Crispin Family Travellers: April 2016

Saturday, 23 April 2016

What I have discovered

Here I sit back at home, filled with so many wonderful new experiences, saddened that our trip is now over and excited to go to new places.
Our "Road Trip of 2016" was a big one, possibly too big but it gave us a great opportunity to get a taste of so many places, most we will try to see again as part of another different trip.
Would I change what we did? -not at all, it was over 8000km of magical discovery.

What have I learned?

This is an amazingly beautiful and diverse country
I love spending time with my amazing husband and kids
The further away from the big cities you get the more intense the beauty
Connecting with the land is spiritual
Audio books are fantastic
I clearly have a problem with washing clothes, when looking around our new digs at Fraser Island Lewis called out, look Mum your favourite thing! yep the washing machine.
Wraps make a great lunch (except when you have to fight flies to make them!)
I still don't like flies!
Not all internet connections are created equal
My kids love swimming pools

But most of all

Nothing beats time together with the ones you love, especially when you are discovering new places together.

Thanks for sharing our travels with us, I have enjoyed being able to put this blog together and look forward to our next travels (even if it is just a weekend get away!)

Friday, 22 April 2016

Day 24- Coffs Harbour and then home -with pictures

What a beautiful start to the day we had this morning.
After a great nights sleep (falling asleep to the rolling sound of the surf must have helped, and waking to the same gentle sounds of surf) we headed down to the beach for a morning walk, our last grasp of holiday time.

If you had asked me if I wanted to live in Coffs right then my answer would be YES! In fact it may still be the same answer.
After breakfast we packed the car for the last time this trip and headed south for home.

Roosters became a regular sight at our road stops, apparently they are often dumped as they are not permitted to be kept in many built up areas

Lunch at John's River and a play

Traffic kept building all day.
The journey into Sydney wasn't great, quite a bit of traffic and some patches of heavy rain and then we actually arrived in Sydney, what a horrible way to finish a road trip. Sydney traffic is the pits!

Rain on the freeway

Welcome back to Sydney

We arrived home just after 6pm, we've had dinner and unpacked quite a lot of gear, one load of washing done. Brett is exhausted from the driving, kids are snuggled in their beds and while I need to add photos from the past few days my priority will be bed, I'm tired too!
I will update this further in the morning but for now, we have had a wonderful family adventure, we have seen so much, and made so many discoveries.
I am extremely grateful to have been able to do this with the people I love so much.

Our last sunset for the trip (pity we were stuck in traffic near Homebush!)

Thursday, 21 April 2016

Day 23- sayonara Queensland, onto Grandma in Grafton and then Coffs Harbour -with photos

A final cuddle for our friends before they had to go to school!

Back to the motorway to keep heading south.
Before we realised it we had crossed the border and we're back in NSW. Missed that photo op too! It has been quite overcast for us today and we actually had significant rain today, (only the second day of any rain all trip but quite a lot more today than before).

more roads....

We took the opportunity to stop and visit Brett's Grandma in Grafton, just in time for lunch. It was a good chance to catch up and for the kids to see Great Grandma again and to run in her enormous back yard.

The tree lined streets just before grandma's house

Cuddles with Great Grandma

Our family tradition of photos on the stairs (just like the ones daddy has!)

We left at about 3 and continued southward to Coffs Harbour. Our wildlife spotting has reduced to mostly cattle, sheep and horses although we did see goats and deer today. We also saw banana and pineapple plantations along with sugar cane.

Our final night of accommodation and we have quite possibly the largest room we have had all trip, not in town, 6km North at Korora, on the beach, as I sit here typing with the glass door open, the waves gently crashing it is bliss! The glass of bubbles and the dark chocolate to celebrate the end of our trip help too!
Like all serious east Coast families who travel north we took the kids to the Big Banana this afternoon for a quick look around, a chocolate dipped frozen banana and a photo at the great "BIG" icon. The kids had a great time! Only problem is that they were disappointed that hey didn't get a swim in the pool. With a bit of luck we will be up early enough to have a quick walk along the beach in the morning.

I am trying to get some photos loaded but the internet is not being friendly, at least now it is letting me on, earlier it wasn't interested at all!
So tomorrow we head home, back to reality!
Lewis has had some times of being home sick but assures us he has enjoyed the adventure.
Aimee has had a great time.
Brett and I have loved it.
I have learned so much about so many places but have really only scratched the surface!
I look forward to more travelling!
But it's not over yet! I still have lots of pictures to load, more travels to plan, and of course somewhere in the vicinity of 500+ km to go.

