AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY!

When we were at Tumbling Waters we received an email from our tenant in Grimsby unfortunately telling us that he had decided to give notice of leaving our property. Whilst this was not entirely unexpected, we were a little confused as to what to do!
We finally decided after much deliberating that we should take a 4 week trip back to the UK in order to see family and friends and also to renovate our property.
We only had a short time to book flights from Darwin but we reasoned with ourselves that this was the best time and place for us to leave Australia from as flights would be cheaper and also shorter in duration.
Conversations with other campers in the swimming pool soon organised a lift to the airport for an early morning flight and also our friends Adriana and Pete agreed to pick us up at the airport on return! All very good of the people we were camping with!
The date soon came round and we departed Darwin, en route to London, via Kuala Lumpur. The flights were comfortable and uneventful and we soon found ourselves in London, sorting out our hire car and then braving the terrible M25 traffic en route to our niece's house in Surrey. We suddenly realised that we had no internet access on our phones and that we had no real idea how to get to our Nieces house! By a series of lucky flukes and general good decisions we managed to get to the house and had a great time, seeing them and catching up on the years.



Saying goodbye to our beautiful Great Nieces,
on their way to school

After a great time with our Nieces family, we headed off to see Richard's sister Gillian and nephew Alex in Southend. It was so lovely to catch up with them as it has been 6 years since we have seen each other.
The following day, we headed up to our house in Holton le Clay via Lincoln to call in on Michael and Janet where we knew more of our relatives would be as they flew in from Dubai the day after we landed!!! it was just wonderful and amazing to see all our beautiful young relatives (who we haven't seen for a number of years! We left Lincoln after an hour or so and continued our journey to the house, admitting to each other that we were a little apprehensive about the condition of the property as we had not lived there for 8 years.

Our great friends Margaret and Tony, welcomed us back to Holton le Clay we are going to stay with them for a few nights, before collecting our provisions as we intend to campout in the house.

Many of our provisions came from Zoe and Glenn Martin, Pat and Steve Humphrey, Dave Thomas, Mike and Helen Lane, Edwina and Paul and Alison Hansen, all of these beautiful friends, gave us beds, kettle, fridge, airbed, bedding, camp chairs and a TV.....not too mention feeding both of us! their help and assistance in the work needed on our house was invaluable, it is something we will never forget and probably will not even be able to repay.

Margaret and Tony joined us on our first visit to the house and we were all pleasantly surprised as to how good the place seemed to be. It needed a little updating and decorating but we soon had a plan hatched to sort the place out.
We enlisted the services of a Real estate agent who advised us how to prepare the property for re rental and so we set about decorating and renovating!
Our first Saturday night in England and we had informed so many people that we would be at the Jug and Bottle for anyone who would like to see us!!! Well it was so busy but, it became even busier when lots of our friends, ex colleagues turned up.
Sue Bird, Paul and Sally Holmes, Steve Allen, Judith and Malcolm Towle, Pam Fyfe, Brian Chappell and our first sighting of the Hansen family who were on their way to Alison's Dad's 80th birthday party... A very emotional time. Richard always sheds a few tears!!

 

Various photos of the house as we fixed it up

 



 

We soon left the comforts of Margaret and Tony's, as they had more important visitors to put up, mainly their daughter Linsey, Adam and two gorgeous granddaughters from Singapore. How lucky were we to be there and catch up with them all? 

 

A night in Derbyshire with the family was undertaken and we just wished we could stay longer, but, we did all meet up again.

 

Fun in Derbyshire, with, Sam, Lila, Seren,
Fina and Sylvie

 



More FUN



Molly



 

We visited relatives in Doncaster, Richard's sister Janice and husband Brian. The first time we visited Janice, our nephew Mark, wife Jo and their little girl Molly (another great niece) were there and a very tearful meeting was had!!!

