I think I have been subconscioulsly delaying finishing off the posts about our trip because I really don’t want to believe that it is all over. I love looking back at our trip photos, it truly was the most amazing time of our lives!! This post will I think be the third last post recounting our adventures, nooooooooooo! Continue reading
As I gathered the photos for this blog post, I realised that there is less then a week of trip travels left to blog about! This combined with the fact that Karen Camper was driven away by somebody else last week, (she sold only 2 days after we listed her on Gumtree!) means I am feeling a little sad that our trip really is coming to a very ‘official’ end. I am reminding myself though, that as my mum-in-law Gayel said to me last week, “if you hold on to one adventure too long, you will never have another”, and she is exactly right.
Ok, so now just a little entry about the beautiful Emma Gorge. Continue reading
Right, back to the trip! Our last post saw us travelling along the Gibb River Road, where after a long day on the road we eventually arrived at El Questro Station. I had been leaving this post for Matt to write as El Questro Station was his favourite stop on our whole trip, but the Farmer Boy just doesn’t have time at the moment and he is usually asleep in the chair in the lounge by 8pm, so if you want some more ‘blokey’ details about El Questro just yell them out in the comments and Matt will get back to you! Continue reading
Sniffle, sniffle, sob.
We have come to the very tough decision that we are selling our faithful ‘home away from home’ Karen Camper’.
It was always a given that when we ended our trip we would have to sell ‘Karen’ and down size back to our tent set up or maybe purchase a camper trailer. We drew down on our home loan to purchase Karen and know now that our trip is over that we should sell her and put some $$$ back on our home loan – financially that is the smartest thing to do.
We just won’t get the time off to do another big trip like that again any time soon. Our camping trips now will be weekends and hopefully a few extended week or 2 week adventures. Added to that 4 children would be a very tight squeeze in Karen.
So, big sigh, she is up for reluctant sale. Here are the details as per Matt’s ad on Gumtree;
“Meet Karen the Kamper
Karen has safely and very comfortably carried our Family of 5 most of the way around Australia for the last 4 months.
If you are looking for the “Hardly used” or “Never been offroad” camper Karen is NOT it.
If you want a camper that has canvas and vinyl that is perishing, hardened tyres that have flat spots and shockies seals that have cracked all due to lack of use, Karen is NOT it.
If you want a camper for your ‘Round Oz trip, that has already been round the block 3 times and had all the little modifications made to it to prepare it for some real adventure then Karen IS it.
We are the third owners of this camper, each owner has taken her around Australia and she is still rock solid. Some people say poor Karen has never had a break and had a chance to sit in a shed under a tarp and get rusty, dusty and lonely. I say she has probably seen more of Australia then Burke and Wills.
She has all the things needed for full on long term camping, for example:
1. 180L of water on board
2. Gas hot water system
3. External shower
4. Dual water/fuel Jerry can holders
5. Dual 9kg gas bottles
6. Dual spare tyre carrier
7. Purpose built Generator Box
8. Upgraded wind up mechanism (heaver grade cable, pulleys and casing)
9. Genuine Vehicle Componants DO35v2 off road hitch.
10. Fully independant, low manitainence and easy to source leaf sprung and shock absorber suspension.
11. 4 x Quality Maxxiss Bravo 771 off road tyres (all less then 6 months old)
11. 3-Way Fridge (with 2 Gas bottles you’re talking almost 2 months of cold beer before having to find civilisation)
12. 120Ah deep cycle battery (With the 3 way fridge on gas the only thing the battery runs is the water pump and the lights. We never got below 70% on the battery and that was during 9 days of rain so no solar)
13. Anderson Plug for charging Battery from the car or solar panels
14. Dual Exhaust fans fitted to the rear of the Fridge to help remove excess heat.Thousands and Thousands of dollars of modifications have been made that really are required if you are serious about going bush for extended periods.
Of course there is the standard features:
1. Queen bed one end and Double bed at the other, table drops down to a bed and the design of the lounge means that one side of the lounge is even another bed (child)
2. Full Size Oven (used, used a lot in fact, why do people always say their ovens are never used?? How do you know if it works?)
