New Lounge

Let the Renovations Begin

After a week or so of rain it was great to have a weekend off with sunshine, Saturday saw a lot of measuring and planning before taking Skye n Obie to Sara's baby shower so while i was waiting for them i used the time to go and buy the materials needed to start building the lounge for the caravan. Sunny Sunday arrives and after an unwanted sleep in the day begins with measuring and cutting all the materials then testing the pieces and continued cutting of other pieces. then alot of screwing and fiddling to get it all in place and the end result is a corner lounge which will double as Obie's bed and have storage cupboards underneath it. on my next day off i will be cutting the holes for the cupboards and making the doors. i will then need to take a trip to Clark rubber to get all the foam then Skye can make the covers for them with her newly found sewing skills. Skysie has posted the pic's for me under the heading new lounge so have a sticky beak at them and I'll post more pic's during the week.


cheers till next time,
Benj.

Our first Mini Trip

On the 20th May 2011 my darling wife turned 29 a night out to dinner at hogs breath with family was in order and the next morning, we connected up Hundred's and off we went to Newcastle to visit my brother and his fiancee and my beautiful niece. we only spent the night but it was good just to get away and use hundreds even if we haven't started the main internal Reno's. At least i got to go fishing even if it was for a couple of hours, alas no luck... oh well, good practice for improving my casting... we went out for dinner to mucho mexican and it was fantastic, a great atmosphere, good food, excellent cocktails and best of all great company. the next day we went to a newly constructed park new Warner's bay and it was pretty awesome and then had a great lunch on lake macquarie at Warner's bay, again with great company. it was only a short trip but it was great practice for us novice carvanners.


cheers till next time,
Benj.

Hundreds!

Hundreds hooked up and ready to go!

Transferring the Registration and Naming the Van

During the first week of buying the van i had spent a couple of hundred on tyres, during the second week of owning the van i had to get the registration transferred and found out i had to get the van blue slipped, so i ring around and find a local mechanic that was willing to blue slip a caravan. i book it in for the Saturday of my weekend off and take it down there at 8am. well i waited about half hour for the guy to turn up and then find out the brake lights don't work when the lights are on. great was my thought. so anyway it was the only thing that didn't pass so i asked him if he was able to fix them not knowing that a small problem is about to turn into a full re wire of the trailer cables. so he looks at the wiring and discovers the previous person had used house electrics for the trailer lights. so i make the decision to rewire the lights from the plug to the back of the van with the new wires going under the van for ease of access. all wired up with new LED side marker lights which are red/amber. get the blue slip passed now time to pay the bill $438. gees i am seeing a trend happening here... so in the coming week while sitting at home, i say to Skysie i think we should call the van "Hundreds" she says why Hundreds... my response... because every time i do something to the van it costs me Hundreds.... and that's how we got the name for the Caravan.


Cheers till next time,


Benj.

Picking up the Caravan Part 2

After driving for a while, I have to make a decision either continue on and hope for a petrol station on the freeway seeing as we hadn’t seen one since leaving Holbrook or leave the freeway and go through a town to get petrol. Watching the road signs and it seems that I can exit at Wangaratta and get back on the freeway by driving through Wangaratta. We make our next stop at Wangaratta mainly for petrol; we go to a petrol station which was different in that it also had a Laundromat inside the shop. Back on the road and we finally get back to the freeway and discover that just past the on ramp there is a petrol station on the freeway just near Glenrowan. I said to mick we should have stop here instead and gone to a famous pub, he says why is it famous? Me shocked at his reply said well its where Ned Kelly made his last stand… so any way we continue on and get a bit further up the freeway just near Seymour and make a quick pit stop (Maccas strikes again), back on the road and I get the shits with the GPS I borrowed from Skye’s mum it continually told me to turn around so instead of throwing it out the window I take it off the cradle and give it to mick.

We finally make it to outer Melbourne and off the Hume freeway which kind of sucked because the ring roads were extremely confusing. Oh and FYI don’t speed once you cross the border, speed cameras are everywhere and they point in both directions from the one point meaning if your speeding towards it you get booked and if you speed off after it you get booked. So we make our way to Essendon to the closest Bank of Queensland, mick isn’t the best at reading a map and was getting frustrated especially cause it was on his phone and he couldn’t work out the direction we came from. So I pull over and get him set, we then spend close to half hour travelling down through Brunswick trying to make our way over to Essendon, finally I get the shits and turn off the main road and cut across to the main road into Essendon. We finally find the BOQ and withdraw the money to pay for the van. Back on the road and following some signs we head towards Tullamarine and end up driving back towards the Hume freeway… oops… well at least we were on the right ring road just in the wrong direction, plus in our defence all the major roads are sign posted as m80 or another number but our map shows them as being a name.