 

Not far from Richard's sister, in fact just around the corner lives Helen's brother Ian and wife Jean this was another emotional visit but good day and night was had. We  did manage to see our friends Jim and Sandra Drury as we called in to them after a little lack of communication as they had been to our house and we weren't there!!! unfortunately, time was not on our hands and we did our utmost to see as many people as possible.

 

Billy and Diane Bacon drove up to Grimsby and we all had another wonderful dinner and evening at Paul and Alison's building site!! There's another story!!

Mavis our dear friend was in England and she and Eric drove over from Ripon to see us and on the same day another good friend Ken and his wife Grace joined us from Huddersfield.  

  

We had a very busy time but it was such a nice time too, eating at Holton le Clay's famous Jug and Bottle numerous times and  Alis Indian Restaurant with friends, Helen and Mike Lane, Sandie, Patrick, Joy and Brian, other friends Pauline and Geoff Cook were in there celebrating their wedding anniversary....a brilliant time was had by all!!

Helen had an evening out with here ex colleagues and had a very nice meal in a pub on Seaview Street,  Cleethorpes.... with Sally, Julie, Jane, Zoe etc, etc

But, probably, the best place ever is Steels Fish Restaurant where we only managed to get there once!!.... We love it!

Helen, would have loved the time to go to the Kingsway Hotel another one of her favourites but we didn't get there this time.
 

Richard put the word out and invited a lots of friends for a pot luck evening on our final Saturday night in England a bit of panic set in but, everything went well and out last guests left at 1:30

 

Photographs below of our pot luck!

 

 

 

We haven't gone into how we managed to get the decoration done but, we arose every morning very early as the sun was up at 4 a.m. and we picked up the paint brushes and started. We pulled up a massive carpet and had new fitted in our back garden room. We painted all the wood white as suggested by our rental agent. In fact we felt it did look 100% better! The light nights and light mornings seem to confuse us too... We both thought it was still 4 p.m. in the afternoon when actually it was 9 p.m. at night!! very strange to us. Unfortunately we didn't see the finished en suite before we left but have received photographs and it looks really good. We did get a tenant within 2 hours of it being on the internet, so we were both very pleased.

 

We have so many wonderful family and friends and we both had very mixed emotions about leaving Holton le lay and Cleethorpes. Lots of happy times and amazing memories. We are sorry if we didn't mention everyone, please forgive us we love you all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tumbling Waters June 2016

Monday 6 June

Our second year visiting Tumbling Waters this time with our friends Glenn and Sue.  
We were lucky enough to have a few pitches to choose from and we were soon set up alongside each other. We recognised a number of faces of people who were here last year, couples from South Australia and NSW.

The site we chose proved to be a good one mainly due to our new neighbours, Peter and Adriana and Nugget (little wire haired fox terrier type pooch) who soon became friends for life!!

Other friends, Penny and Bob (Perth) arrived the next day, it was good to see them. Penny organised a wonderful trip, a tour on the Adelaide River, Crocodile spotting, this trip was for 8 of us. What a great experience up close and personal with massive crocs and a visit to Goat Island.

Our camp for lunch

We were joined within a few days by Liam and Liezl, Sue's nephew and his girlfriend. They had been with us in Katherine and had left us to go and do Kakadu, but Liam had some news that, unfortunately, they had to buy a whole new set of tyres for the campervan at a cost of $1500 and Liezl had to have a root canal at the dentist another cost of $1200 all within the space of 3 days poor kids!!

Our nearest supermarket is a local IGA but is very expensive so a drive of 30kms to Palmerston for supplies of food and alcohol is taken in turns between Glenn and Sue and us. The Northern Territory has specific rules on the limit of alcohol that a person is allowed to buy, also the opening times of the shop!!

Lots of time was spent in the park's swimming pool cooling off and chatting to friends.

We took the young ones, Liam and Liezl out fishing, we tried to find a good spot on the river. Liam had been given directions by one of our neighbours as where we would catch fish!! (it didn't happen) but we had a great few hours on a very big jetty, fishing, in the Elizabeth River!

