaine – a new area for us. We would use that as a base to explore some of the nearby old goldfields towns. M – never one to miss a travel opportunity – said she’d go too. I booked sites at a Castlemaine caravan park, for four nights from Sunday December 7. Consistent with our policy of “saving” closer places for the time when our travel abilities were reduced, we’d never visited this town or area before. The abilities were certainly reduced now!
I went through Bus cupboards, throwing out past use-by food stocks and replacing same. Made up the beds, packed my clothes, dog food and treats. All that was left to do were the Driver’s jobs.
When we woke on Sunday morning, the rain was pouring steadily down. We didn’t fancy doing the final packing and preparation in the rain, so deferred departure until the next day. The rain cleared after lunch so we were able to work on the final things. John checked Bus coolant and oil, drained and refilled the water tanks. The Coaster seems to have such a cumbersome system for adding coolant – or were we doing it wrong, by taking off the driver’s side step cover?
I put enzyme down the sink, so it would slosh around the grey water tank in travel, and loosen up any grease. We put the car hitch onto back of Bus.
Just about ready to go again…
I then had a really bad night, with nerve pain from the leg ulcers, exacerbated by doing a clean dressing on it Monday morning. John asked if I still wanted to go away, given the pain I was in. I didn’t. He phoned the caravan park and explained; they were very understanding.
Later in the day, after some extra pain killers kicked in, I was able to unpack Bus fridge and my clothes. The dog was totally confused! At least I didn’t have to cook tea, as I’d previously cooked chicken marylands to take away for our first night’s meal – and podded a couple of lots of broad beans, to reduce the space they would occupy in Bus fridge.
The trip nearly happened….
This episode led to me being put onto Lyrica for pain management.
Thus ended 2014. This was the first year since about 1980 that I hadn’t been away holidaying and travelling at all. Even as a single mother, working full time when my children were young, we always managed at least a week’s camping in the holidays.
Bendigo grandson came to stay in the September school holidays and John took him to the Royal Melbourne Show. A plan to take him out for a drive in Bus didn’t eventuate because John was really tired after the Show day.
Grandson doing “shed work” with John
Clearly, though, Bus needed a run to shake out the cobwebs. After the family had gone home again, we took the tarpaulin cover off Bus and I checked over the inside. Was surprised to find the house batteries were down to 1. Not good for batteries! I couldn’t work out why, because it had been plugged into 240v power, ever since we’d come home last year.
We took Bus out for a day trip, on a day that was cool, grey and slightly misty. Firstly, a detour down to Bayswater to refuel at an easily accessible servo – which our local one definitely wasn’t. $1.489cpl – much less than we paid on last year’s trips.
Back up the hill to Mt Evelyn, thence Woori Yallock and across to Healesville. The Yarra Valley was beautifully green after winter.
At Healesville, we parked a block from the main street and walked to get lunch at the place we’d eaten at, a few times before. This was shut, and a pile of mail on the floor inside suggested permanently so. So we had to lower the lunch expectations. John got some Charcoal Chicken. I managed a ham and cheese croissant from the nearby Bakers Delight, and we got coffee from a bakery cafe.
We’d left Couey at home today. My thinking was that, not knowing quite what was happening with Bus electricals, it would be better if dog was not with us if we broke down.
Back at Bus, parked next to us was a brand new Traveller caravan and 4WD. The owner was taking photos of his rig, which did look rather splendid in contrast with our utilitarian Bus. I could remember when we were that proud of our new Trakmaster and Landrover. Now seemed a long, long time ago.
John wanted to go look at Maroondah Dam – a water storage for Melbourne’s supply, a few kms out of Healesville. As soon as we parked, could hear the roar from the dam. It had been a wet winter. Although we thought the excess water must be coming out through a pipe, it was really boiling up and then coming down the rock faced section into the Yarra River. That was worth seeing.
Surplus water leaving Maroondah Dam, into the Yarra River
The gardens at the Dam are extensive and lovely, a destination for a picnic and wander in themselves. Back in 2008, when we’d had son and his children staying with us, we had occasionally packed the makings and had a BBQ lunch here.
Today, I took a couple of photos of a conifer-type shrub that had eye-catching bright green tips on it.
As we drove to the Dam and back, saw that new dining options had opened, on that side of Healesville. There was an establishment that offered wine tastings and food, seeming somewhat upmarket. There was a Beechworth Bakery too – how long has that been there? Maybe not so surprising that the cafe had shut down, after all. Entry on my mental to-do list: return before too long and try out these options.
