Five months in the bus

Mmm as time moves along I marvel at the amount of time we have been living in the bus. I thought it would be good to talk about what living in the bus is like – what we found, what we liked, what we found a challenge.

Let’s start with what we like – it certainly is the freedom of picking up and going wherever we please. The best part though is that the bed is always the same, so even though we are in different places, our bed doesn’t change. As you know getting a good night’s sleep is critical and when travelling we all have a horror story re the beds we have slept. I remember in Milano (no less) waking up and having small bite marks over me! Another time in London (ok it was some one-star hostel backpackers) the mattress was lumpy as!

We are getting used to living in a tiny house (as essentially that’s what it is) and manoeuvring around each other as we negotiate cooking, working in the office (for me), reaching for drinks in the fridge and lifting the bed to retrieve clothes or food.

We thought we would do more cooking outside, but somehow, we tend to do it inside, mainly cause all food prep stuff is inside and there are less flies!

What we found a challenge (note I didn’t say what we didn’t like) The smallness can get to us sometimes, especially if the weather is a bit cold or raining. Working out the layout of the new town and ensuring we stay close to walking distance to town to make life easier especially when needing food. We do have a bit of a storage of tinned and frozen food, but we both like our fresh veggies, so this means lots of trips to the market.

Sometimes we don’t get enough exercise – this can be because of the weather – can be too hot, too cold or raining, and obviously not many places where we can dance. At night we are not ones to watch TV and in a lot of these small towns it can be challenging to find things to do. Any dancing is usually towards the end of the week as a club or pub will have some live music. Occasionally we try to get to the flicks if there is one in town and of course we try and find yoga and if we are lucky we do 2 or 3 sessions a week.

Although we did bring along our yoga mats and even though doing it on a beach or river sounds great, the reality is the ground is uneven, can have sticks and stones, and weather not always enticing.

Funny thing about towns, when you google them to see what there is in the town, there appears to be lots of information about things you can do such as visiting museums, water activities and fun parks, lookouts, lots and lots of “vintage” (translate to old stuff) shops – none that really interest me much these days. Let’s face it Don and I have travelled quite a bit in our lifetimes and have seen enough of these things and more to last a lifetime. It must be extraordinary for me to take a peek inside.

We also thought we would do more dancing videos, but the reality is what do you dance in front of? In Australia other than the rock, opera house and bridge – what are the other significant structures? One person did suggest dancing in front of all the “BIG” things ie pineapple, banana, prawn etc. A thought … ahhhh not.

But what I do love is the quirkiness of towns, the people in them. Such as why set up a sourdough bakery in a small town – such as we found in Braidwood. Or refurbished a pub with no pokies, no TV screens and no gambling like we found in Tathra. Perhaps this is what makes up Australia’s story?

So what have we found? We do spend quite a bit of time together….. and suddenly I’m yearning for girlfriend outings. And I’m sure Don is looking to chat to males about ... well blokey stuff.

I though we would interact more with the people we meet in caravan parks, but I find we have little in common and Don and I are not ones to sit around and drink beer/wine and cook sausages on the BBQ – we don’t even have one! Perhaps we haven’t struck it lucky yet, but we do keep looking.

I also can’t help thinking about my parents and my mum in particular. She left a life of outside toilets (in fact our first home when I was until 7 years of age, we had an outdoor toilet), cooking over open fires, showering when possible (this sometimes equated when cooking as the fire also warmed up the water so you could take a bath, looking for water and ensuring there was enough food, when she set sail to Australia in 1956. I think if she really knew how I was currently living… well let’s not go there – Italian mothers

Ok on with our travels

Eden

Caravan park - thoughts
 of Paris

the bus

Travelling further down the south coast we land in Eden and stayed at the Garden of Eden (I kid you not) caravan park. Well this was one well-thought out park. There are several caravan parks that just squeeze you in. At times you may be positioned next to the indoor pool with a noisy spa that goes on all day. But at the Garden of Eden (ha love saying this) spaces were divided up with gorgeous trees and deciduous ones at that, so that when we arrived during Autumn we were treated to the changing colours and crisp dry leaves floating in the air. With lovely dappled sunshine through the branches I felt like I was back in Paris again!

Unfortunately, we only stayed one night there as we were on a mission – to re-live some of Don’s childhood holiday memories.

