Townsville (part II)


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Oceania » Australia » Queensland » Townsville
September 9th 2012
Published: September 9th 2012
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Wow, amazingly our time in Townsville has already come to an end! After seven weeks, it feels very strange to be hitting the road again tomorrow. I’m surprised to be feeling both excited (more adventures, yay!) and apprehensive (living in a van does come with its drawbacks). What I’m very aware of is how quickly we adapt to new circumstances, so we’ll probably have settled comfortably back into our hippy lifestyle within a week. I will seriously miss having a bathroom across the hallway though! Back to weeing in the wild and having a shower every other day… and getting used to having bloodthirsty mosquitoes around. Dean says he is going to miss standing upright when he gets out of bed and not bumping his head on the van ceiling of the van.

Aside from all the comforts that we all so easily take for granted, we are really going to miss our friends Tracey and Jason! THANKS SO MUCH to you both for being so welcoming and having us. You guys are amazing and we hope to get back together again soon. PS. we will also miss your awesome cooking skills, Tracey. That quinoa salad is to die for!

We will miss Loki very much too. He’s gorgeous! As much as I want us to get our own dog, I realise it really isn’t compatible with our lifestyle… and it probably wouldn’t be very good for our relationship either. When Tracey and Jason were both down in Victoria for a long weekend, darling Loki followed me everywhere - including into the bathroom - and snuggled up in the centre of our bed most nights. I’m not sure how Dean felt when he woke up to me spooning the dog, haha!

Tomorrow I will have my last dog walking session with Toro, the chiwawa. Against all odds, I have grown quite fond of him and really enjoyed our walks. I plan to keep up the dog walking, so have printed a big stack of pamphlets and designed a dog-walking-tshirt so that people can approach me while I’m out and about.

A propos tshirts: after losing yet another merino wool top, I have invested in some custom iron-on labels with my name and telephone number. I WILL NOT lose any further favourite items!!

During our time in Townsville, I have thoroughly enjoyed getting stuck into my yoga and visiting the same studio regularly. I discovered, to my surprise, that I have been practising yoga ten years ago; and I’m loving it as much as ever. Dean has been getting his regular exercise just by going to work. Manually unloading and reloading 15-20 tonnes of truck tyres is no mean feat and my boy looks fantastic, having lost 6kg! I’m loving the flat stomach – keep it up Deano! My work has been rather more sedate. After hurting my back during a cleaning shift, I worked in the recruitment agents’ office for several weeks. Sadly the WorkCover pay was abysmal so I have managed to earn negative dollars during our working stint here :-( The GP finally gave me the all-clear on Friday but I have no intentions of going back to physical labour work. I’m just not built for it. Although I thought that I had healed well, my back is really sore again today, presumably from carrying things out to the van.

The van is almost ready for our departure tomorrow. We have a new, larger solar panel (we lost the old one on our trip back from the dropzone a few weeks ago!), a small oscillating fan (we’re certainly going to need it!) and our aircon has been repaired (the mistake of driving through a flooded creek ended up costing us $200, but I still think we got off lightly).

Today was spent making the final touches to the van, washing & packing, and generally taking it easy. I had anticipated our last day being really hectic but it’s actually been really nice with a relaxed pace.

As we prepare to move on from Townsville, I suspect that we may need to adapt our travelling plans due to the climate in the northern parts of Australia. It’s already heating up (I got a really sore heat rash on my neck yesterday!) and, if it gets unbearable further north, we might just have to backtrack or speed up significantly. Only time will tell. I also hope to establish a good studying routine; something that I haven’t had an opportunity to do so far.


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