Toowoomba, Wk 1, 2011

August 22^nd, We packed up and drove to Toowoomba, planning to stay at the Big 4 Caravan Park. Because the Flower Festival was only a few weeks away, they couldn’t give us a site, for a long period, but they rang another Park for us and found out that The Jolly Swagman could accommodate us. We booked in on a weekly basis, with the first 2 nights on their drive through site then onto a permanent site for as long as we needed, which is an unknown. This worked out well, as I was given a glowing recommendation for a local Caravan Repairer who would quote on our Van repair to-morrow and being on a drive through site I didn’t have to unhook the car from the Van. After hooking up the power and water I tried to tune in the TV, but to no avail. No signal was being received. I unpacked our 2^nd TV, which I had bought from Coles when we saw them on “Special”, back at Bateau Bay. It is a digital ready model, so doesn’t need the separate set top box. I connected it up, tuned it in and we had perfect reception, so after checking all my cables it was obvious that the old HD Set Top Box had “karked it”.

August 23^rd, I dropped Val off at Spotlight and took the Van out to “Trail-a-Van” to get things started on a quote to repair our Caravan damage. After a look and a few quick photos, they will prepare a quote and send it to the NRMA Insurance for approval. It’s now just a matter of waiting till we hear from them. The young fellow at Trail-a-van recommended Superior Springworks, in the next street, to fix my rear suspension problem on the Territory, as they did all that sort of work on their vehicles. The quote for the car was $340, to replace both rear suspension coil springs with HD long and it’s booked in at 8am on the 31^st August. I picked up Val from Spotlight and on the way home we checked out the local, Federal Hotel, and decided to have dinner there to-night. We walked across the road to “Big Dads Pies” and had takeaway pies and chips for lunch, back at the Van. They were really good pies. It was only a 2 minute walk from our Caravan Park to the Pub, the $11 meals where great but the Pokies weren’t good to Val.

August 24^th, I dropped Val at The Grand Central Shopping Centre, in the CBD, while I went to Centrelink to put in my paperwork. Parking is impossible, every street, laneway and back alley has Parking Meters and I had absolutely no money on me. At Centrelink I found a 10minute parking space and was in Centrelink for at least 30 minutes, so I was a little stressed, worrying about getting fined. When I got back to pick up Val, I had the same parking problem. I couldn’t drive into their car park as the boat was on top of the car, so I rang Val’s mobile, numerous times, without an answer, while driving around the streets looking for a place to park without meters and you can understand the level of frustration I was feeling by now! Finally Val answered her phone and I picked her up and went home for a couple of Chardies. When I checked Val’s phone, somehow the ring setting had been accidently changed to buzz only, so I soon fixed that.

August 25^th, I took the boat off the car and unloaded most of the gear from the back. Two reasons for this, I wanted to be able to drive into underground car parks and Scott, at Superior Springworks, wanted to check the unloaded height of the back of the car, so that he could make sure he selected the correct springs for the rear suspension. After I got back from Superior Springworks, we walked down to the Information Centre just down the road from the Caravan Park. We browsed around and picked up some brochures on local sites and events, had a free coffee and walked back home.

August 27^th, The weather has been good since we arrived in Toowoomba, with the temperature being kept down by a cool breeze, until last night. The rain caught up with us and this morning it was quite a sight to look out a see the air was white with, what I can only describe as “sleet”. Something I had never seen before and very cold.

August 30^th, The weather has been controlling our activities. We have had a good day , then a wet day, sunny day etc, so in between we have filled in time with a few repairs around the Van. I cleaned up my boxes in the back of the car and put a lot of stuff in the bin. The painted base of the table was an eyesore, the chipped and worn areas had Val complaining for a long time now. So I dismantled it all, cleaned up and painted the base, then to stop the base being damaged by our feet I cut a circular piece of carpet and glued it in place. I am very happy with the finished job and it met with Val’s approval.

