The Big Day is Here!

Well – we did finally hit the road and make it out of Samford today at about 1pm …………………. and we made it all the way to Wynnum – about 45 minutes away!

It took us quite a while this morning to get organised enough to get away – and while we are still not packed properly – we do feel like we are a bit more sorted in the camper.  We bid farewell (sniff, sniff) to the Hanstede and Sheil families after finally gathering up the last of our belongings!

Matt’s younger brother James flew back in from five months in the UK today so we decided to have a last night in Brisbane staying with Carla (Matt’s cousin) and Lachie (thank you soooooo much guys!) for a night, who hosted a Fealy/Neary cousins BBQ for us all to catch up.  It’s taken a trip around Australia to make us come over to the other side of Brisbane for a visit!!!

We are very disappointed that our little Toyota Yaris didn’t sell today.  We had a buyer interested from Thursday and he even called at 7.30am this morning to say he was catching a bus from Toowoomba to come and buy it, but after running around to meet him in the city and checking to make sure bank’s etc would be open – he drove it and decided not to buy the car after all – sooo frustrating!.  So we have gone with our plan F – which is for Matt’s little brother James to drive it back up to Far North Queensland for us next week and try to sell it up there for us over the next month or so.  Aaaaargh, so annoying that it hasn’t sold before we head off on our trip – but fingers crossed it won’t take too much longer – otherwise our trip will be much shorter than we expected!  We had hoped that the car would be sold before we left so we could hit the road ‘free agent’s with nothing to worry about, but I am learning (lesson number one for the trip) that best laid plans don’t always come through!!

While Matt took the Yaris into the city – I drove the car and camper to a spot just outside the city (I was not game enough to be driving the whole rig through the city!) and parked to wait for Matt to be hopefully dropped off and the car sold and driven away.  While I was waiting I turned the car off – but did not remove the keys from the ignition which meant the car headlights stayed on.  Consequently, when Matt returned – with an unsold car – he also found I had deadened the battery on the Prado – needless to say we were both happy campers at that point – not!  Thankfully we had the switch to flick over to the second battery and we headed over to Wynnum at last!

The next unfortunate incident occurred as we were parking the car and camper out the front of Carla and Lachie’s house.  Matt was reversing the car and camper up alongside the curb, and due to the fact that the car/camper are now much heavier – we have realised the mudflaps Matt made are too long – unfortunately this meant that as Matt was reversing – he ran over the mudflap and pulled the bumper off the back of the left hand rear tyre.  Awesome.  But we picked it up off the ground – threw it in the car – and decided to think about it tomorrow and enjoy our last night with family.  And that is exactly what we did – a night with family has lifted our spirits.

We will hit the road for real tomorrow.  We have no idea which way we are headed – except the general direction of West -ish.  We think we will just ask the kids in the morning ‘left or right’ as we leave Brisbane and see where that takes us.  We’ll do some more sorting out at our next stop.  We need to find a weigh-bridge as the camper and car feel very heavy and we need to see what weight we are actually sitting at – there may be some emergency dumping required!

It will be interesting to see where we pull up tomorrow! Some photos from our first day ……………

Farewell to the Hanstede family!

Jack and his best mate Connor

Tobe and his best mate Patrick

Farewell to the Sheil family xoxoxoxox

Welcome home Uncle Jimbo!

Madi & Lex with their ‘Tinkerbell’ pressies from Paris from Uncle Jimbo

Spoilt nephews with their costumes bought for them in London by Uncle Jimbo!

Lovely night with the Fealy/Neary cousins – thank you so much to Carla & Lachie for having us!

The Fealy Boys