3. Griller and 4 burner stove
4. Microwave (actually that was never used because we we very rarely plugged into 240V)
5. Bagged and zipped bed end flys both ends
6. Fiama F45s wind out awning (if anyone tells you you need an full sized annex ask them how many times they actually got the 48 poles and pegs and ropes out to set it up? 20 seconds and the Fiama is out, you are in the shade and your cold beer is open)
7. Fold down table (perfect for road side lunch stops)
8. Pull out external BBQ (perfect for road side lunch stops)I could go on forever. Simply put, if you are in the planing phase of quitting your jobs and thowing the kids in the car and heading out around Australia then Karen will get you there and back comfortably and with ease.
If maybe you are just after a serious long term camper, for the yearly Xmas/Easter trips but have a nice clean, dry garage Karen can sleep in in the mean time, I’m sure should would love the rest.
Eitherway, if you are even looking at this ad, you know that the older (pre-blue colour scheme) Goldstreams where the ones “made like they used to” so you already know just how rock solid and amazing these campers are and know that she will serve you very very well. Karen is a 2003 model, the last of the Maroon colour scheme.
Oh, almost forgot, She just had her bearings and brakes done. And dont worry, she does look a bit dirty in all these pictures, but she has had a shampoo, wash and blow dry and she is looking schmick-o again.”
There are plenty of photos of Karen Camper all over our blog, but these posts in particular “The House on Wheels” and “Our Home” give you a good look at the Karen Camper specifics.
This is the link to our ad on GumTree – please feel free to pass on the link or our blog to anyone who is looking for a great camper!
We can honestly say, hand on heart, that she was the perfect camper for our trip. Very easy to set up and pack down and oh so comfortable. We never felt crowded or even like we were ever really roughing it!! And we are happy to report that after we gave her a very good clean and finally removed the several layers of dust she had been wearing, she is still in very good condition after all her Fealy Family Adventuring!
We will definitely be so, so sad the day someone else drives Karen Camper out the driveway, but we know she could bring lots of enjoyment to another family just like ours!
See you in 25 years or so time capsule!!
This is our 100th Blog Post! I can’t believe we have written that many posts or even more amazing that you are all still reading our rubbish hehehehe!
I really enjoy writing our blog and even though I am so far behind I intend to keep going and finish the adventures of our trip off and then hopefully share our camping escapades up here in Far North Queensland, when mango/avocado packing season finishes and life settles down a little again! We will definitely be well and truly ready for a short camping break away from the farm by then!
To mark our 100th Blog Post, I thought it would be appropriate to use this entry to tell you about our Trip Time Capsule. We decided early on in our trip that before we finished, we would like to bury a time capsule somewhere in the great blue yonder of Oz. There was no set plan for where it should be buried, or when, just that we wanted to plant a treasure box filled with some memories of our trip which had been so long in the planning and would hopefully be a great snapshot of a significant event in the lives of the Fealy Family in 2013. This is how it went down ……………….
The contents of our time capsule – pictures and drawings from the kid’s journals, a ‘Fealy Family Adventure’ t-shirt, a letter to Fealy Bub No 4, shells, small toys the kids enjoyed, a newspaper clipping about the farm we have now moved on to, a fuel receipt, letters from the cousies before we left on our trip, a map
All packed up – I sacrificed one of my very handy plastic kitchen containers for the cause!
There was quite a lot of discussion about where the best place to bury the time capsule would be!
Dig, Dig!
Watching Dad do the hard work, Matt was cursing that we hadn’t chosen somewhere sandy to bury our loot!
Fealy Family Adventure 2013 Time Capsule
We’re hoping that if somebody other than our family find our capsule that they will contact us to let us know!
Ok – in it goes
Who wants to put it in?
Toby did!
Tobes having a go with the shovel to bury it!
It was very hot and hard work in the sun – Dad took over to finish it off!
We used the tape measure to help record exactly where we had buried our box! That along with the GPS co-ordinates, some spray paint and a detailed note with a description has all been saved in the Fealy Family vault to help locate our capsule somewhere in the future!!
We’ve written a post in the past about ‘Why we go camping’ and we hope that even with our change to farm life, we will still continue to get away on some great family camping trips in the coming years – as you know from our previous post, camping is something that is very important to us.
