Going… going…. going………going……….going…….going………….gone…………….. I think?

There’s been somewhat of a failure to launch.
We were supposed to set off on the next part of our trip nearly 2 weeks ago.
Now that I have a house that I’d actually like to live in one day SOON, Georgie has a school she doesn’t want to leave, & I’ve become completely unfamiliar with what money looks like, we’ve had to break our traveling up into shorter stints.

This trip was meant to be 3 months touring Far North Queensland. Back to where it all started.
Seeing the places we never seemed to get to when we were living a life of work & kids & grocery shopping & dinner & dishes & laundry & BAS statements & paperwork & so on.

Laithe went to a lot of the places now on our list, because that’s were he hunted & fished, but that was usually with ‘The Boys’, & I was happy for him to go get away from me for the weekend because I was pregnant, or had a new baby, or just couldn’t be arsed at the thought of all that extra washing that camping inevitably creates (particularly when I was already so far behind the eight-ball in the laundry department… & the paperwork…….. & the BAS).
Our set up was going to look a little different from the original one.
Remember the Landcruiser, the rooftop tinny, & the 22 foot monster?


Well, the 22 foot monster isn’t exactly “intact” anymore.
It looks a bit more like this…



Shit.
 
We limped back into civili… *cough*…Western Sydney, from Broome, with our tail between our legs.

Thankfully, we’re insured & the van was delivered to face the final verdict- written off or repaired?
Seems the damage was more… er… extensive than first thought.

Apparently, someone got my memo about the ticker tape parade I requested for our arrival home, only it wasn’t  Hawkesbury City Council.
And instead of ticker tape raining down on us, it was kangaroos through northern NSW.

That happened 2 days out from our final destination.
Aw, spewin’.
The poor kangaroo was definitely written off.
It’d been hit by a truck before stumbling into the side of our car & caravan.
The car managed to get out of it unscathed, but the van ended up being a write off.

Cha-ching! $$$$

We went shopping for a camp trailer to replace The Beast.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t agree on which one to get.
Laithe preferred the trailer set up of the MDC, but I preferred the tent on the Scamper Camper because it was a much prettier colour obviously a superior canvas & plastic.

Then Laithe changed tack & found this little beauty on Gumtree…

…and everything fell into place.
It was a great price, just up the mountain, fabulous condition, only one previous owner, hardly ever used, & the sellers were really nice people.

So we bought it, fixed some original Jayco roof racks to it for the canoe, rubbed our hands together at the thought of all the money we’d now save on fuel towing something that small, & that was that.

Or so we thought.

 The Cruiser had been having all those overheating issues towing The Beast through WA.
Probably because we’d blown a head gasket, most likely between Esperance & Wave Rock, about 7 months prior to our homecoming. Ooops.
So for the last couple months it’s been  worked on by our new neighbour/mechanic & Laithe, trying to fix the issue, or at least work out what the frigin issue is.
Discussions on possible problems & solutions have been… er… in depth & at length.

This has all been at great personal injury to myself.

Of course, nothing will surpass the trauma caused by the Dual Battery lecture of 2010, where I suffered in silence as a captive audience on a long, long drive from Cairns to Cooktown, OR the ‘amps in to amps out’ discussions I was subjected to over, & over, & over, AAAAAND over again, up & down the coast of WA.
But the sound of him inhaling to start talking about the fucking car has been enough to immediately induce absent seizures, where my eyes roll violently back in my head before vacantly resting on a point somewhere far, far off in the distance & my breathing becomes laboured & irregular.

The head gasket has been replaced 3 times now, the head crack tested, fans checked, gauges installed, nuts tightened, bolts loosened, fluids drained & replaced, sticks dipped, & I can assure you the list goes on. The cumulative results of all this have ended in sweet F.A. 
 
So, as the car drives ok but doesn’t tow ok, the decision was made to leave my beautiful new van at home & sell it at a later date!

I’ve had time to process this & am only just now in a good place.
And ONLY because selling the van means that we’ll be able to install a kitchen in the house when we get back, instead of cooking on a camp stove for the next year & a half.
This decision has also taken some pressure off seeing as we seem to have been bleeding money from every orifice recently, including the envelope with approximately $3000 (our fuel money) that Laithe has fucking lost! we have “misplaced”.

So!
*drumroll*
We just spent $1000 on a fucking tent. In fact, that’s it official name for the trip.
The Fucking Tent.
For 3 months.

Oh, the humanity!

I think I’ve made no secret of the fact that I would not have coped as a Pioneer.
So this should be interesting.

We left the Hawkesbury to return home to The Beast, which is our onsite accommodation at our renovators delight.
We went back to check that the misplaced cash was definitely not there (it wasn’t), & then 1/2 an hour from home the Cruiser’s fan belt starts screaming from under the hood.

You’ve got to be fucking JOKING.