First fish out!!

A drive of 60 plus kms took out to a beach called Wagaiti Beach, with Glenn and Sue, this area is directly opposite the city of Darwin where a ferry takes passengers directly to the CBD 6 kms away. Its a very remote area and we all wondered where the passengers lived.



View of Darwin

 Wagaiti

On the way home we did a 5kms trip off roading to find a WWII plane wreck of a B24 liberator called "Milady" what a sight this was and all so sad!



List of the souls lost in the crash

Happy hour was usually at our caravan and evening meals often shared and eaten with Glenn and Sue, Liam and Liezl.  We were joined by Sue's brother Morrie and wife Chris, Morrie is Liam's Grandad. I forgot to mention that Liam is a very good golfer, so, Liam and Grandad managed to have a few games of golf.

Two NRL games were watched outside one under Glenn's canopy and the other under Morrie's canopy.

Unfortunately, it was soon time to say goodbye to Morrie and Chris and Liam and Liezl we will miss them, but have promised to keep in touch and follow the young 'un's travels. On a shopping visit to Palmerston we visited a flight centre as we had been dealing with issues from the UK and we feel we need to go back to Holton le Clay and see our house!!! The following night our flights were booked and we would be flying from Darwin to Heathrow via Kuala Lumpur on Monday 4 July!! eeeekkk!!!

A few days later, we had more goodbyes when Sue and Glenn left us for their journey back to Brisbane.. the next time we will see them will be when we meet up before our ferry crossing to Tasmania in October.

The following week was to be a very big tidying away, ready for storing the caravan...All very exciting but stressful at the same time. We will be sad to leave this hot weather.

I have mentioned a couple earlier on, Peter and Adriana, these two are really the most friendly, caring and amazing couple, who, we will always be indebted to. The helped us out in our hour of need!! 

 

 

 

Up the Stuart Highway again!

We arrived at Pimba after a long but very easy tow from Port Lincoln. Last year we stayed at Woomera which is just a few kms away from here but this time we decided to stay at "Spud's Roadhouse" which is a free camp, just off the highway.
We were expecting bad weather here and true to form, we had a day of very high winds. We just stayed put, not wanting to tow our caravan in high winds. It was a good stop for two nights, at least we could get a drink at the bar and watched TV for a day, it was quite relaxing.

Our next stop would be the Opal town of Coober Pedy, here we need to fill our water tanks, this will cost us! On arrival in the town we soon find the Information Centre where we see the water pumps.... Richard filled our tanks for the measly price of $1. Off we went to find the cheapest camp ground. The place being found we managed to drive around and notice that there is no way our caravan will fit in the place. A phone call to the Big4 was done and after filling the fuel tanks with reasonably priced diesel we travelled the 2km to the Caravan Park! A great place with excellent facilities and lots of off-road vehicles in for the night after leaving the Oodnadatta Track they had had some rain and boy oh boy their vehicles where covered in the old "RED DIRT/MUD"

Further and further north we travelled, passing the places we had seen last year and once again we talked about the Peter Falconio murder!!

We had a stop at a place called Agnes Creek and got a lovely spot, soon after a caravan arrived close to us and as always we got chatting. As the sun was going down Richard decided we would have a fire on our Oz pig that he had made, so Helen set too and made up a small "damper". We seemed to cook it just perfectly this time! We also cooked our chicken for dinner on the flat plate, photographs below.

Our neighbours were heading down to Ayers Rock and Kings Canyon, maybe we will see them on the road again, who knows??

We left one happy couple at Agnes Creek they had decided to stay another night, we wanted to get to Alice Springs and we are trying a different Caravan Park this year!
Telephone reception is nil for km after km.... Until we hit a hot spot and managed to get a call to the Temple Bar Caravan Park.... The owner said he would hold it for the next 2 hours, yippeeee!!
What an amazing caravan park, $22 per night and we paid separately for our electricity on the morning we leave. A nice lady called Fiona put us on our drive through pitch under the amazing cliff face of part of the Macdonnell Ranges. Once again here in Alice Springs we decided to visit the Royal Flying Doctors Visitors Centre and re visit the Desert Park as we loved it so much last year! Helen had her hair cut in town by a lovely lady who was living on our caravan park.