So any way we manage to turn around and head back in the right direction and we finally get to Myrniong. We inspect the van and are happy with it, with one slight problem the trailer plug is 7 pin round and the pin on my car is 7pin flat… off to find an auto parts shop because we also have to get to a tyre shop seeing as the tyres don’t look like they will make the trip back home. We drive into Bacchus marsh 10 – 15 minutes back in the direction we had just come and after going to the local auto electrician and local servo we find an auto parts shop and get a trailer adaptor. Mick decides to stay in Bacchus marsh while I go back to get the van… the van is finally connected and back to Bacchus marsh to get a new set of tyres. It’s now 5pm and the tyres are fitted and we are back on the freeway and then on the ring road in peak hour traffic and Melbourne drivers are just as bad as Sydney drivers in peak hour. I finally get on the Hume freeway and we make a petrol and coffee stop at Seymour. We then head back over the border and continue on to Holbrook, for our next petrol stop… there isn’t much happening seeing as its nearing on 10pm and we can only drive at about 95kph otherwise the car chews the petrol like nothing else.

So we stop for a toilet break at Gundagai and then we got just near Yass when I finally stopped for a power nap. Half hour later and we are back on the road and I am full of red bull and V and coffee… had quite a few of them, we make our last petrol stop at Marulan and from there its straight back home… we get to Narellan road and mick wakes up again and was like it’s going to feel like forever to get home… I was like at least we are here and not still in victoria…I pull up on the nature strip and walk straight inside and hit the sack… I was so tired at work on the Friday, but at least I had got our Caraban home. Almost 24 hours straight on the road, crazy… spent way too much time stuffing around in Melb i.e. Essendon for the bank and driving round Bacchus Marsh and back n forth to Myrniong…


Cheers till next time,
Benj.

Picking up the caravan Part 1

We had won the Auction on the Friday night and by Easter Sunday evening; I had spoken to the seller of the Caravan, who informs me that she had lost the rego label and she can get a replacement on Wednesday once the public holidays are over and Vicroads has opened again. So after a busy couple of days at work Wednesday comes and I finally here from the seller after lunch, she has a replacement label and I can now get the Caravan. Wish it was that easy, the van is located in Myrniong, Victoria. Which is about 60kms west of Melbourne, so a decision has to be made when to pick up the van? Seeing as it was about 1pm on Wednesday and I only have the 2 days off (Wed, Thurs) before going back to work for 6 days and having my next block of days off the following Friday which is my 3 day weekend.

So the big decision was to go down early on the Thursday morning and be back Thursday night or early Friday morning. Now the other major decision who was going to come with me, I spoke with Skye and told her to just call in sick and warned her that if she did ask her boss and he says no she can’t then turn around and call in sick cause it would look to suspicious. Skysie had decided that she would do the right thing and speak to her boss and ask for the day off, well didn’t that turn out to be a major drama. He told her that she could have the day off but gave her massive guilt trip on how busy they are and then he turns around and leaves within half hour and doesn’t turn up on the Thursday. Anyhow Skysie went to work and Mick who just happened to be on holidays was kind enough to do the drive with me. So I organise with mick to leave at 3am, early night to bed and I get a good sleep up at 2am have a shower and a cuppa, I get everything I need organised and it’s just before 3am. Sitting on the lounge waiting for mick to come over so we can head off, and it gets to 10 past and I give him a call and send a text I then spend the next 45minutes sending texts and calling him…. Noddy strikes again… we finally hit the road at 4am, oh well.

We hit the freeway and drive straight down to Gundagai and have a rest stop and breaky at the infamous golden arches, 20 minutes later and after freezing we get back on the road and just before Tarcutta there is some road works this continues on for many kilometres almost all the way to Holbrook. During this time mick has had many naps, we drive through Holbrook and I see a sign advertising the pub museum (apparently a famous icon) and a submarine café, sounds weird I know seeing as the nearest ocean is many kilometres away, so my interest to see this café and I was expecting to see a café shop front with a submarine sign or something, to my surprise in the middle of town there is a park which has a full size submarine which has a café as a part of it. We continue on headed for the border and finally make it to Albury/Wodonga the freeway by passes both towns and we continue on, one thing I noticed going over the border there are some funny road signs and the freeway is a lot straighter. Some of the road signs you may see say things like “TIRED, power nap NOW”…

cheers till next time
Benj.

