Trailer all repacked, restocked and washing nice and clean again we set off for the Yorke Peninsula. We had searched on the internet to find some good snorkelling spots and decided we would look at the campsites as we went to decide which one to stay at. The National Park has several campsites which are all bush sites. We eventually decided on Shell Beach as it was right on a lovely beach, it was one of the spots we thought we could snorkel at, there was a campsite we could fit on and the toilets - although the standard pit toilet [View Full Entry]

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Drove to Mount Eccles National Park. The drive there was some of the best of the Great Ocean Road so we made sure we stopped at most of the view sites. The 12 apostles are rock formations that stand tall in the sea and were incredible to see. The coastline is beautiful. The weather, however, remained windy and cold. We found our campsite in the park with no trouble. This was to be our first proper bush camp and it was beautiful. There were very tall trees, individual camp sites, most with a fireplace. You have to take all of your [View Full Entry]

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Off to our next stop which was planned to be the Otway National Park. We stopped off at Torquay for Kerry and Dave to do some shopping as it is known as a big surfer town with lots of good shops. We were now starting our drive along the Great Ocean Road. One of the big towns along the road, Lorne, has a music festival that starts on 30th December. It was just our bad luck that we were trying to get along that stretch of the road the day before - along with everyone else. We were nose to tail [View Full Entry]

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Today we packed up in the Grampians and took the short drive to Melbourne. We hadn’t booked a site so struggled to find one. There didn’t seem to be many close to the city centre so after driving around for a while decided to take the first one we had seen which wasn’t great, was quite expensive but at least close to the centre. It was a bit commercialised for us, with all the camping sites marked out and your own parking spot with lines painted next to the tent, unfortunately the only one left was next to the toilets. It [View Full Entry]

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After having a couple of days doing some shopping for camping equipment and food and drink for the camping trip, we packed the trailer - why are they never big enough? We had to put the tent, chairs and tables on the roof of the trailer. We left about 4am which you have to do when you are going on holiday or it doesn’t seem right. It wasn’t cold though. We had an uneventful journey and it was lovely to see some of the Country. We arrived at our campsite about midday and set up camp. It was a lovely spot [View Full Entry]

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We arrived at Perth on time and had to transfer by bus to the international terminal. This wasn’t that easy with large suitcases, bags and other presents bought in South Africa but we joined the queue and waited. Again it appeared that some people were really going to struggle to make their connecting flight. We were quite surprised to find out that the bus ride was a good 15 minutes away. Anyway we caught out plane, but again had no waiting time, and it was late as well. We did arrive on time though and were met by Kerry and Dave [View Full Entry]

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Far too quickly for us the day to depart came around. I had a last morning shopping with Lynor going round some of the shops I hadn’t seen, I just like to walk around and see what they have, a lot more than we get in Ashford. We weren’t able to book in online unfortunately so left plenty of time for checking in. As we arrived we could see a huge queue snaking around for the desks we needed to go to. They are doing some building works at the airport and maybe that was the problem. Normally we check in [View Full Entry]

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We decided to have a day at one of the 4 x 4 trails near Johannesburg with Aaron and Lynor. We set off in the two vehicles and finally arrived after a little off roading on the way following the sat nav. Now I don’t like riding in a vehicle when it feels like it is going to topple over, at least it does to me, so this did mean that I walked pretty much all of the 7km circuit getting rather dusty, lots of exercise and also lots of really good video. Whenever we came to a steep bit I [View Full Entry]

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Today was going to be our Christmas day, it also happened to be my birthday. We started off with an early morning game drive with nothing spectacular in the way of viewings. The highlight of the day was our Christmas dinner. We started just after lunchtime and soon had the gammon turning nicely on the spit, the veggies roasting in the pot and the Christmas pudding steaming away. We had a minor setback when we tried to roast the potatoes on the skottle as the jet was blocked but it was soon fixed. Supper was served at 5pm which was pretty [View Full Entry]

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Arrived at Pilanesberg yesterday after an easy 3 hour trip and set up camp. We then took a game drive through the reserve and had a good few sightings. We saw elephant, some rhino, one had a small calf and an enormous horn and lots of zebra, giraffe and buck. There seemed to be quite a few young around. But the best of all was as we were making our way back to camp. We came across a black backed jackel den in a storm drain under the road. The mother jackal wasn’t there but three cute pups were running in [View Full Entry]

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