cvwhelan's latest blog entries

Time to have some FUN, Week 13 – (one to go)

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 20:30:01 EDT

Weeks 13 saw the Whelan’s at Noosa Beach, Mt Tambourine and the FUN parks. Noosa was very busy but the beach was fantastic, we camped 15 km to the North of Noosa over the river. We spent Monday driving to Rainbow beach via the 50km beach front and had some 4WD fun through the tracks to the township.

Moving south some 300km we camped at Mt Tambourine and hit the fun parks.

MovieWorld gave us the Superman ride, Lethal Weapon, Shrek 4, and The Batman which delivered the action rides.

Friday saw us at the Wet n Wild where Dad and James demolished the Tornado and Black hole while the family conquered The Falls and slides.

Next it’s off to Nimbin to see Stan, Laura and Kids, the in-laws at Kempsey, Simon and Matthew (+families) in Newcastle and home next Saturday.

Though we could continue for another two months we are looking forward to getting home. Vanessa keeps having “Millie Moments”.

Thanks to all our mates for the correspondence through the blog, it’s great getting all the messages.

3 Beaches and a Birthday

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 05:42:47 EDT

Week 12 of Fourteen, Ball Bay – Yeppoon and Agnes Waters

Ball Bay – 40 km North of Mackey was a holiday by itself. We stopped here for 4-5 days and slowed down. We virtually had the small campground to ourselves and where amazed at the distance of the low tide that went out some 250m off the beach. We played numerous beach games here – chased Crabs, fished, swam and ate fresh fruit.

Joshua celebrated his ninth birthday at Ball Bay and received a baseball set, motorized car, clothes and other assorted nick naks.

We leapfrogged down to Yappoon and journeyed up to gallerys and beaches and found top quality pineapples for 50c.

Beach camping again at Agnes waters near 1770. We fished off the rocks and only caught a sting ray, swam and surfed in Queensland’s northern most surf beach with actual swell – our first this trip.

Thanks for the Birthday wishes for Joshua. Two weeks to go and we still have Noosa the fun parks, Nimbin, Kempsey and Newcastle.

RAIN RAIN and more RAIN at Mission Beach

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 03:29:02 EDT

Week 11 of 14 finds us at Mission Beach for an extended stay with a beach front camping location for $12.50 a night. The rain finally found us here and it bucketed intermittently for 5 days. The camper trailer (with full annexure attached) worked a treat with no leaks. We spent the week playing games and walking the beach and finally swimming again in the ocean when the rain let us. We travelled to Townsville to dry out and spent the night listening to sugar cane trains and then onto to Ball Bay 40km north of Mackay. Here again we are lucky to get beach front camping by ourselves in a sleepy coastal town. We now prepare for the biggest event in our travels “Joshua’s Birthday”

Undara Lava Tubes, Daintree and The Great Barrier

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 22:34:39 EDT

We are on the east coast now and spent a week checking out the Undara lava tubes near Ravenshoe which were very speckie. Next we moved up to the Daintree and camped at the beach while living in the rainforest. We took a day trip up to Cooktown through the Daintree and this marked our northern most point on the east coast. We move down the coast now to Port Douglas and spent Friday snorkelling the outer reefs of the Great Barrier Reef – the day was one of best with abundant aquatic life and coral formations in full colour to die for. We are now located in Mission beach where we were very fortunate to get a beach front camp site for $12.50 a night – here we shall stay, swim and look out of our camper trailer at Dunk Island for a week. (someone has to do this) We may hire some sea Kayaks and try and circumnavigate Dunk Island.

4 weeks to go – very scary

See ya and please keep sending the messages

Steve, Cath & Kids - reply

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 03:56:53 EDT

Hi Steve, Cathy and Kids

We are travelling for 14 weeks altogether and we believe 14 weeks is okay but a little longer is always better. Travelling with kids is fun but there are always the occasional moment that can stress you out. The highlights of the trip are too numerous to list here but in summary its been a great experience, great family building experience, the people and characters you meet are great, getting away from the rat race is fantastic, top places, top times and memories and finally, your kids learn so much about their own country and themselves!

We have employed a number of ideas that have helped us a lot, here they are;

·          Kids do school work for 1.5 hours most days, English, Maths, a Journal and reading books. They need to do this in the morning normally first thing in the car while travelling. Vanessa also collects free brochures and pictures for their journals from visitor centres which they cut and paste into their diaries. It helps them keep interested in their diaries (as they don’t enjoy writing) and shows where they have been so they can show it to other travellers we meet.

·          The car is set up so that the fridge and two drawers never come out of the car, we keep a 15 litre water container here to – this makes it easier to leave our camper and still have lunch when we are day tripping around. The trick is to do as little messy unpacking and access your Ute tray _canopy??? when you need something in a drawer system – we didn’t spend $$$$ on a drawer system but rather got plastic drawers and containers from the hardware (Big W) and then made some ply platforms that act as prep tables for lunch

·          We used containers for everything so we can move them quickly and can access things fast. They clip shut so it keeps the dust out.

·          The frustrating things of living out of a camper are having to be much more organised and a little longer in setting up (tables, chairs and trailer tent) – however the bonuses are that we can go into many more 4wd spots and get away from the caravans and only need un-powered sites due to having 2 batteries. (means 99% of the time we never need to book anywhere touristy).

·          We placed the kids bedding (kids have stretchers, sleeping bags and sleeping bag) sheets on top of our bed when packing up the trailer. This makes setting up and packing up faster.

·          The 4wd camper handled the Gibb river road easily – the trick is to let the tyres down by 20% and not go too fast 70-90km/h tops.

·          Yes we were set up for off road sites – we bushed camped a lot we had, two batteries, a simple toilet bucket (which acted as a garbage bin during the day) used a camp oven heaps in fires for cooking with a billy. We took a 20 litre water container, 2-20 litre fuel containers, 1-3kg gas and 1-1.5 kg gas as back up. (the trailer has a 60 litre water tank). The car recharged the batteries some what and we occasionally got a powered site in a caravan park to recharge the batteries to full strength.

·          We also travelled with a DVD player with two screens and headphones which are a godsend with children. We only used them on very long distances (over 500km in a day) and only after all our school work was completed. It was also a family treat to have DVD in the camper when we had the flu or just needed to chill out at night.

·          Once you get your system worked out, tested and running it is easy and not a hassle – the kids also learn to set up with us and you tend to work better as a family unit over time.

Happy to continue this help via our email – cvwhelan@actewagl,net,au

Good luck and yes it’s definitely worth it !

Craig and Vanessa