After quick road side stop, which I have the feeling wont be our last, we got home in time for Laithe & our mechanic to make some adjustments by torch light so we could head off the next morning.

That was yesterday.

We left at 4.25 am.
At 4.28 am we lost all power in the car which had Laithe completely shitting himself until he realised the sub fuel tank was empty & simply needed switching back over to the full main tank.
Thank Christ!
 
I don’t think either of us exhaled until we crossed the boarder into Queensland at about 11.30.
All these positive thoughts kept entering my brain but dared not leave my lips in case I spoke too soon.
‘At least the weathers nice. At least there’s no fog this morning. At least there aren’t kangaroos out/ too much traffic/ the kids went back to sleep/ the car seems ok now etc, etc. ‘

It was a very quiet morning.

Anyway, yesterday afternoon we made it to Brisbane, my least favourite city to drive in.
We’re camped on our friends floor for 2 nights, had the best Thai in Brisbane last night (Thai on Earth- 412 Milton Rd, Auchenflower), bought The Fucking Tent today, stocked up on some food, & revised our travel plans to make up for the fact we are way behind schedule.

We head north tomorrow.

Hopefully.

Gathering moss. There’s a cream for that, isn’t there?

It’s been a while. I know.

Over 6 months.

Stuff has happened.

Things have changed.

Of course, one thing that hasn’t changed is the fact that I live in a caravan.

 

I have a house now. No longer homeless. Yet still, I live in a caravan.

 

I made a deal with Laithe when we moved from Cairns.

He didn’t really want to leave.

The deal was- we’d move closer to family & friends if he could buy a farm. Or at least ‘land’.

Lots of land.

Under starry skies above?

 

With that in mind, he chose a little town within 3 hours of the Grandparents & friends in the Hawkesbury, & 3 hours from the coast where my best friend’s place is we have a glorious holiday home near the lake.

 

We bought a shitty little house.

Again.

 

It was full of asbestos & the floor plan was shit, so Laithe conned a mate into helping him gut the house in the few days between Christmas & New Year. The kids & I moved out to the house after the hard work was done all the internal asbestos was removed.

  

 

 

That left me with a toilet & an open shower (4 Pubes).

Showering after dark meant you had to share your loofah with the resident cockroaches, & the water would run straight off your elbows onto the lounge room floor.

 

We’ve been here 3 months now.

 Georgie started school… again.

Her 3rd one in less than a year.

Bloody awful parents, I know. She’s loving it.

 

Emerson is off to preschool so now, for 2 days a week, it’s someone else’s responsibility to keep him fenced in.

He hasn’t wandered off since the last major incident, though I did leave him on the wrong side of the road last week, totally unintentionally.

Do you think it would help if I taught him to ‘heel’?

Appropriate supervision doesn’t seem to be my strong point.

 

I’ve started work at the very small local hospital.

It’s my kind of place.

CLEAN & ORGANISED!

Even the patients are on to it. I came out the front door yesterday to this…

Comes for blood tests. Leaves boots & hat at the door.

Bless.

 

Laithe is working on making the house liveable.

No mean feat.

The toilet is still inside the house, but we now shower in the luxurious garage bathroom/laundry outside. It actually used to be the old hospitals mortuary.

Nice, ay?

It’s OK.

 

But winter is coming.

 

Getting ready for work via 12volt lighting isn’t that easy either.

I got to work the other morning looking a bit like this…

Yikes!

 

Bathroom aside, we’ve smashed out a fair bit of work in the last 3 months.

Just like our last house, there was barely a straight wall in the place. There wasn’t a single room where the floor was level throughout.

And part of the house, where four of the rooms come together, was four different heights despite being laid on the Same. Frigin. Beams.

But now that Laithe & I have finalised the details of out DIVORCE finished yelling to each other through the floor while he was crawling round under the house trying to fix it, everything is reasonably level & ready for a floating floor to go down… at some point in the distant future.

 

Our travels have been mucked around a fair bit. Obviously.

We were meant to be in Tasmania from January to about now. I was SO looking forward to it & went through a fairly substantial mourning period when our plans changed. I wore a LOT of black.

Then we were going to leave after the coming school holidays in April to head up to Queensland for winter.

Fortunately, I finally finished our WAAAAAYYYY overdue tax this week (yeh, I did a little dance & sucked back on a cigarette all ‘post-coital’ like).

Unfortunately, it’s become quite clear that … er… umm… we HAVE NO FREAKIN MONEY! *sigh*

 

So anyway, as soon as we put some dosh back in our account, we’ll be sloughing off the growing moss & heading off on a much quicker, less luxurious (can it be any less luxurious?), chocolate/cheese/& alcohol free trip up to Far North Queensland.

 

Hopefully.

 

Although without chocolate, cheese & alcohol it hardly seems worth it.