Followed the Maroondah Highway to Lilydale and thence home – just in time to do battle with the local school traffic and buses.
Bus went as if it had never had an extended period of inactivity.
It appeared that, as we went along driving, the house batteries were receiving some charge from the engine. That was a surprise – I did not know that was supposed to happen, for those. The two cranking batteries, used to start Bus and power its “car” things, were isolated from the house system, and were obviously not affected by whatever had flattened the latter.
I still had much to learn about this motor homing lark and started to seek advice wherever I could, about what might be the problem.
The slight niggle of worry aside, it had been so good to be going somewhere in Bus, again if only for a few hours. John enjoyed the driving.
My email queries to the company that had done the Bus conversion, back in 2004, went unanswered as did their phone. I wondered if the guy had retired?
We consulted an auto electrician in Lilydale. The advice was that we needed two new house batteries and a new charger. The batteries were a pity because the ones in Bus were onoy three or four years old. They were Haze brand which I’d never heard of. I ordered Full River batteries. We’d had these in the van, which was all 12v so they got a solid workout and were still going strong, after eight years, when we sold the van. Decided to go for another Projecta charger, same brand as was there. The electrician said there had been a faulty batch of Projecta chargers some years ago – maybe that was our issue?
When I thought back, wondered if the funny episode we’d had with the smoke alarm, coming back from the NSW coast, last November, was in fact the charger burning out?
The new one came with a remote monitor, which the man mounted next to the other monitors and switches and wired up for us, so I would now be able to see what it was doing. Previously I would have had to take everything off my bed and open up the underneath, to check this. I was much happier…
The new charging monitor – easy to see
He also explained to me how the electrical systems worked – finally I thought I understood it all….
That lot cost almost $1300.
Bus came home again, after its stay in Lilydale. We did not put the tarp back over the roof, hoping to get in a sort break away, before too much longer.
A new desktop computer – the first of these I’d had since the children were at school in the 1980’s – led me to get serious about researching my family history. As I’d realized, when we were in Tasmania in 1999-2000, this was an area of considerable sensitivity amongst Tasmanian families, where much information was simply not talked of, let alone passed down the generations. So many ancestors had arrived in Van Diemans Land involuntarily, courtesy of the British Government – and so many isolated farming families had intermarried…. It proved an engrossing study, one that would continue to occupy me, intermittently, for years to come.
My father’s family members – if not their individual history and experiences – had been documented in the family history book published in 2000, so I knew that family branch originated labouring on farms in Somerset and being enterprising enough to chance their futures in Van Diemans Land as assisted migrants. They bred prolifically, as was usual in those times. Perhaps a bit less usual was that almost all offspring survived to adulthood to, in their turn, produce large families. By the end of the 20th century, the descendents list filled several hundred pages in that book.
What was not realized at the time, or until modern genetic testing and research, was that the “family illness” was also passed down from my twice great grandmother, through most of her children, fortunately skipping the branch that I descend from. Dad had spoken vaguely of Huntingtons Chorea occurring when some first cousins married, but of course that was only a partial truth. Not a great claim to fame for poor old granny.
Much less was known about the family lines of my three other grandparents. My investigations on Ancestry into this led to some interesting results. Most pleasing was being contacted by a previously unknown cousin – I have lots of those as it turns out – descended from dad’s mother. She was seriously into researching the history of her family in Tasmania, New Zealand and Ireland, and gave me much information. Even better, she lived on the other side of the Dandenong Ranges, so we were able to meet in person and forge an ongoing friendship.
My mother was the youngest of seven, hailing from an isolated area in the foothills of the Great Western Tiers. On a trip to Tasmania with her, in 1971, I had briefly met large numbers of her brothers’ families. I knew that her oldest brother had moved to New Zealand to find work, when mum was young, so about 1916, and the family had lost contact. Seems that migration to NZ was rather common in those times. Although mum was no longer alive to hear the news, I was able to track down his NZ life and family and make contact with a person who had known him. One mystery solved.
Best of all, I was able to track the arrival in the Australian colonies, of mum’s ancestors. The theme of assisted agricultural labourers, mostly from Somerset, continued. But a grandfather’s history was elusive, for ages, and I suspected all sorts of dire explanations. Persistence found an official mis-spelling of a name – also common with semi-literate officials – and so that branch turned up as assisted immigrants to the Port Phillip District in 1849 – just in time for the gold rushes! But twice great-grand-dad died in 1851 and it seems his remains are now beneath the car park of the Victoria Markets. This area was in those days, outside the young Melbourne settlement and the site of its first cemetery.
