We finally got on the road around 11.30am, thank you so much to my wonderful Geoff, who fussed over us to get everything right and Jason who was prepared with cameras and enthusiasm. Thank you to Adam (Scott’s younger brother) who came to see us off, especially considering his great pain from a dislocated thumb the day before (Adam make sure you get to the doctors if it doesn’t look any better today!!) and my love to Ron and Jan Day for your warm support and farewell.
While I’m thanking people, a special thanks to everybody who sent us messages of good wishes and a successful journey.
The great thing about an adventure is the combination of the anticipation, the dream and the nervousness of the reality. What is really going to happen around every corner in front of us?
In this adventure we‘re aiming to paint and draw and it is very exciting to know we are starting something and at the end we will have a record of our journey with our memories cast in so many different ways. We will be able to look back at what we thought our future was and hold and view what it has become. As a budding artist, I am finding it very exciting to know we haven’t yet created something, though we will, and that the end result is something I cannot even imagine.
Scott settled in immediately as we drove out of Ron and Jan’s place where we had stored the caravan to pack for the trip, like the cat that got the milk, it was just him and me on the road and he loved it. The blue finally left my knuckles around Seymour (about 110kms) after I realised I could hardly feel the caravan on the back of the car. I haven’t towed a caravan before so I must admit I was very nervous and I was glad to get across to the Western Ring Road (a major arterial that leaves suburbia) and onto the open road. I must say how great these roads are now that the works have finished and that it was so easy to get to the Hume Highway turn off and straight out of town towards Wodonga on the border of Victoria and New South Wales. Yes, we had to have a ‘pit stop’, including our last Big Mac until the journey is over; Scott and I have made a pact to lose some weight and get healthy.
After 5 hours we finally arrived at Colac Colac, would you believe it is actually pronounced “clack clack”, it is approximately 8 kilometres before Corryong and our first planned overnight stop. We had about an hour of light left to set up the caravan and Scott was the man. He took control of his role to help unhitch the van, level it, wind down the 4 stabilisers underneath, open the van top and pull the beds down at each end.
It was getting pretty dark and cold, so into our little mobile home we jumped. I don’t know how more than two people would survive in here!! I think you would really need to love each other and be very forgiving. Considering Scott and I are reasonably patient it was testing all the same. Everything went very smooth; we even got the TV working so Scott could play some xbox. Scott loves small, tight areas; maybe that’s why his birth was so long? He is in his element in the caravan; he quickly marked his territory at the table under the bunk and settled in for the evening.
I realised we had hardly any food for dinner, so after a quick consultation with each other, we decided on toasted buns with cheese. Unfortunately the buns caught in the toaster and began to burn and the smoke alarm went off. Scott and I ran up and down the caravan like a scene from the 3 stooges and just after getting the caravan warm, all the doors and windows were opened and we were wildly spinning towels in the air to get the smoke alarm to stop, lucky there was only us and another van some distance away, so nobody else was aware of our dilemma. All fixed, no damage and time for bed, only to realise I packed for a warmer climate; everybody had told us how warm it is this time of the year in Mildura, which is a lot more North west than our current location, and unfortunately that is still long way from us at the moment.
Cheryle
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