So, the hope then is, that maybe in 25 years time, one of the kids might take their own family away on a camping adventure, or their boyfriend or girlfriend, a sibling adventure, or even just a solo break away, and head off towards where we buried our time capsule. We hope they will remember that we buried it around that area somewhere and ring mum and dad and say “hey Dad, remember that time capsule we buried on our trip around Australia in 2013? What is the exact location for it? We want to have a go at finding it and digging it up!”. Or it may even be that in 10 years time we get a chance to head away and do another big Fealy Family Adventure again and we go searching for it! Or maybe Matt and I will head off as grey nomads in 25 years time when all our babies have left the nest and we will dig it up ourselves!! Who knows, but it is something to look forward to, a little bit of a treaure hunt down the track to locate a small piece of Fealy Family history.
This is the image on one of the shirt’s Matt’s workmate, Hayley, made for us! We loved the shirts Hayley – I’m bummed we never got a photo of all of us wearing them!
From Manning Gorge we decided to push for El Questro Station to spend the final two nights of our travels along the Gibb River Road. That turned out to be a very long day on the road! This section of road was the worst stretch we travelled on the Gibb. We blew a tyre on the camper and pretty much averaged between 20 to 60km’s per hour for the whole day. A few photos of this stretch of the road to begin; Continue reading
So, getting back to the Gibb River Road now – we are only about half way along it and there are some beautiful places we still want to share with you! After stopping at Bell Gorge, we set up camp for two nights at Manning Gorge. This was a really nice place to camp with heaps of campsites and the campground was quite big so if you didn’t mind a walk to the amenities you could find a campsite away from everybody else. The amenities were generator operated hot water showers – so you could only get hot showers for an hour or so in the morning and two hours at night. The generator was a little noisy but the toilets and showers were nice and clean. It was a little smelly though so I was glad we didn’t camp near the amenities. Most of the sites were quite shady which was nice but they were all very dry and dusty when we were there.
The best thing about the manning gorge campground was the river and sandy river bed right near the campsite which you could swim in – it was lovely! Continue reading
Right, back to a post about the trip! At the rate we are going you guys will all be still reading posts about our trip twelve months after we finished it!
After two nights camping at Windjana Gorge and checking out Tunnel Creek we headed off to get a few kilometres of the Gibb River Road under our tyres. We were a bit nervous about what the road conditions would be like, but we were pleasantly surprised to find this stretch of road – about 1oo kilometres from Windjana Gorge to Bell Gorge – was pretty good. Corrugated and mostly dirt but it looked like it had been very recently graded so we travelled along with no problems. It was hard to bypass Lennard Gorge and the Mt Hart Homestead, but as we only had a week we had to be selective with where we stopped on the Gibb. We had decided that this was just to be a ‘practice run’ Gibb River Road trip and we will come back and do it properly one day!!
This stretch of the Gibb was quite scenic – with some lovely spots to stop and check out the views.
Lookout view Gibb River Road
Peter Prado and Karen Camper on the Gibb River Road
We had decided that Bell Gorge would be our lunch time stop, but we didn’t realise that it was actually 39km in to the Gorge along the access road off the Gibb River Road. This road was actually pretty rough and there are a couple of creek crossings along the way which we didn’t know about either. They were quite shallow when we went through so no problems and a bit of excitement for us as they were Karen Camper’s first water crossings!
Creek Crossing on Access Road into Bell Gorge
Peter Prado and Karen Camper handled them too easy!
We unhitched Karen Camper at the entrance to the Bell Gorge Campsite (called Silent Grove) as we thought the road was getting quite rough and we weren’t sure what parking there would be at the Gorge entrance. We were really glad we did this as the road did get more corrugated (it was another 10km’s from the campsite to the gorge) and the car park at the Gorge is really quite small – it would have been difficult to park the camper down there. The Silent Grove campsite looked quite nice – very dry and dusty but some shade and amenities so you could easily have a few nights there. We then had a quick bite of lunch and headed off for the short 3km return walk into the gorge – yes dragging a few reluctant kids again for another walk!
Back of the car lunch preparation
Off to walk in to Bell Gorge
It was an easy walk in to the Gorge although it was quite hot walking in the middle of the day! We were glad to have a swim when we got there! The water in the swimming hole at the bottom of the water falls was freezing!! But we did all get in eventually – even me! Be warned though – the edge going in to the water is very slippery and slimy – we all had big slips going in!! The pools at the top of the gorge are really lovely and not as cold as the bottom pool – they would make a great spot to waste away a few hours soaking in the sun and water. The climb down to the water fall pool is very steep but our kids made it no problems – their walking skills have definitely improved heaps over the duration of the trip!
