11/01/2012 to 14/01/2012 Dubbo

We have spent the previous 3 weeks or so visiting family and friends, travelling from Bairnsdale to Pakenham and Berwick and then travelled to Temora via Wangaratta and then on to Cessnock via Moss Vale. Whilst at Cessnock we travelled to Taree to see Gaila's brother and the back to Sydney and back to Cessnock.

I suppose that this is now the start of our travels. We left Cessnock for the trip to Dubbo, a trip of about 350ks. A bad day to head west towing a caravan, headwinds all the way. Almost three quarters of a tank of fuel, that's a dam lot. The Patrol has a 85 / 90 litre tank.
Gaila and I hadn't been to Dubbo since we returned from Malaysia in December 1981, so we wanted to visit Western Plains Zoo. Although the animals were magnificent and the enclosures were large they just didn't look as grand as they do in the wild.

 

Dubbo gaol is a well presented attraction, with the usual displays. There were a few single prisoner breakouts, however at the time of the breakouts the prison only had a 3 foot tall picket fence, so I suppose they were only lucky that there were only a few breakouts.
However there was a couple of dodgy looking people that they thought they would keep for a while.
There are numerous stories of prisoners that were released who would immediately re-offend. Life was much easier in prison with 3 meals a day and a bed and a roof over your head than trying to survive on the "outside".

The Western Plains Cultural Centre had a number a displays, one of which was called "The Spirit of Australia"

This 10 foot by 8 foot  mural is made of Australian postage stamps.






The Royal Flying Doctor Service operates 2 aircraft from the Dubbo base for emergency medical work, they are about to receive a third aircraft so they can commence regular clinic visits to out lying areas.

Tomorrow (14/1) we head off for Temora, travelling via Parkes.



The Story So Far

I returned from working in Melbourne in March 2008 with the idea that Gaila and I would sell up everything and hit the road for an indefinite period. Well at that time my plans were put on the back burner. You see Gaila was none too keen on the idea of not having a base to come back to – fair enough I said.

We sort of lost our way with the idea and purchased land with the plan of building our dream home, this was going well until I supposed I chickened out on that idea, we were just about to sign with the bank and I felt a little uncomfortable seeing that I would be about 80 odd before the mortgage was paid. So we decided to stay put for a while and think about everything.

Fast forward to early 2011 and we decided that we would go to Borneo for a holiday. Yes that’s right Borneo, why I hear you ask. Gaila has always had a fascination for Orang-utans and wanted to visit Sepilok rehab centre. On our return we realised that there were these people with nothing and they were happy and always willing to give to others.  I suppose I had been on about travelling this fair land of ours for some time, leaving caravan mags around the house etc.  We had by the way changed our caravan to one that had a far better layout than our previous unit. So by mutual agreement we decided to put the land on the market and when it sold that would be the point that we would put a date in place to finish work and start our incredible journey.

The land was on the market for some time with one agent who was making very little progress in selling the property, after changing agents the property sold relatively quickly. I was turning 55 in the October (good for super purposes) so we made the 16^th December as the date that we were going to retire. We had planned to either rent out our home and store our furniture or just leave it as a base. Gaila arrived home from work one evening and said why don’t we sell the house and store our things, who know where we will end up after this adventure (her thinking that in the current market this could take up to two years).

Well you guessed it the house was sold to the second couple who looked at it and they wanted to settle in early September – so much for the two years.

Panic stations, Peter has knee operation, we have nowhere to live for three and a half months. I know you are thinking, you’ve got a caravan (apparently there is a rule in Victoria that if you stay in the one park for more than 28 days you have to be treated as a resident – whole other set of rules), house full of furniture and tools to put into storage and so on. Luckily we had 2 sets of friends who were travelling overseas and asked us to house sit for them and that took us up to Sunday 20^th November, just 28 days before we planned to leave on this adventure. This takes us up to 16th December, retirement for both Gaila and myself.