Mallacoota

Don at Mallacoota - learning against a familiar wall

We arrived mid-afternoon with Don reminiscing about the road in to the town. We found the place we were staying, and Don felt sure it was the one he had stayed at as a child. We found the wharf which hadn’t changed that much!

If we thought the views of the ocean, sunrises etc were stunning before – here they were magnificent. I did try and take some pics, but unfortunately random people and my shadow spoilt some of them Granted I am still navigating a new phone camera.

Here we also hired a small boat and took it out on the lake – wow wasn’t that a great day. Firstly, me who hates the water, got in a boat! But it was the serenity of the lake – it was vast, with several interesting points to stop at, hop off if need be and continue. We hired it for 4 hours and secretly I thought that was a long time. Amazingly it wasn’t – in fact I was surprised at how quickly time flew as we negotiated our way along the lake.

I loved the guy we hired it from. He lives in Ballarat miles from Mallacoota, but he comes over during the good weather (Oct – April) to run the hiring of the boats. I’m sure he was around 70 and very old school, though he did have an iPad  to check the weather conditions before he sent out hopefuls like us.

The vista

We try not to eat out too much – for several reasons – cost, the size of some of the dishes, though we are taking to share dishes these days, but also in some country areas it is still pub food, with lots of fried options and not too many non-meat dishes. (Not that we are entirely vegetarian, but we don’t like to eat meat all the time.) But occasionally when something catches our eyes we indulge. This time is was the figs. As I had not had any figs all season, this was a must. I had to say it was one of the most delicious ways I had eaten figs - along with my other favourite pomegranate which was added to the dish (and you can see scattered on the plate).

The food

We were told that abalone was “the” seafood of this fishing village, so we added this to our list to try. Walking through the small town (very small), and looking at the few eateries, we spotted the local Chinese, of all places, serving abalone. We decided to come back there for dinner that evening.

We entered, sat, Don went to order and returned.

Don’t have any said Don.

What do you mean they don’t have any I said, It’s on the board outside.

Well they don’t have any said Don.

Apparently and typical in a small local Chinese restaurant, the spoken English of the lady at the front, was not great and eventually Don worked out they didn’t have any, even though it was proudly displayed on their blackboard outside. We looked at each other and thought, Nah, we didn’t want to Chinese, so we left. We ended up at the pub where it turns out EVERYBODY goes for a pub meal.

Lakes Entrance

Leaving Mallacoota with Don sufficiently happy revising his childhood we headed to Lakes Entrance. This is the place for Melbournians to come to relax for a few days or so.

What a fabulous spot and I managed to find a great location for the bus – right by the river. By this time, I had worked that as much as I do love the water, it’s not the beach with its pounding surf, but the lovely flow (fast flowing at that) of the river that I love the best. It’s quieter!

Farewell Lakes Entrance

We walked along the pier and bought fresh fish caught that morning in readiness for Good Friday where we would feast on fresh seafood.

Beach huts

 

We didn’t stay long at Lakes Entrance for a couple of reasons. Don wanted to do a little more work on the bus – put in the remaining security screens so we can open the windows without worry of files and safety. We also wanted to do a little more work at the country residence and ultimately needed to be back in Canberra for the birth of yet another grandchild.

We travelled across the Victorian Alpine area which is just gorgeous in Autumn. I have travelled through the Alpine area a bit (as I lived in north east Victoria for some time) and I never stop marvelling at how ghost like the tress look during this time of the year. It is almost eerily white – a promise to what will be around the corner (snow).

A stop at Bright was mandatory just to view the spectacular change of colours from the gorgeous trees that line the streets. This is always a highlight in autumn except the day we got there you may have mistaken it for a summer day as it was quite warm.

Bright

A quick walk and stop and yet another pie shop (out clothes are starting to get tight) and we were off again heading to Wodonga/Mulwala to make the bus adjustments.

As time was on our side I again got to spend a bit more time with my daughter and her boys (in Wodonga) where we caught the musical Kinky Boots (Albury) – ok a local production, but was a good excuse for a night out with my daughter and something that her and I loved doing when she was younger and definitely before kids!

enjoying Kinky Boots in Albury

But the nicest thing about this return journey was the birth of my new granddaughter – it did take a trip to cold Canberra for this (and I mean cold) after a near 3 week stay (babies just don’t have a habit of coming on time do they?) lovely Charlotte May was born, little sister to Ella.

Enough for this time – where will be next??