first road trip

Just back from our first proper aussie road trip. 1800km in 36 hours down to the other side of Esperance via Jenny's brother at Albany for an overnight stay. Weather off the southern ocean was cold and wet - just like a certain english summer - and we're still saddle sore even though Harry did all the driving. Esperance is as far east as civilisation reaches in western oz before you start crossing the nullabor plain....

Saw our first 'roos, one in the morning bounding along the verge, and 2 more after dark just stood there on the side of the road. Brings it home how dangerous they can be and you definitely need  a serious bull bar on the truck as they are big buggers.

Cloud started to break last night as we were driving back and even on a partial view the night sky is fantastic. for much of the drive we were the only light in sight - no other traffic, streetlights, farms, pubs, villages on the horizon, nothing. Stopped briefly to turn off the headlights and its the darkest i've ever know - even on safari there was still a glow from the camp.

stopped for a final fuel up near wave rock and as they were closing up they were giving away pies. And no, I didn't eat ALL of them. They are a bit like Gimlet's rat on a stick - definitely need ketchup.

Shipped luggage arrived on monday and we were able to pick it up tuesday morning after 24 hours waiting on customs, and australian bureaucracy is just as messed up as british - customs to shipping agent, back to customs, wait 24 hours, over to quarantine, back to shipping agent and then finally to the warehouse to collect. All in good nick, and ended up costing us about 6 quid a kilo. Daft thing is that it came in via singapore airlines the day after we did, so if they had a sensible pricing policy for additional luggage it could have come in with us and cleared customs without the running around. But they wanted £55 a kilo....

bought bikes on monday - Maria's was from cash converters for £140 - RST forks, shimano everything else, cable disks and alloy frame. I ended up buying the same make, next model up new for £300 - hydraulic brakes and rock shock forks, but wanted the larger frame, so not a bad price and i'll hopefully get about 1/2 back judging by prices at the swap meets.

oh, and we bought a rig....

5th Wheelers, caravans, swap meets...

the first 3 days in Perth have been full on. We have visited a number of caravan dealerships in Perth and a few private sales today, and now are even more confused than ever! We need to make a decision this week, so we're taking our trusty host (Harry) along tomorrow to show him what we've seen. We also visited a swap meet (boot fair) and markets today to check out the second hand stuff people have for sale. Some of it was in good nick, but most of it was crap - just like at home.

Tomorrow we will also start to look at dual cab pick-ups, 4WDs, generators, portable fridge freezers, bicycles, etc. the list goes on. I think a visit to 'Cash Converters' may be on the cards.

And to top it all off, a slight Aussie twang has started to creep into my speach already... Oh dear...

They let me in!!!!

Cleared immigration and customs with no questions or rubber gloves. Told them I had some pocket knives which they said they had to inspect, and the inspector kindly lent me his own to cut the wrapping off the chav bag, and still got out of the airport faster than we usually manage at Gatwick. 10 minutes from the airport with a scouse cab driver and woke jenny up with the doorbell

A glorious day in Perth - blue skies, bright sunshine and 22c - I was wandering around in shirtsleeves laughing at the locals in coats, scarves and bobble hats. I suspect the tables will turn as we go north and I turn into a grease spot as the temperature rises, but we'll deal with that as it happens. And buy a van with aircon....

Harry has bought us a load of caravan and truck advert magazines (plain brown wrapper optional)  and been through them with a red pen, and we start in earnest tomorrow with the Perth dealers. Having bored everyone on the subject for months it will be interesting to see how much of my thinking has been complete bollocks.

halfway there...

6 hours to kill at Changi airport, so we're going to choose to sit in an airline style seat for 2 hours and watch a screen in front of us....free movie theatre

final house packing was a bit manic, but everything fit and we finished cleaning with seconds to spare. I can now state from extensive personal experience:

Cif power cream is good
Mr Muscle is crap
Ovenpride is vicious...and viscous

and you don't realise how big your house is until you have had to carry it all down the garden in the rain, and then hoover every square foot of carpet. Repeatedly. Thanks to Gary, Johnnie, John and Philip for helping with the big stuff.

Tenants should move in on Saturday, so its all worked out well so far. Just waiting for them to break stuff and make us pay to fix it....

Dole scum...

Finished working for a living as of last night, so i'm now a gentleman of leisure. Still didn't manage to sleep in any later, and a crappy grey day didn't help, but tomorrow I can go out for a ride without feeling like I'm sloping off. Going laundry-bag shopping in woolwich market like a proper pensioner - all i need now is to hold up the queues at sainsbury's tills buying 1 tin of catfood every day

3 Weeks to go…

And still lots to do. Week 1 of my ‘retirement’ was largely spent emptying my study. The desk and contents have now been removed and looks as though it never existed. Mark will start on his this weekend as he officially finishes work next week. All 7 wardrobes have now been sorted and contents either vacuum packed (into approx a 1 metre cube – not including ski gear), sent to the local charity shops or still in use and will be packed to take to Oz in 3 weeks time. Mark has been busy the last few days with cleaning the lounge suites so they can be packed away nice and clean. They haven’t been done for a while, and even though they still look the same, the cleaning water told a different story! I’ll make a start on the contents of the dining room next. All that glass ware – could be interesting. This’ lady of leisure’ lark beats working for a living.

Never looked so tidy....

House has gone up with a local estate agents (KFH.co.uk) and has never looked so clean and tidy, thanks to strategically chosen camera angles and hiding piles of stuff behind the photographer. Now we just need to keep it that way for viewings....

Lovely six bedroom family house to rent located close to transport and Greenwich park.

• Three reception rooms
• Two bathrooms
• Modern kitchen
• Private garden
• Garage
• Unfurnished

Local authority

Greenwich London Borough Council

• 6 bedrooms
• 2 bathrooms
• 3 receptions
• Furnished, Unfurnished, Part furnished

Nearest stations

• Westcombe Park (0.3 miles)
• Maze Hill (0.64 miles)
• Charlton (0.75 miles)