Underway… Hello to all our followers. First I must thank you all for you very kind words of support when we caught up face to face or online after our last trip in the ‘van. So don’t say you didn’t ask for this next round. Monday 16th of May, and we finally made it to the airport with bags packed, the house locked up, the bins out and most of all, Geoff’s cellar secured! The kit car is in its box in the garage, pretty much as it was delivered and although Geoff has faith that it will be that way when we return, Marg would not be unhappy if someone sneaked in and completed it so she would not have to put up with the gory story. Ok, we had our tickets and they said ... read more

We left you with our first impressions on our arrival in Karumba and a hint at the reason for the title of the last blog. It is true that the barramundi had largely left the area and I am told on very good authority (fishermen never lie do they?) that the barra’s will only ever be seen when the tides are very high - which was not the case when we were there. Nevertheless, we were in the Gulf and it is full of suicidal fish, so much so that in a couple of hours on the beach Geoff had landed 4 bream, 3 of which were well over the ‘keeping’ size. Margaret is very quick to tell everyone that I can even cause professional fishermen to fail when he is around, so those bream were ... read more

6th Blog I don’t think days have dates or names at 4.00 am especially in winter, but that was the time that we had to arise to get back to Alice Springs on Tuesday 22nd June. Tiger Airways got us back by 9.00 am (local) and our car was returned to us by a friend that lives in Alice Springs. It was not long before we had stocked up on a few things and were on our way back to Glen Helen resort to get the ‘van. The West MacDonnell’s are truly beautiful in the glow of a full sun and something that we remarked on being a very pleasant change from when we left a month previously. The original plan was to do some more camping in the back of the car at Palm Valley ... read more

There is only one photo of Coober Pedy as it was visually a pretty unremarkable town. We made a reasonably early exit from Coober Pedy and the kilometres rolled easily under the van as we headed for the Northern Territory and Uluru. Marg drove for a couple of hundred kms. before lunch and we finally got to the corner of the Stuart highway and Lassiter Highways. This is the location of Erldunda and the only habitation for 100’s of kms around. Erldunda is just a roadhouse that has caravan sites, camping sites and ‘motel’ accom - how lucky were we to have a caravan!! It was pretty busy in the caravan section as it is the place a lot of folk stop before doing the last 240kms into Yulara (village before Uluru) or conversely those who ... read more

We found a lovely campsite by the Darling River just out of Menindee and set up camp there. The river was the colour of very weak café latte and looked quite strange. There was a fire place and picnic table and SILENCE. Surprisingly there were hardly any flies. The mosquitoes were hungry, but a little ‘Bushmans’ helped that. There were no others at the campground which was set amongst big river gums. After lunch we set off to explore the area. Once again the road was dirt and bumpy. Saw the old Kinchega homestead. The station covered one million acres and ran 143,000 sheep. Heavens knows how and it is virtually dessert and a huge old woolshed which had seen six million sheep shorn over a century. The homestead was somewhat disappointing in that it was ... read more