On the road again...

Shrek and donkey off on another whirlwind adventure....you can guess which one is which

Collected the van from storage on Friday and towed it to Berry, about 130 km south of Sydney, then went back into the city on Saturday, and picked Sam and Gav up from the airport and handed them back their flat this morning.

We needed to restock the van and someone told us about a fruit and veg and meat place as we were driving down. Whole rib eye steak fillets for 8 bucks a kilo, so be bought 2 - cheaper than Woolworths chicken. At least it gives us an excuse to drink all that red wine we bought in the hunter valley :-)

We are starting to firm up our plans now for the next leg of the trip. We have abandoned the idea of going to Tasmania - its just too expensive to get over there. Makes crossing the English channel seem like a bargain. We are also not going to see Knees and Clive in south Australia as they will only be there visiting family for a couple of days, so we'll just meet up with them in WA. So, our itinerary looks a bit like this:

January - work our way round the south east coast toward Melbourne, with maybe a daytrip up to Canberra

February - a week or so around Melbourne, then up the coast via Adelaide for a few days, then a long haul inland to the underground opel mining town of Coober Pedy - famous from Priscilla.

March - back to the coast and a few days on the Eyre peninsular, then start heading west across the Nullabor again. When we get back to WA we want to spend a few days in Esperence on the south coast where we bought the rig - we saw it in winter and it was beautiful, so think it should be even better in late summer.

We then aim to get to Albany on the south west corner on maundy Thursday, leave the van and run up to Perth on Good Friday to see Jenny and Harry as that day is J's big 5-0. Knees and Clive fly into Perth on easter Saturday so we'll pick them up and shoot back down to Albany for a couple of days with them, and then on to Margaret River for a couple of days before being back in Perth for the joint 50th party on Saturday April 6th.

I'm exhausted just writing it :-)

Berry is about 40 km north of the bush fire that crossed the Princes highway south of Nowra (next town down) earlier in the week. We have not heard anything about that particular fire for a couple of days so assume its been brought under control, and there have been a couple of fairly heavy showers this afternoon, so hopefully that has helped the firefighters and it should all be sorted by the time we are ready to head on. This is just the start of the bushfire season, and I'm sure that we will be close to others in the coming months. All anyone can do is listen to the radio and react accordingly - planning to avoid them is an exercise in futility as they can break out pretty much anywhere at any time...Just make sure you have marshmallow handy if the worst comes to the worst.