Jack, Tobes and Lex at the top of Bell Gorge
Looking over the edge at Bell Gorge
Walking down to the waterfall pool Bell Gorge
The lovely top pools at Bell Gorge
Having a swim in the freezing water at Bell Gorge
When we first arrived at the waterfall pool at Bell Gorge there was a tour bus of people there but they left shortly after we arrived (I’m sure we didn’t scare them off – we didn’t smell that bad!) and we had the place pretty much to ourselves – it was heaven! We were definitely glad that we got to see this spot! After about an hour swimming and relaxing we headed back to pick up the camper and push on to our campsite for the night at Manning Gorge which was about another 80km’s along the Gibb River Road once we had got back out off the 40km stretch of the Bell Gorge access road. Once again we had to reluctantly drive right past Adcock Gorge and Charnley River Station, with a promise of ‘next time’. We stopped at the Barnett Roadhouse and purchased our camping permit for the next two nights camping at Manning Gorge. It was of course ‘ice-cream o’clock’ and we thought we all deserved one so we bought those and a souvenir stubby cooler too!
Barnett Roadhouse
Yum – Icecreams!
Our time at Manning Gorge will be our next post. So, who has stopped at the places we missed along the way from Windjana Gorge to Manning Gorge? C’mon then, make us jealous, tell us what did we miss out on???
Tunnel Creek was really cool! I know I sound like a big kid when I say that but it was just really fun and quite amazing! We had read lots about it but I wasn’t really that excited about walking through a dark tunnel filled with bats and freezing water and if rumour had it correctly – fresh water crocodiles! But after being strongly encouraged to visit by a follower on our Facebook Page (thanks Tracy!) we decided to check it out and boy are we glad we did!
Tunnel Creek is Western Australias oldest cave system, in Tunnel Creek National Park, and is famous as a hideout used late last century by an Aboriginal leader known as Jandamarra. He was killed outside its entrance in 1897.
The entrance is actually a little tricky to find which adds to the experience – the kids were so excited running off ahead of us along the path to the cave entrance that they totally missed it and had run off up a hill and we all had to turn around and come back!
Can you spot the entrance?
Off we go!
The cave is about 750metres long and quite dark in places so taking a torch is a must. You have to wade through quite a few permanent water pools which were mostly only ankle deep when we were there – except for the last one which was about waist deep. I think if you are there after the wet season there is quite a bit more water around and you may even have to swim in parts. There are a colony of bats living in there and some beautiful stalactites that descend from the roof in many places. It was really quite fascinating.
The boys loved it! Lex wasn’t quite as keen!
Tunnel Creek
Exploring
Opening where the tunnel has caved in and where most of the bats can be found
Adventurers
Hard to capture the stalactites – they were beautiful!
We finished with a quick dip in the water hole at the other end of the tunnel which the backpackers swimming there assured us was croc-free! It is really quite a quick sightseeing trip – we spent about an hour there and felt like that was heaps of time and tunnel creek is only about a 45 minute drive from the Windjana Gorge campground where we had based ourselves for two nights. There is also some Aboriginal Artwork on the cliff face at the end of the tunnel which was quite easy to spot and something else interesting to see.
Having a dip in the water hole at the end of the tunnel – a little chilly!
The whole family enjoyed our afternoon out at Tunnel Creek, although be warned – all that time in a dark cave can make you go a little crazy!
Ok – now for the last two weeks of our trip on the road! After a great week at Middle Lagoon we reluctantly packed up reasonably early and were on the road out and headed for Derby by about 8am. We were all feeling a bit grumpy and sad as we left Middle Lagoon as we were now heading ‘back’ to the East and commencing the journey towards home. Up until now we had always been travelling ‘away’ – this was the first day heading back, signalling that our trip which had been almost two years in the planning was just about over!!!
