The Journey Begins

Hi to all those reading this blog. 

We are well into our journey now as it is 12 Dec Wednesday and we have been on the road for 10 days. I shall go back to the beginning.

We left Fremantle on Sunday, Dec 2, and had our first night at Boondi Rock, roadside camp 523 km from Perth. then we had the trek across the Nullarbor for 2 more nights. We averaged 500 - 600 km per day travelling at 90km per hour. I must add that Reece has done ALL the driving and we have done over 3000km so far. Reece celebrated his 62 birthday at Tailem Bend where we had 2 nights. He spent most of the morning doing some work on the hot water system, changing the anode! then we had a long drive to Meningie and along the Coorong. You will have to check your maps to see where we are. the Coorong is a really long stretch of water like a lagoon and looks great coz there is so much bird life after the recent floods. Reece cooked a yummy roast beef on the BBQ for dinner and of course some nice champagne. The caravan site was right on the river.Tailem Bend was a busy town as it is on the highway to Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide. Meningie was a much prettier town, and would have been better to stay there. 

Next stop was Boort, Nth West Vic. This was great as we visited on old friend of Di Morrison, Marilyn who is a farmers wife and started a business called Simply Tomatoes. when they bought the property many years ago, they grew heaps of tomatoes and sold the crop to Kraft, but now she picks an acre of green tomatoes and makes really delicious chutney. She sells all over Australia and also into the Middle East.She also has a business where she makes woollen bed underlays and doonas, our beds are more comfy as we bought the underlays from her. we then went on to see Mr Spannerman. this chap makes the most amazing pieces of work all out of spanners which he welds together. They are really speccie.

Fabulous drive through very big dairy country Tongala, and camped on the Golburn River. which brings us up to yesterday when we arrived here at Julie and Ian Dodds place at Barnawartha, near Wodonga in Victoria. Cousin Ian had just returned form work flying the qantas plane back from Bangkok  The farm is in a pretty valley which looks very dry now, but the garden here is a delight. i am sitting on the back deck listening to the sprinkler click away, the birds singing, the 5 chooks wandering around, sun shining. it is beautiful. We are camped right near the vegie patch which Julie has got growing very well. So lovely to be here with them. We collected Jake, now 12, from school in Albury. he has got really tall. He finishes school tomorrow the holidays.  We had some champagne and a beautiful leg of lamb that Doddsy cooked on the Webber. Jake loves his tennis so after dinner he challenged Doddsy to a game on the court here. it doesn't get dark until 9pm as they have daylight saving. Tonight Matt comes down from Sydney . He has some leave  from the Navy before he starts at ADFA in Canberra.   

I hope this isn't too boring . 

I hope I will get better as time goes on. We leave tomorrow and will be at Shoalhaven Heads on Saturday.

Now I will attempt to attach some photos.

Love Penelope