August 31^st, I took the car into Superior Springworks at 8.30am and waited while they fitted the new heavy duty coil springs, into the rear suspension of the Territory. I’m very satisfied with the finished job, the back is well clear of the tyres now.  Scott pointed out that one rear tyre was badly worn on the inside edge and needed replacing. When I got back home I thought that I would replace the worn tyre with the spare and put that problem aside till later. Not a chance, the spare was as bad as the worn tyre, so now I’m up for 2 new tyres. We did a bit of shopping after lunch and stopped off at the Federal Hotel for a flutter, on the way home, and came home $120 in front.

Killarney, Warrick 2011

August 18^th, We left Evans Head this morning after Val bought herself $20 worth of prawns with her Co-Op voucher. We stopped off in Ballina to do some shopping before heading for Killarney, famous for its great waterfalls. It was featured on one of the Travel Shows on TV and looked well worth a visit. We stopped in Kyogle and had a very nice lunch at Dave’s Bakehouse. The “so called” highways from Kyogle to Killarney were atrocious, narrow, windy and so broken up in places that, at one stage, Val thought her head was going to leave her shoulders. We drove into Killarney to the Pub to pick up some wine and I pulled into a street parking spot only to find that I was too long and blocking the driveway to their carpark. There was plenty of room in the Pub’s carpark so I turned in and the Van mounted the gutter and, unseen by me, collected a cast iron street garbage bin that was concreted into the ground, which gouged a split in the aluminium wall of the Van, from about 1/3 from the front down to nearly the door, ripped of the wheel arch dress pieces. We discovered later that the wall had been broken right through in some places, that was when Val looked into her shoe cupboard and could see outside. You can imagine how upset we both were. We bought our wine and put $20 through their Pokies, without any joy, then drove out to the Queen Mary Falls Caravan Park and booked in for 2 nights. I had a bit of trouble getting the Van unhitched and noticed that the body of the car was sitting down on the rear RH side. I had to jack the car up to get it free from the Van. Looks like I’ve got a suspension problem to deal with to-morrow. When Val went into the Van she found a lot of things stored on the bunks had been bounced onto the floor and her “Turbo Oven” bowl was smashed into pieces. To top our day off, when I tried to get TV I found no signal for digital and unwatchable picture on analogue. Luckily we had some DVDs to watch. We won’t forget our trip to Killarney, in a hurry. We hung our thermometer outside and last time we checked, it was 3 deg.C, BRRR!

August 19^th, Val woke up at 8am, gasping for breath and realized that her breathing machine was not running. We had a widespread power “blackout” in the area that lasted till 1pm. I rang in a claim on our NRMA Insurance, for the damage to the Van and replacement of the Turbo Oven, so now we need to obtain a quote, with photos, to complete the process. We drove into Killarney Township to do some shopping and I took the car to a local mechanic to get an assessment on the rear suspension. He couldn’t find anything broken and told me the coil springs had collapsed and need to be replaced with long “heavy duty” springs. We are leaving in the morning so that will have to be fixed at our next long stay. We stopped on our way back to look at Dagg’s Falls, which were very good. We sighted a couple of small Kangaroos on our trip back to the Park and this area is full of all types of birds. I walked down to see the Queen Mary Falls while Val put away the shopping and started preparing dinner. It was starting to get very chilly out but the view at the Falls was spectacular. The nights were very cold here so we had to get out our fan heater to warm up the Van. We had been told by the Manager, that there was a Caravan Repair place at Warwick, only 43klms away.

August 20^th, We packed up and drove to Warwick and our 1^st stop was the Information Centre, only to find that there wasn’t a Caravan Repair place in this Town. As it was Saturday and nothing could be done till Monday, as far as repairs to our vehicles, so we decided to stay in Warwick and have a look around. We looked over 2 Caravan Parks and decided to stay at the Kahler’s Oasis (Big 4).

