Days 8 - 15

This last week has been absolutely manic!!

We left Brisbane on Tuesday after spending a fantastic three days with the Hartleys and catching up with Gerard's aussie rules footy mates. The morning we left Brisbane, Richelle from Ibuyeco called and asked if we could attend a park in Brisbane for a media conference regarding our trip. We arrived thinking maybe there would be one or two people there but it was pretty busy with camera crew, presenters, photographers, interviewers etc. It reminded me a little of our wedding day as we were asked to pose for numerous photos, walk along the river holding hands (!) and then to circle the car around the park so that they could take pictures of us driving and the exhaust pipe (just to clarify, the driving the car around the park bit didn't remind me of the wedding day, just the pictures really!) You will be relieved to hear that the Battered Fish behaved herself and I did not stall the car once!

We then headed off to drive to Fraser Island, praying that we would get there before dark so we could set up camp without the dingos finding us! For those of you who haven't heard of Fraser Island (where have you been!), it is an island stretching over 123 kilometres along the southern coast of Queensland and is inhabited by a pure breed of dingos! After picking up our permits, letting our tyres down for sand driving and crossing the ocean on the barge, it was about 4.30pm. We felt quite smug that we might for once set up in daylight as we were camping about 70 kms up the beach which we were told would take about an hour. After checking the tide times (you can only drive on the island in some places 2 hours either side of low tide and you are advised not to travel at all 2 hours either side of high tide), we found that we were three hours away from high tide. No problems we thought. Oh how wrong could we have been! The drive started off well, there was a beautiful sunset over the ocean, which we stopped to take pictures for. It suddenly started to get dark pretty quickly and we were having problems to distinguish washouts on the beach and shadows. Bang, a wave had crept up on us and hit us as we were about to cross a washout. Windscreen wipers on full pelt, we proceeded to then come across Eli Creek, a fast flowing stream where you can float down the creek to the ocean. There was, as we found out, a deep channel. The Battered Fish and the trailer survived but we were pretty scared. (I later found this advice on researching Eli Creek - "Take care when driving through the creek on the beach, as its fast-flowing water can gouge out deep channels. At high tide it's best to take a break and go for a swim until you can cross the creek at the lower end of the beach.") We made it to our camp site 2.5 hours later, bang on high tide and definitely not in the light!! We have made a pact to each other that we will never be as stupid as that again and drive in the dark in places we just don't know.

We woke up in the morning, as usual, intrigued to see where we had camped the previous night. We were in a fantastic shaded spot just back from the beach. I went fo a wander around and found the following notice "Snakes - you might not see them but they will see you. Be careful when walking and always wear sturdy boots." I looked down to see my flip flops (or thongs as the aussies call them) on my feet and walked back to the camp very slowly to change my footwear! Mum - don't worry, I didn't see any snakes in our whole 4 days there. We saw some fantastic sites on Fraser, from beautiful inland pools that are a turquoise colour fringed with startling white sands, to shipwrecks and rocky outlooks, and we were both sorry to leave after this time.

Other than the first nights drive, some funny incidents occured. On my wander around the camp on the first morning, I heard someone saying my name. I looked over and saw Rob, the instructor from our 4WD course, along with some other instructors on their "holidays". They invited us to tag along with them to go around the island. After the previous nights little "incident", we jumped at the chance and spent three wonderful days with them. They call themselves the "RoughIt in Style" club and I soon found out why. On our first drive with them, they asked over the UHF Radio if I liked champagne. I informed them that I am partial to a little and that night, we sat by the camp fire drinking champagne followed by port. What a life!! We became honouree "RoughIt in Style" people and will defiantly keep on channel 16 to see where they are in the future!

When we returned from one drive, we found some "fishos" had camped pretty close to us. I got our the car and was greeted with "G'day, how ya goin'" from one of them, to which I replied " Morning, yes, very well thank you." This same ritual went on each morning! We had a look at their camp and saw 8 cases of beer and one case of Jim Bean for four of them. We asked them how long they were staying as some people stay for weeks on end here. 10 days they replied!

