Saturday 9th August After a leisurely morning we were all packed up and ready to leave Marble Bar by 1000. A little difficulty was experienced in rolling up the awning, it getting away from Rags causing him to jam a finger between two of the struts. He now sports a very blue fingernail! The road to Nullagine was quite smooth, minimal corrugations and only a few wash-aways where we had to slow right down. It was very dusty but the special hatch on the van pressurised the interior and only a little bit of dust entered. Taping up the fridge vent [View Full Entry]

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Monday 28th July We were at the school by 0730, both a little nervous as to what to expect. No problems, we were soon made welcome by the principal, Carol Mills, as well as the staff as Rags renewed his acquaintances. After being shown around the school we soon set an introductory programme to follow, this will be refined as we go. Judy started our program with the secondary section of the school, Rags taking over the supervision of the whole high school. Today this consisted of 1 student! This state of affairs was caused by the unfortunate death of [View Full Entry]

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We have scored a two week contract at Marble Bar school to assist the teachers in using technology in the curriculum to enhance learning. Rather than being flown there and staying at the rather primitive motel there as Rags did earlier in the year, we have negotiated with the school to allow us to travel there with our caravan and stay at the caravan park. This has allowed us to plan around the times we have to be there, taking a week or so to travel the 1800 kms there and maybe longer to return. This will give us plenty of [View Full Entry]

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This entry is a little late as we were away about 3 weeks ago. We wanted to put it in however as it is a record for us and it shows those of you who don't live here just some of the beautiful places in Western Australia. We left on the Thursday morning and headed for Waroona Dam, about 120 kms south of Perth. The caravan towed beautifully and the Jeep showed its power. Wouldn't say that it didn't notice the load behind (2.5 tn) but there was still plenty of acceleration left. We cruised at about 90-95 kph, at this [View Full Entry]

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Rather than writing individually we have decided to continue to use this blog to update our travels and experiences as they happen. If you do not wish to get the email advising you of the updates please feel free to unsubscribe. We hope that you find some of our ramblings interesting and we appreciate your feedback. Both of us are now in the lucky position of working when we want to and where we want. Great to be able to choose. Later, we will relate our adventures around the State as we have purchased a 6.5m caravan (camper trailer for you [View Full Entry]

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For those of you who may wonder where we've been for the last week and for friends overseas who may like to see a bit of Australia we're adding this new blog post. Last Tuesday evening we took the midnight horror to Coolangatta, Queensland via Sydney to check and finalise the purchase of our new vehicle. The worst part of this trip was the 4 hours twiddling our thumbs at Sydney airport! Arriving in Coolangatta we were met by Ken from James Frizzel Motors as promised. After taking delivery of our new Jeep we drove north to Nambour where we stayed [View Full Entry]

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It was suggested to us today to continue our blog. It will give our friends overseas a chance to see a bit of Australia and keep our local friends up to date with our movements. (Thanks Larni) We certainly aren't going to give the detail that we did while we were traveling. For one thing we are far too busy socialising and for another most of it is much too mundane! However, the week after our return saw us heading down to Margaret River with Pat and Jack who'd come to visit my mother and us all the way from Canada. [View Full Entry]

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Saturday 26th January Happy Australia Day! Arriving at the station just before 7am we headed straight to the subway, amazingly finding an entry right out the front. This wasn't the way we had come when we left Beijing previously but we didn't complain. We stopped at the dumpling shop not far from our hotel for breakfast so it was almost 8am when we reached the hotel. What a lovely welcome we had - a smiling; “You're back”! We were quickly shown to a room similar to our last stay and we collected our cases and did some repacking so we knew [View Full Entry]

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Monday 21 January After a good night's sleep we awoke. We checked out the buffet breakfast at the hotel but it looked similar to other “plastic” food we had seen in China so we decided to eat the bananas we had with us and pick up something else later. Our first stop was the railway station as we wanted to secure our final train tickets as we had heard there would be a rush with Spring break beginning on the 23rd. This was done easily by showing the ticket seller the map page of Beijing with Beijing written in Chinese and [View Full Entry]

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Thursday January 17th Our third early morning in a row saw us waiting at the hostel by 7am. From here we were transported to the train station for the 7.57 to Chinqingbei. This has given us the time to sit, crammed into the train, and catch up on our diary ready to upload at the next opportunity. We are passing many small farms and villages. The scenery here is much greener than we've seen in other parts of China but the same smog hangs over the countryside and unfortunately the train windows are so filthy we won't even attempt to take [View Full Entry]

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