At least we had the fact that we were heading into new territory again and the excitement of getting to tackle the Gibb River Road ahead of us. We had ummmed and aaahed all week at Middle Lagoon as to whether we head home via the infamous Gibb River Road or back the same way we had come across to Western Australia, via the Great Northern Highway. We were keen to not travel the same road again, but also a little worried that we wouldn’t be doing the Gibb the justice it deserved by trying to cram it all in to a week – before our trip plans were changed, we had planned to spend about a month exploring the Gibb! It was also worrying us that by having to travel quite hard to get across the Gibb in a fairly short amount of time, we might put a lot of strain on the car and camper and given that the Gibb has a name for being quite a rough stretch of road, we were not keen at all to have something major breakdown only 2 weeks out from home. However, after talking to other campers at Middle Lagoon who had done the Gibb in their caravans not to many weeks before us and said that the road was pretty good, we decided to give it a go.
So after a quick stop to check out the Church at Beagle Bay (pics in our Cape Leveque post) and a last longing look at the turnoff back in to Broome (if we had still been travelling we definitely would have spent another few weeks in Broome after exploring the Cape!), we headed to Derby (it took us about 4 hours from Middle Lagoon) for a quick look around, a late lunch and some grocery shopping to stock up on supplies before we headed off on the Gibb for a week.
We checked out the prison boab tree on our way in to Derby (it is about 7km’s outside of town on the Broome side), it is huge!
Prison Boab Tree – Derby
The kids were really interested!
We splashed out and had some lovely fish and chips for lunch down at the famous Derby Jetty. The tides in Derby are the highest in Australia and we were there at just about high tide which was lucky! The jetty in Derby used to be used for live export but is now mainly used for barges exporting lead and zinc from a mine at Fitzroy Crossing. We all thought it was pretty interesting as we had never seen a big commercial wharf before.
Lunch at the Jetty in Derby
Yummy treat lunch!
We stocked up on groceries from Wollies and had to wait in line for half an hour at the bottle shop to buy a carton of beer as it was rodeo weekend in town so everybody was out buying their alcohol! Then it was off to start the Gibb River Road!! It was late by the time we started the Gibb which had the bonus that we got to witness a beautiful sunset, but once again it meant we arrived in to our campsite in the dark!
Airing down at the start of the dirt on the Gibb.
Beautiful sunset
I had Matt taking photos of Boab Trees all over WA for me – I think this one is the pick of them!
We had decided that our first stop on the Gibb River Road would be Windjana Gorge. The road to get in to Windjana was very corrugated and we again lost a headlight – not ideal when you are driving in to a new campground at dark! Lucky for us when we arrived at the campground a lovely couple saw us come in and pointed out a great campsite for us right near the shower block and then also offered to mind our tired and grumpy kids while we set up. The funny thing about arriving at a camp site in the dark is that you really don’t know what to expect when the sun comes up in the morning and you can see where you are. We were so surprised to wake up and see that this was the view that greeted us;
Windjana Gorge
As we had heard that the best time to see the crocodiles at Windjana was early in the morning, we had a quick breakfast and then walked over from the campground to the Gorge to have a look around. We thought we were ‘gorged’ out after all the gorges we had seen in the Northern Territory but Windjana was definitely worth the stop!
The ‘tunnel’ entrance into Windjana
Time to find some crocodiles
Can you see any?
Heaps, and heaps of Freshwater Crocodiles!
Really beautiful
Time for a walk
Someone before us had built this ‘sand crocodile’ very clever!
We spent the morning at Windjana, but didn’t do the whole gorge walk as it was very hot and other campers had suggested that the best part of the gorge was just the first couple of kilometres so we were happy to just do that and then headed to Tunnel Creek for the afternoon. You will hear all about that in our next blog entry!
We camped for two nights at Windjana Gorge and it was a nice spot! The showers were hot and free – pretty good for a National Park Campground! The only downside to our time at Windjana was that after a week at Middle Lagoon without power, and then some very hot weather at Windjana – the fridge in our camper just didn’t seem to cope! Which made us very grumpy as we have struggled all along to get the camper fridge to run well on gas. Anyway – we decided for the rest of the trip to just turn it off and run with our car fridge only which worked out fine! Stay tuned for Tunnel Creek details next – it was one of my favourite stops on the whole trip!
Relaxing afternoon at camp – Windjana Gorge
Fun with play dough – Windjana Gorge
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