We have now driven to Yeppoon, ready to go over to the Great Keppel Island tomorrow for some snorkeling. Gerard managed to pick up a further 40 litres of WVO from a fish and chip shop and Chinese restaurant in the town. We are running very low on veg oil after our little trip on Fraser with a trailer consumed far more oil than we thought. We will be on Great Keppel for three days and then heading inland to Emerald before heading up to Airlie Beach. If anyone has any WVO for us in these places, please send us an email and we will come and pick it up from you!!

Regarding the WVO, we are still having to filter by hand as the drill that we purchased to filter the oil is not powerful enough. It takes between 30mins - 8 hours to filter 20 litres of WVO, depending on the condition of the oil (if its fatty, it takes longer) and the state of the filters. Gerard is extremely patient!

Righty, the next time I blog will be in a few weeks as we will be out of communication for a while. Hope you are all well and enjoying work!

I have posted some photos of fraser island, our camp and the roughit in style gang!

Rach and Ged x

Days 1 - 7

"When will you be ready to go", I demanded of Gerard for the 7th time that day. It was Monday 12th May and today was suppose to be D-Day for our long awaited trip. But as per usual, there were a few "things" that still had to be finalised before we could go, "things" that I did not understand about and definately "things" that I did not understand why they were taking so long. "I will not leave today if we leave after 12.00" I shouted, " I do not want to be setting up camp in the dark." Gosh I had become a nagging wife!

At precisely 2.30, we left. First destination was Stockton Beach, which was about 3 hours North of Sydney. We chugged into Stockton (literally, yet more problems with the Battered Fish which we are hoping will be resolved with time!) and stopped in the entrance to let our tyres down to drive on the sand. 5.45 we were ready to rock and roll - only problem, it was dark and we had no idea where we should set up camp. The advice from a local "fisho" that we found wading in the sea was "camp anywhere along the beach, just make sure it is above high tide mark." Where precisely was the high tide mark I thought and great advice, seeing as the beach is 32 kms long. I jumped back into the Battered Fish and told Gerard to find a clearing in the dunes to camp. Reverse parking the trailer up a dune and down the other side in the dark was fun!! We went to bed that night with a totally clear night full of stars and the sound of the surf pounding the shore - it was perfect.

We woke up in the morning excited to see where we had set up camp the previous night! We were not disappointed, the beach was totally desrted as far as the eye could see and it was a beautiful morning. We spent two fantastic nights camping on the beach, totally remote from anyone or any facilties. The camper trailer even survived a huge thunderstorm one afternoon. We were wondering during the storm how safe we were as we were in the middle of a beach in a camper trailer with metal poles - maybe best not to think about it!

Our next scheduled stop was to be Ballina - about 600kms from Stockton. However, we made an unexpected stop into Coffs Harbour due to a few "instances" - the ones of note being the handbrake breaking on the camper trailer and the Battered Fish not going above 1600 revs after we had stopped at road works. Ho hum!!

We eventually arrived in Ballina - ah, Ballina - what a beautiful spot. A gorgeous coastal town where the river meets the sea. We camped in a fantasitc place about 5kms out of Ballina on a beach called Flat Rock. Each night we would light up a camp fire and sit back in our chairs looking at the stars with the surf pounding in the background. Again, we were extremely spoilt to be in such a beautiful location. From Ballina, we made a day trip to Byron Bay and Cape Byron, where we walked to the lighthouse and to the famous Watagoes beach, which is millionaire row. The houses on the beachfront were breathtaking. Mental note - need to work harder, a lot harder, to be able to afford something like this!

By the time we were ready to leave to head towards Brisbane, it was time to find some waste veg oil to fuel the Battered Fish. We had not been having much success on the way up to Ballina in regards to getting WVO from shops as we have found that most shops have contracts with people who turn the WVO into biodiesl. We had been rejected about 12 times when Gerard went and asked in a fish and chip shop in Lennox Head - bingo - we were given 20 litres of WVO. That then followed by success in Mi Thai in Lennox Head, who said we could take as much of the WVO as we like. That evening, Gerard spent the evening filtering the oil which is a long process, especially as he did not have a pump to pump the WVO through the filter and had to do the process by hand. Me on the other hand had a lovely evening toasting marshmallows in front of the camp fire!