I found a great grandmother who died exactly 100 years before the birth of my daughter, on the same date – in childbirth! Tragically common in those times. Possibly a good thing I didn’t know about that, back in 1972…They say history repeats itself, and it damn near did!
I think it would be rare to be descended from the Tasmanian pioneers of the 1830’s and 40’s, without having a smattering of convict ancestry and so it proved, with a couple of thieves in there. Again, a mirror of their times – picking pockets, stealing a coat, stealing a piece of bacon…One ancestor was sent to Van Dieman’s Land for stealing his brother’s coat. I suspect that may have been a somewhat disfunctional family?
Another rogue great grandfather also related to Australian history in an interesting way. Arriving in SA as an assisted migrant under the Wakefield scheme, he soon abandoned the wife who came with him, and their young child, and then resurfaced in gold-rush Melbourne. He married great grandma there – presumably bigamously – and they moved to Tasmania. Eventually he disappeared from there, leaving behind wife and a clutch of offspring, only to appear yet again around the Victorian goldfields of the Wedderburn area where – you guessed it – he married yet again and had another family.
My original university degree was in history and Australian history had been a speciality, so for me it was fascinating to be able to place the key events in the lives of these ancestors against the backdrop of my knowledge of the nation’s history.
So, all of that was about the one highlight of an otherwise dreary year.
I was able to travel vicariously through friend M, who – along with gentleman friend – travelled to Qld for a house sitting stint. They travelled up through Bourke, in order to show the man, who was a novice at M’s kind of travel, some of the inland. Unfortunately, whilst there, he had a camp chair collapse under him, and eventually ended up in hospital in Toowoomba, diagnosed with a couple of broken ribs and pneumonia.
After our thoroughly enjoyable long trip last year, we had been looking forward to a repeat in 2014. But not to be.
The year turned out to be one of dealing with health issues that kept us anchored at home. Just for some variety, this year the bulk of the problems were mine, although John did have “re-bore” surgery. Can I feel male readers flinching? I will not go into further detail here, except to say it solved the problem that plagued him during last year’s travels. There were also some more lung issues and his breathing capacity was measured at just 66%.
The sore on my leg, that started at Forrest Beach, last year, turned into a nasty leg ulcer that no amount of varied medical expertise seemed able to heal. One solution – by a plastic surgeon – created a second ulcer, worse than the first. Pain from the ulcers led to having to wear morphine patches. Repeated infections led to repeated anti-biotic courses. All this medication in turn led to an immune system melt-down. Medication for that sent the blood pressure sky high. Eventually I finished up on a pain relief medication I’d not heard of before – a nasty called Lyrica. It dealt with the leg pain and enabled me to sleep but had some drastic side effects, like blurred vision. I really felt that I was on a downward spiral, suddenly.
With visits to assorted medical people happening two or three times a week, and instructions to keep leg elevated, travel was out of the question.
In January friends V and F came to stay for a really enjoyable week. They travelled by bus and train from Griffith – F did not want to drive anywhere near Melbourne and we failed to convince him that they could reach us with minimal exposure to metropolitan traffic. We collected them from, and delivered them back to Southern Cross Station. Fortunately for us – and F’s nerves – they arrived and left on Sundays, so none of us had to brave weekday traffic and hunting for parking places. We did do some driving about with them – mostly to different parts of the Yarra Valley. They enjoyed our pool, as the month was exceedingly hot. Swimming was something else I couldn’t do, due to the leg.
February saw bushfires in assorted parts of the state, but the Dandenongs were spared again.
One of the rare pieces of good news for the year was that son acquired a lovely new girlfriend – if that’s an appropriate term for someone turning 40 this year. She was an old school classmate, which made her a former student of mine, too! A further twist was that she and son had exactly the same birthday. It was delightful to see the both of them so happy with each other.
I occupied my forced sedentary time with quilting, completing my first quilt, started some years ago, made completely by hand. The action of doing the actual quilting caused a fluid build up in the wrist, which had to be treated by injection. I resolved that, although really enjoying the hand sewing together of the various quilt pieces, the actual quilting of any future ones would be by machine – or someone else. The quilt went to grand daughter and I started thinking about and planning the next one.
This Adventurous Age 