August 21^st, It was raining steadily all morning and Val’s head cold had freshened up again. While waiting for the rain to stop, I picked out a few sightseeing places that looked interesting. There wasn’t a lot of things open on a Sunday. The 1^st was Australiana Park and when I got there it was only a Playground Park with a football Oval. I went on to Rosenthal Lookout, which was a 2 story tower with a viewing platform a fair way from the Town Centre. When I went to climb the Tower steps I found the gate was welded closed, so I assumed that they didn’t want anybody to have access. I was now getting a little dejected, but carried on to have a look at the Queens Park Rose Gardens. When I got to Queens Park I actually drove past the Rose Gardens without seeing them. It was a large Park, with another Football Oval and picnic/BBQ areas bordered by the Condamine River. On the way back around the Park I came across the Rose Garden. Have a look at the photo below and you can see how I missed seeing little stalks sticking out of the garden beds. On that note I headed home and the rain started up again. We leave for Toowoomba in the morning.

Evans Head, August 2011

August 4^th, Arrived in Evans Head, mid afternoon and booked into The Silver Sands Holiday Park. We have an ensuite site for 2 weeks. This used to be run by the Council and was the cheapest Caravan Park in NSW that we had come across. It is now owned by The Lands Department and the prices are up! Up! Up! $38/night, without a discount. Val rushed next door to the Bowling Club, while I was setting up, to get the weeks activities and naturally, have a flutter.

August 5^th, After doing our washing in the morning, we walked into Town to find out what had changed. A few shops had closed, including “Farmer Charlie’s” but they have a good sized IGA Supermarket and a very large Soul Patt’s Chemist. We checked out the local Hotel and the RSL before walking back home. This is such a small place that you very rarely have to use the car.

August 6^th, We decided that this was a good place to start doing a daily walk, for exercise. We set off after lunch and walked around the Park and along the Riverfront, which took 45 minutes, so not a bad start. We did see another camper who had been out fishing in his tinnie and his clamp on wheels, were fitted with wheelbarrow wheels. What a great idea, so now my project is to do the same. The small wheels on my clamp on set bury themselves in the sand and make it very difficult to get the boat out of the water on a sandy beach.

August 8^th, We went into Ballina today, I had to visit Centrelink and then we wandered around all the shops at Ballina Fair. I also left Val at the Shopping Centre and went to Bunnings, looking for wheelbarrow wheels. It was a very small Bunnings and I was told it was cheaper to buy a new wheelbarrow than to buy a replacement wheel, at around $60ea. I tried 2 other places for wheels and no luck, so gave up. I priced a piece of toughened black glass, for the stove lid and found the glass was only $40 but $110 for the painting. It’s a minimum charge for the painting process. Looks like I may have to think of something else for the stove lid.

August 9^th, Val’s head cold flared up again, so while she kept out of the cold breeze I put a fishing rod together and went for a fish, up river near the bridge. It was low tide, but I was happy when I hooked a 33cm Bream, which Val enjoyed for dinner.

August 10^th, We walked to the Bowling Club for their meat raffle, dinner at the Chinese restaurant and a flutter. We had an enjoyable meal, but came home empty handed.

August 11^th, I got up early and went fishing, to same spot near the bridge, but couldn’t get a decent bite. I decided to try the sandy side of the river, just opposite, as it looked like an ideal spot for flathead and the tide was running out. I couldn’t find a flathead but was happy to take home a 28cm Bream.

August 13^th, Went fishing again this morning but no luck. I drove down to the Co-Op to check out the wharf area, as a possible fishing spot. It’s alongside their Trawler Boat Harbour and looked promising. I chatted to a local that was in the area and he gave me some tips on fishing the river, but pointed out the best time to fish from the Co-Op wharf was when the fishing boats are working, which isn’t now. I might give it a go anyway one morning, once again I was told not to use a sinker to fish there.

