Six weeks in… thoughts

Posted by efloow on July 30, 2015 in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

So here we are six week into the adventure and hopefully six weeks wiser. What have we learn’t so far?

• It is a long way between things. This one seems a bit obvious, but we now think nothing of driving for 500 or more kilometres in one day to get from one place to another. What makes it easier is that there is nothing between everything…. no delays and no traffic.
• The landscape is stunning. You really don’t have to drive very far for a change in scenery, and remain by how captivating it is. Deserts, forests, escarpments, gorges, folded mountain ranges, lakes and rivers with and without water. The hardest thing is trying to capture it with the camera. It is usually so vast that you can only get a slice that gives so little idea of how impressive it really is. We truely live in an amazing part of the world!
• Grey nomads are everywhere. I had not really realised what an industry ‘grey nomading’ is. They are everywhere. As evening approaches, every road side parking spot that has a loo, the so called free camping, are jammed packed full of caravans. I suspect that this is something to do with it being peak nomad season up here. We have been told that they will all disappear as soon as it gets warmer.

• Caravan parks are to be avoided. This is the natural habitat of the Nomads and Britz vans live. They either have their satellite TVs on too loud late or as a tourist in a Britz van, they are unaware of camping etiquette (more on this later). You need to camp at the end of a hazardous dirt road to filter the crowds.
• School as a teacher is just as hard as being the pupil. I am only a bystander to this, but I can hear the exasperation in Sarah as she tries to “distance educate” her occasionally reluctant pupils. I suspect that they prefer being tourists, or a least rock climbing and swimming rather than a good comprehension or maths lesson. A byproduct of this is that I am getting better at my times tables!

  

• Hair washing, or not? For the record, this is not my problem! Sarah has gone all rustic and stopped using shampoo and conditioner. I am now well versed on the no shampoo theory of hair management and the virtues of soda bicarb and apple cider vinegar outside of the kitchen. After the initial horrors it seems to be fantastic! 

• Dust versus dirt. Dirt roads equals dust everywhere! It is now just part of life. I would never have believed it before, but you can be clean despite being dusty, it just doesn’t look that way. 

• There can never be consensus of how and where to park the van. This is well known. We have witnessed more than a few domestics on how and where to park or reverse the trailer. It can be quite a spectator sport. We must confess to driving around a few camp sites more the once trying to find that perfect spot and even bickering about it.
• Road trains are amazing. The thrill is still there, even after six weeks. They are still massive. They still make the car shudder. They still put our hearts in our mouths while trying to overtake them.

• There is always something to fix. I suspect that this is no different to home. Bikes, punctures, vans. I am surprised there is not more. A daly driving on corrugations shakes everything to its foundations.
• Bed time gets earlier and earlier. Rise with the sun is fair enough, but these days we seem to to going to bed earlier and earlier. All the walking and fresh air? Maybe the lunacy of the Western Australian time zone with sunrise at five thirty and sunset at five thirty is to blame?
• Camping etiquette…. rule one to ten is silence. This one may seem obvious when living in canvas in close proximity to your neighbours. Mostly everyone gets it, but every now and then it goes wrong. Music and partying are the obvious faux pas but shouting to the phone, personal conversations at full volume, banging doors, squeaky doors, TVs, packing up at 5am, and running your air conditioner on your Britz van all night are equally irritating.