 

 

View from our caravan

View from our caravan

 

We realised that we had never been in this area of Alice Springs and so we took a trip around and found Honeymoon Gap and the amazing Simpson Gap. We had a wonderful conversation with a Ranger at Simpson Gap and he told us to take a walk into where the water is and we would probably see the Rock Wallabies. What a wonderful place.

 



At the Royal Flying Doctors we saw a wonderful Holographic Presentation telling the story of John Flynn and how he instigated the first Flying Doctor services, we were in awe of this amazing story!


Whilst here in Alice Springs we received a call from our friends Glenn and Sue who we were meeting up with us in either Tennant Creek or Banka Banka Station, for the two rigs to travel to Darwin. They were stranded in Mount Isa, Queensland after their Jeep stopped in the gateway of their Caravan Park. Their insurance company were excellent and paid for RACQ, caravan park fees etc...We had no problem with waiting around for them in either Alice or Tennant Creek. Glenn continued to keep us informed and the outcome was the JEEP had died so he bought a new Wildtrack Ford Ranger, luckily the Ford agent in Mount Isa had one! as there is a 6 month waiting list if you want to buy one!! Glenn and Sue continued on through Queensland and us up the middle. We did stay in Tennant Creek for 3 days, as always we visited the local Memorial club and had a meal there.
We also visited the Civic Centre where there was a Da Vinci Machines exhibition, a few hours spent looking at these amazing exhibits here in the outback!

 

Before leaving Tennant Creek we had lots of communication with Glenn and Sue as to where we should meet up, as both of us would have no telephone reception. It was agreed we would wait at Banka Banka Station a relatively cheap place that had decent water but no electricity. We had stayed here last year. We knew that we would be entertained by some country and western style singers in the evenings! This is a place where people arrive around 11a.m. and stay for one night and move off early in the morning. We had great neighbours and one lovely family.

Our second morning, everyone has left

 


Another Damper made here at Banka Banka



The resident Donkeys



Glenn and Sue a few metres away



























Glenn and Sue arrived a day earlier than we anticipated, see the new Wildy above (black one), we decided to stay another night....
Our two rigs left and headed for Daly Waters pub, but, we decided on a place on the highway, where it was a little cheaper and they gave us a voucher for a free drink at happy hour, needless to say it was very good. We had a lovely grassy site. After unhitching we took a drive to the famous Daly Waters pub and took the usual touristy photos! (did that last year too)

After a pleasant evening and a good sleep we all headed off for Mataranka where we wanted to show Glenn and Sue the hots springs and the "We of the Never Never" homestead.

Our next stop is to Lee and Jennys Bushcamp which is a long tow but will be worth it.
Arriving on the Daly River we were met by Lee, he is so welcoming. Jenny was in Sydney!
Unfortunately our stay here this year was hampered by the amount of mosquitoes, Richard was continually using Bushmans, Aeroguard etc. Even Helen had some bad bites!! The humidity was unbelievable.... Glenn and Sue were also being driven to despair with the insects!
We were lucky to have three evening meal cooked for us by Lee, he had two large Barramundi cooking on hot coals one night. The next day, two of his friends from Darwin arrived early and went hunting for buffalo and we were treated to slow cooked buffalo meals, then Sunday evening we had a roast dinner of pork and all the trimmings. We left on Monday morning feeling we had been well looked after during our five night stay!

Onwards we travelled to Berry Spring and Tumbling Waters our next Caravan Park. Great tow and a wonderful greeting from Jenny and Darren the owners... we have been here four nights now and tonight we are going to listen to the entertainment at the Habit bar/café where we just might have a feed of Barra and chips...
Watch out for our next update.