We are now in Brisbane for the next 3 nights where we are catching up with some of Gerard's aussie rules football mates and doing yet more minor tweakes to the Battered Fish and the camper trailer.

We have seen some major icons of Australia - the big banana, the big prawn and the totally unclassless Surfers Paradise!! Fraser Island is our next stop on Tuesday.

I have added a few photos of where we have been staying and some of the places we have visted along our way.

Hope you are all well and keep us posted with your news.

Rach and Ged x

We are still in Sydney!!!

Before I begin with why are are still in Sydney, I learnt a new "O" at the weekend -"houso" - meaning a person who lives in Social Housing accommodation. I really am getting down with the local lingo now (remember, if in doubt, add "O")!

Over the weekend, we went on a Vic Widman 4WD course about 3 hours South West of Sydney. We packed up the camper trailer with all our camping gear, filled up the dual fuel tanks and off we went to camp for the first time. On the way down, we decided to test out the rear fuel tank which holds 180 litres of fuel. We could not understand why it was averaging about 3kms per litre until we got out of the car at our camp site and the stench of diesel was gut renching. It had leaked diesel all over the back of the car, all over the camper trailer and we are guessing all over the road. Great - another problem with the Battered Fish. We ploughed on and set up camp - by this stage, it was past 9pm so we set up the camper trailer for the first time using the Battered Fish's driving lights (at least they worked!!). Not bad for the first effort - about 1 hour.

I had been warned before we went that when you go inland in Australia at this time of year, it could get cold. When Australians say this to you, you think they mean about 15 degrees as even now, they wear scarves and coats when I am in shorts and a t-shirt. However, this time, they were right - we woke up with frost outside!! I ran to the camp kitchen to have a coffee to warm up and found out that I needed a 20c coin to work the stove. Would you believe it that the only coin that I did not have was a 20c coin!

By the time I had gone to get change, we were running late and still had to pack up the trailer. 45 minutes later, we were on the road to go to our course. When we pulled up at the course, I did a quick scout around and all I could see were brand new 4WD's. I later found out that the Battered Fish was the oldest car by a few years!! However, she did not let herself down. We tackled river crossings, sand driving, steep corrugated hills and forest drives - everything was done very slowly but we managed everything, even the steepest of hills. The instructors thought the "big white shed" (as they called the Battered Fish) would be great for our trip which installed us with confidence after all the problems that we seemed to have encountered. On the Sunday, we were lucky enough to have one on one tuition with an instructor, Rob, who taught us how to drive the Battered Fish towing the camper trailer. The first challenge was to reverse the camper trailer into a camping spot. I "wasn't bad for a Shelia" according to Rob!!!!

We left the course Sunday evening after having a fantastic 3 days of 4WD driving. Not only did we learn so much about the car and what it is capable of, but yet again we met some fantastic people.

So, it was back at the mechanics on Monday morning where they tightened up a few hoses and drain points and so far, we have not encountered any further leakage problems. We then drove about one hour West of Sydney to have the car converted in order for us to be able to use waste vegetable oil on the journey. We picked the Battered Fish back up on Thursday evening and just to let all you cynics of veg oil out there know, the car is running brilliantly on veggie oil. Infact, we even got up to 120kmph in fourth gear!! The smell comning out of the exhaust is not too bad either - a distinct Nando's chicken smell at the moment!! A massive thanks to Fitian for doing the conversion and for all the effort he put in for getting us running on veggie oil.

Our D Day is now set for Monday so fingers crossed nothing goes wrong between now and then. First stop is still set for Stockton Beach.

For those lawyers amongst you, you will be pleased to hear that I have accepted a job at Corrs Chambers Westgarth. My start date is 19 January 2009!!

Take care everyone
Rach and Ged x

PS - Dotti and Steve - Bear and Rabbit, the mascots, are very much enjoying their trip! Photos will follow shortly.