Saturday, August 29, 2009

VMS Replaced Today

We have been having trouble with the in car navigation system we purchased 6 months ago. I went and had the system replaced today and so far, so good!
The guys at Olbis have excellent service and woud not hesitate to recomend them to anyone.

PS This is being blogged from my iPhone!

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Birdsville And Back !

We have now completed the shakedown trip to Birdsville and back. Tracey and I had a great time and everything went really well. The van was perfect and no major breakages occurred which is good news.

After getting an early start on the Saturday morning we did a full days travelling to a free camp at Morven. We set up in the rest area and as we were having a beer a fellow came up and informed us that the showgrounds had hot showers and power for a donation. Oh well, live and learn I guess!

The next destination was a free camp at J C Hotel Ruins about 30km from the turnoff to Birdsville. This left us with a reasonably short run on the third day to Birdsville. We had the whole of the camp site at J C to our selves and enjoyed staying out in the desert in the silence. The picture on the right is the Ruins site.


The run into Birdsville was all dirt road, the Birdsville Developmental Track is in pretty good condition. The drive was great and we got into Birdsville about lunch time and proceeded to the Pub to have a few cold ones! We stayed at the Birdsville Caravan Park for $25 a night. All the amenities were great and the sites were good as well.
During our stay a Birdsville we went to the Working Museum, Big Red and had a curried Camel pie at the bakery. We went for a drive to the edge of the Simpson desert and drove the Patrol up Big Red as last time we were there we only did Little Red. So this time we made sure we got the right hill!!

All in all a great time at Birdsville.
On the way home we stayed at Mungallala next to the pub there for $11 the night. Decided to have a pub meal and a couple of drinks. Next stop home was at Windorah and a camp spot on the banks of the Cooper Creek. This was a great spot where once again we had a camp spot all to ourselves. The following day was home!

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Off To Birdsville !!!

It's been a while since I have updated our blog. Not much has been happening, we have done a couple of short trips in the van to Stanthorpe and generally getting used to the features of our new home.

We are heading off on our "Shakedown" trip to Bridsville. Birdsville is near the Queensland, South Australia and Northern Territory borders and is approx 1600 Km West of Brisbane. We will take 3 days to get there with the Kedron in tow.

The trip will serve as a learning experience as to how we will be able to handle the distance and more importantly the dirt stretch of road at the end of the trip, about 200 Km of it!

Looking forward to seeing how the car and the van goes.