Day 22 bye bye Frazer Island- now with pictures!

Our time at Frazer Island has been fantastic, too short but wonderful fun.
We had tried to see the dingos down on the beach on our last afternoon and headed down to the beach to watch sunset, we'd were moments too late, we missed the best colours in the sky and, according to the first lady we saw, we missed seeing a dingo by 2 maybe 5 minutes. Knowing that our best chance to see the dingos was dawn or dusk the kids were awake at stupid o'clock to catch the sunrise, so off we trekked just a bit after sun up!

This is what we saw and followed,

But only tracks.

Back to our villa for breakfast, final pack and to head to the ferry, I kept reassuring Aimee that we still hadn't left the island and we may see a dingo but damn those dingos! we didn't see one. Apparently there are only around 125 on the whole island and there is a huge education program to educate people to keep away from the dingoes not to feed them and so on which has obviously paid off. They are wild animals and unpredictable, especially when people have been feeding them and trying to make contact with them. We discovered that at least three camp sites have been closed at the moment as some dingoes have become quite aggressive.
Our ferry trip was quiet, Aimee and I shed a tear but we have a good reason to go back. We tried to see too much in our one whole day. Next time we hope to head further up north.

we saw this perenti in the garden as we packed

The kids running to me along the pier while we waited for the ferry

You get to drive on for the return trip

A sad girl with her brother, making a final search along the Fraser shores

Once we were back on the mainland we traveled through quite a lot of various farm land areas.

The increased traffic, larger roads/lanes, bigger and more frequent towns (which were pretty) only meant one thing, we were getting closer and closer to big cities and home! I have been denying the idea of returning home, back to reality but realise that if we are to have more great adventures like this, home and work are a necessary evil.
Once again we proved the theory that the shorter drives can often be the longer ones. Our destination today was Burleigh Heads to visit our once were neighbours Tania, Dave, Maddy and Megan who have made the big life change from the hustle and bustle of Sydney to the Gold Coast. It was great to finally see them and the kids loved catching up ( so did the grown ups but it was too short!).
One thing that completely surprised me was the traffic on the motorway, four lanes (sometimes more!) but it was just as bad as the M5 in Sydney (Dave and Tania assure us it is dreadful most days!) and we weren't even on in in full peak hour. Apparently Gold Coast folk are not great on motorways.

But we did have a great time catching up even though it was only short (& maybe we will trek Fraser together in our matching Everest cars)

Day 20-21 Fraser Island -with pictures

We had a truly magical time on Fraser Island.
No internet and limited phone connection made they relax even more enjoyable.
We have lots and lots of photos.
As I update this (we are now in Coffs Harbour) we are again running on limited internet, I'll see what I can do.
Aimee (and I) were extremely disappointed to miss seeing a dingo on Fraser Island (we did see others on our trip) but we did see the turtles at Lake Allom, a huge sea eagle with a really BIG snake on the beach, a perentie, and loads more while on the island.
Like most of the places we have been to on the trip we didn't have anywhere near enough time to see it all but we did manage a super delicious taster, we have all decided we would love to go back!
The kids really loved the 4WD part of the trip too!
Our accomodation was perfect, the weather was pretty good, a little overcast but not too hot and certainly not cold.
Getting to Hervey Bay from Bundaberg took so much longer than we had expected and we then had major detours and road works but we managed to make it, we relaxed and we enjoyed the break.
Before we left Bundaberg we found a terrific council run zoo called Alexandra Gardens. They had dingoes, emus, wallabies, cotton top tamarins, quolls, birds snakes and lizards, it was really pretty and it was free. Bundaberg is another place that we definitely need to go back to as well.
I'll try to update with pics asap but may not be until we get home.

The kids had lots of fun playing around our villa, these enormous seed pods were a big hit

Posing with a perentie

That's a dingo in the background @Alexandra Park (zoo)

Cotton top tamarin

The dingo again

Heading through Hervey Bay (I think!)

Getting ready to board the ferry

Reversing onboard

Reception at Kingfisher Bay

Our accomodation on the Island

The 4WD adventure begins

More 4WD

A very happy man, who I love to bits, relaxing by Lake McKenzie

This kid discovered a love of rolling in the sand, he didn't get that from me (or his dad apparently!)

And so the game was, roll on the sand, get covered as much as possible then run to wash it off in the lake. They had a ball, even had passers by laughing with them