August 15^th, It was high tide at 9am, so off I went, rod in hand to try fishing at the Co-Op wharf. After an hour and no bites, I decided that this was a waste of time, so I packed up and went to the old boat ramp and threw in a line. This was better, I caught a couple of 24cm Bream to throw back. Still not overjoyed, I moved down to the new boat ramp, which has a small floating wharf. Not a lot happening here either, until 12 o’clock and a string of Cruiser sized boats came in and each revved their motors getting up onto their trailers and in the process churned up the water along with the fish waste off the bottom. Fish came from everywhere and the bites were on. Lots of small fish but I caught a 30cm Luderick (on cooked prawn) and a 37cm Bream that gave me an exciting fight and I was feeling WOW when I landed it. I hadn’t heard back from Concept Caravans, I sent them a help email a week ago asking for advice with 2 problems. I haven’t been able to properly fill the water tank in the Van as it just kept blowing back, no matter how slow I ran the hose. 2^nd problem was the flow of mains water through the sink tap was down to less than half. So, after a late lunch I decided to look at the pressure reducing valve at the water connection. It was the easiest thing to get to, so I pulled it apart, flushed it out and re-assembled it. Success, the flow was now back to normal. When I checked the emails to-night there was a reply from Concept, with a suggestion that possibly water had collected in the vent tube and that their Plumber would follow up with suggestions for my 2^nd problem, which I have already fixed.

August 16^th, I received the Concept Plumber’s email and he gave me a list of potential problem areas. I got stuck into the blocked vent tube problem, crawled under the Van, dropped the tank and disconnected the vent tube from the tank. No water in the tube, so I blew through the tube with my 12v tyre pump and something shot out of the vent outlet, like a bullet, and went onto the grass. No chance of finding the foreign object, so re-assembled everything and filled the water tank without any problem, hooray! I should have fixed these problems ages ago, instead of letting it annoy me for the last 6 months.

August 17^th, Packed up, ready to leave in the morning. We walked to the Bowling Club for raffles and a flutter. Val won a meat tray, a $20 voucher for the Fish Co-Op and another $20 voucher for the Club, but because we were leaving in the morning, the Barman simply gave Val $20 cash for her voucher. A great result for the raffles but no luck on the pokies. We will spend the Co-Op voucher as we leave in the morning.

Brisbane, July 2011

July 29^th, Arrived in Brisbane and booked into Brisbane Gateway Holiday Resort for the week-end. After setting up, we headed over to Brian (Val’s Brother), Julies, Nigel and Rebecca’s for Pizza and to see their new house at Mount Cotton. We were very impressed, a very modern, spacious 4 bedroom brick home with a large outdoor entertaining area and a double garage, that is set up to be the man’s place, with TV, 2 comfortable reclining lounge chairs and a bar. Every man’s dream. Sophie was a little shy of us to start but soon warmed to having us help her with her drawings. We had a belated joint exchange of Birthday Presents for Val and Brian. We gave Brian a Jacket and a T-shirt and Brian’s family gave Val an Electric Wok. She was very excited and promised us a Stir Fry on Sunday night to christen the new Wok.

July 30^th, To-day got off to a very bad start. My WiFi modem stopped working so I decided to use the free WiFi connection available at the Resort. All was going well until I decided to look at my Telstra account and it was $692.86. I had changed my phone and wireless internet and this was my first full account with my new set-up. The mobile phone charges were as expected but the internet charge was $605. I was floored, can’t possibly be right, so I went searching through the online account only to find that the area in question had no data available. Only 28 calls at $590.34 and $49 for another mobile, which I assume is my old internet connection that was cut off, so I thought. I have to wait until Monday to sort this problem out with the Telstra Business Centre in Coffs Harbour, where this was all set up. We all went to the Redlands Sporting Club for dinner and a flutter, to celebrate the joint Birthdays. The meals were excellent, the entertainment was great but Val and Nigel were the only winners on the Pokies.

July 31^st, The family arrived around 4pm and we enjoyed a few games of Table Tennis in the Games Room while Sophie was amused at the Play Centre. Val whipped up a chicken, pork and prawn stir fry, which was enjoyed by all. After saying our “good byes” and seeing the family off, I packed up ready to leave for Brunswick Heads in the morning.