Buying our Caravan

Where to begin, well I’ll start with a funny story on our decision to buy a caravan, it all begins with us having a family holiday in March 2010. We had decided to take a family camping holiday to Dubbo and stopping at Mudgee for a couple of days on the way. So we arrived at Mudgee pitched the tent in what seemed like a good spot and for the next couple of days it was blowing a gale, we enjoyed Mudgee going to the history museum, honey mead brewery, and just enjoying the township. We packed up and headed off to Dubbo via the Castlereagh Hwy and Gulgong. When we arrived at Gulgong we were supposed to make a left onto Goolma/Mudgee road and head across to the Mitchell Hwy wellington then onto Dubbo, well we missed the turn and decided to continue along the Castlereagh Hwy, we ended up going through some extremely small towns and then ended up on the golden Hwy Dunedoo. We continued on through to Dubbo, what a great mistake and it only added an extra ½ hour to the trip.

We had booked into the big 4 at Dubbo for 4 nights being members it seemed like the sensible idea. The facilities and park were fantastic perfect for families, and the bonus we had left the gale force winds behind, we set up camp and took Obie swimming and let him play on the parks jumping pillow and play equipment.

For Obie’s 3^rd birthday we went to Dubbo zoo the weather was perfect, and the day was fantastic walking the whole park to see everything.  We went to sleep that night and about 5 am I woke to a light shower outside, falling back to sleep I got awoken at 7am by Skysie frantically telling me she is floating, my response half asleep was “how can you float in the tent?” she says wake up and feel the floor we are flooded. GREAT everything inside the tent is saturated except a few things like one set of clothes each, so the decision was made to pack up even though we had 2 more nights paid for.

We packed everything up in the rain and drove down to the amenities block to shower before heading to the goal and then home. On the way home we had decided that whilst we enjoyed camping, we just didn’t like the idea of having the canvas leak again, so buying a caravan or camper van (Winnebago) for travelling was for us, fewer hassles in setting it up and no canvas to leak. Well a few months have passed and nothing we had put buying a caravan on the bottom of the pile until grandma and poppy mark came for a visit Christmas 2010, Obie thought it was fantastic his grandma and poppy mark have a "caraban" as he calls it, this sparked a fire in me to get a caravan for our family holidays, over the next couple of months we either visited grandma and poppy mark or they had visited us whilst they had a base in Queanbeyan just near Canberra.

Let the research begin and scouring of eBay and some magazines, the decision was to buy an older van and make sure we enjoy using it before getting something more decent, so 16 foot 4 berth single axle should be perfect for us. After searching eBay and watching a number of caravan’s sell for $2500 - $4500 we continued our search.

 I found a 16 foot York up for auction starting price of $2250 with 12 months registration, in pretty good condition and the interior only having some overhead cupboards and kitchen bench/cupboard and a wardrobe, I showed Skysie and we decided to place a bid not thinking we would win as most had gone out of our price range it was approximately the 15^th April 2011 when we placed the bid and I only placed a bid for the starting price one to find out if there was a reserve and two because then I wasn’t too committed to it.

I spoke to Skysie again and we decided our max bid would be $2400 if we get outbid, oh well we just keep looking. Which I did keep doing as well as keeping an eye on the progress of the Auction, the auction ended on Friday 22^nd April 2011 at 7.51pm.

I was luckily on my night off and I said to Skysie even if we are over your parents or doing something we know that we have placed our maximum bid and what happens, happens. So it gets to about 7.40pm and we have finished dinner and I log on to eBay and check the progress and funnily enough no one has placed a bid so I kept the laptop with me logged on to eBay watching the last 10 mins of the auction while watching the footy and it gets to 2 mins to go and still no other bidders I said to Skysie unless someone places a last minute bid we have won the caravan, we sat there eyes glue on the timer on the auction and even counted down when there was 10 seconds to go and we had…… won the caravan for the sum of …. The starting price $2250.

Wow I can’t believe it not even another bidder, well the next couple of days were spent with Skysie’s parents at dog shows at castle hill for Easter shows and Obie was entered in the tiny tots handlers which he won both days, somehow we even managed an Easter egg hunt for him before going to the Sunday show.

Next post I’ll tell of the adventure of picking up the caravan.

Cheers till next time

Benj.