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The Van - CHAD
The moment you've all been waiting for. Meet CHAD our home for the next few months - roomy isn't it?! Scott writes:
Crikey, living in a van and traveling up the east coast has been absolutely ripper so far. Our very basic of mobile home, now called Chad, is exactly that....basic. We have all the normal rooms that come with a house its just our kitchen, lounge, bedroom, garage and loft are all rolled into one small space. Oh yeah, and we have two bikes that go into the mixer as well now.
Go North
We decided to travel up the east coast and abandon our original thoughts of going south and then west on the basis that a few locals gave us some fair dikkum advice and told us it would be cold. We didn’t really like the thought of being cold and sitting out on a camp site in our rinky dink chairs freezing our bejesus’s off, so we threw in the towel and went with the flow, which is head north.
After Manly we took our first meaningful drive inland to the
Blue Mountains (Aussies own version of the Grand Canyon - which they say is bigger and older). They are not actually Blue but the view when you get there is a bit special and
Three Sisters
The Three Sisters feature in aboriginal culture so are a pretty big tourist spot. the abbo’s love the mountain range for their spiritual significance. It was a beautiful sunny day and hot too, but for our first night sleeping in the van it was freezing! We had our limited warm clothing on, a blanket over our chairs and tried to play cards and drink boxed wine to warm us up. This was not a good sign, it’s supposed to be warm people! Central heating came in the form of putting on another t-shirt. After a while we gave up, got in the van and said lets just go to bed. On checking the watch it was 8:45pm. We laughed. I was stunned. It felt like at least midnight as it was so cold and had been dark for ages. I said there was simply no way I could go to sleep at such a time and hadn’t been to bed so early for years. We were a sleep in ten minutes!
Drama, drama, drama!
The van needed some work doing on it from the previous owner’s trip. We were told
Newcastle was a pretty cheap place to get things done, so we headed up the coast, booked our Van in and had a
The Van - CHAD
As you can see CHAD is a spacious one room mobile apartment - modern living serving as bedroom, lounge and walk in wardrobe (for bathroom step outside) look around the town. To be honest, the Van didn't really want to go in for a good old service, as when the day arrived it developed a won't start/cutting out problem! After a row or two we broke down for the last time and had to call a tow truck. Then Chad seemed to take pity on our little wallets and out of nowhere started again. Tow truck cancelled, I drove, then Kat drove and as we had finally finished our rowing, it broke down again about five meters from the garage! Arrr! Anyway, it was apparently minor and 'no dramas' to fix. Chad had the overhaul and now is an absolute beaut!
It was in the garage for two full days so we had to make do in a small town called
Wallsend. It had a small plaza , a small high street and a Mcdonalds. We examined them all! Then all of a sudden Kat turned Hippy on me! She strolled out of Aldi with a guitar in a box under her arm. Not only do they sell cheap baked beans, crisps and apple juice but they have moved into guitars too. An orange guitar with
Newcastle
Stockton beach near Newcastle (20 second walk from our campsite) a teach yourself kit and sing a long songs such as Coom-Bye-Arr. I was in stitches and couldn’t believe she had bought it from Aldi but Kat just strolled past and said with a big smile
“I'm going to learn a new skill so there”. So for about two weeks she was in the van strumming away and now it hasn’t been out for a while!
Up the coast
After we got the van back we moved on up again to a few coastal towns. We stayed in
Port Macquarie over the Easter Weekend and then
Coffs Harbour on the Monday. We hired surfboards, took walks through the parks, chatted to fellow campers and Kat got poo’d on the head by an Eagle! I was like “wow an eagle” and all I heard behind me was “Eewwww”. It was a big poo and the bird obviously ate pretty well as it stank of fish. Kat had to make a hasty retreat to the shower.
We flew our kites on the deserted beach at Coffs, it was probably the best flying we had had since leaving the UK as it was mega windy with the sand whipping around your
ankles. The kite was a menace to handle and would throw you around. At one point we could do jumps and get catapulted along the sand a few meters. It was so much fun. We also played Bowls (which is huge over here) at the local club but we were so bad it was embarrassing. I was surprised as having played it once before (Beating Jenks in a close final on the best football pitch ever to played on next to the institute a few years back) and thought I would fly the flag for Pomie bowls, but I was crap.
Flower power & peace man
Next we moved on to
Byron Bay, described in the lonely planet as a mecca for backpackers, alternative therapies and thinking and surfers. As we rocked up, we were greeted by a guy playing the didgeridoo and then calling out “Look after the world people…..whats left of it” with other dudes, well Hippies all sitting around with tie die on and looking like they have never washed, nodding! We didn’t really know what to make of it and skulked off towards the beach. The beach is awesome! Great surf and the sea is
One corner
A great conversation spinner! Whatever! crystal clear. There were loads of people there but still it is undeniable. We then knew would like this place. Our campsite was great and close to town, we got friendly we a few people called Tom, Irja, Gemma and Polly and spent a few nights sitting up drinking Goon (Boxed Wine) or going out to the few local bars. On several occasions the campsite police were called out in their golf buggy as we were making a bit of noise and had got hold of illegal chairs after the 10pm curfew. Strewth he was mad.
We took bikes up to the Lighthouse and then walked along the trial to Australia’s most easterly point where the view was great and we saw dolphins playing in the surf and jumping really high out of the water. That was just awesome. We spent a few days on the beach and we did a bit of body surfing. We also watched as three dolphins came into bay and were swimming with the surfers. I played in a footie tournament on the beach while Kat checked out the shops. Our random team got beaten in the final of a round robin competition 2
The Van - CHAD
There is always an opportunity when living in CHAD to make good use of the massive outside space it usually comes with. -1. Booo but we got free beers that evening in a local joint called Cheeky Monkey’s. Basically a place where you can eat cheap, drink cheap and dance on the tables to cheesy rock tunes.
We left Byron (28 April) with very fond memories of this crazy little town and a liver a little worse for wear. Now it was onto the Gold Coast and into Queensland.
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