THE ADVENTURE BEGINS

Ever since Joy decided to retire this January this trip has been on our minds.

It was never really the plan that I - at the ripe old age of 59 - should do the same thing ... but that's how it turned out.

We said our farewells on a long weekend of parties that ended on February 13.

And so began our trip of a lifetime.

Some might ask why Adventure B4 Dementia?

Neither of us have the terrible disease but who knows what lies ahead, so we wanted to do our long journey around this vast country while both of us are reasonable fit and able, and of course, it also rolls off the tongue quite nicely and should be something that people remember.

We had done one trip around NSW and South Australia in our old camper van which we called Myfanwy ... Joy is Welsh and the play on words with the van worked too I think.

Poor old Myfanwy was not up for the lap of Australia so we traded her in for a younger model - still a Toyota Hiace - but something (we hope) is much more reliable than the old girl.

The new model we shall call Daffodillon... again going down the Welsh theme and the suffix most could work out too, I hope.

The first two weeks of our journey were spent In Hervey Bay searching for property (and fishing... above). We needed something that would help pay for our trip and a base that we could return to when we eventually finish the Grey Nomading - something I suggest everyone taking on an expedition such as this needs to do.

At one of those aforementioned farewell parties Joy's colleagues had chipped in to buy some Big 4 camping vouchers, so we used those to stay at Pt Vernon in Hervey Bay - a lovely site with some of the cleanest toilet and shower facilities we have ever seen.

I would recommend this park to any traveller, especially at $35 a night for a powered site.

As we left the bay we were warned of a weather system that was going to dump huge amounts of rain on south east Queensland.

Unfortunately for us and more sadly for the poor folk of Gympie and beyond, those warnings came true and we were stuck for a few days before we could safely make our way south to Brisbane.

Fishing for compliments

With Gympie (above) under water for a few days we decided to head north after flirting with flood water near Maryborough. With daily updates from our very own weather and travel guru, you know who you are.......we finally managed to push on South.

We settled on Agnes Waters and 1770 (above with Joy posing!!!) two beautiful seaside towns in central Queensland.

And this is where my fishing challenge began. Joy challenged me to catch dinner for our stay at 1770 Eco Camp (above), another recommendation for travellers but be warned.... there are plenty of flies and mosquitoes.

While I caught a nice-looking fish (above), it was sadly not big enough to cook for tea.

The fishing challenge continued in Burnett Heads, our home for the next few days.

But once again no luck... and the shop-bought food would have to do again!!!

A beautiful campsite again, clean and beautifully maintained.

A tip for campers here, though, don't cut corners when putting up gazebos or tents etc, with some strong winds ours blew away for a couple of metres as we decided that guy ropes were unnecessary. Not the case, as we found out halfway through the night with our gazebo upside down and halfway across the site!!!

The 'real' journey

As the floods subsided, we had a few days chilling with family in Brisbane, the 'real' journey began, or so we thought.

The plan was to slowly make our way down the New South Wales coast.

But Mother Nature put paid to those ideas.

Road closures forced us to head through the centre of Lismore, another town ripped apart by flooding, and driving through the Northern Rivers town was worse than Gympie.

Piles of furniture and household goods lined the streets in what could be only described as apocalyptic... not sure we could cope with what these poor people went through.

We had a fairly brief, albeit terrifying vision of what they went through as Joy drove through the middle of the mother and father of thunderstorms between Lismore and Grafton.

The rain was more than torrential if that is possible. It was 2pm but it was so dark it was like the middle of the night with potholes the size of Wales to avoid as well as water on the road.

I was panicking in the passenger seat but Joy was calm and collected and we managed to survive, but it was a terrible couple of hours.

Wauchope and beyond

Our plan also was to stay - as much as possible - in free camps or cheaper campsites and the Timbertown campgrounds in Wauchope (pronounced Warhope) near Pt McQuarie fitted the bill perfectly despite more rain and the cost again was in our budget at $20 for a night's stay.

The theme continued as we moved south as news reached us that parts of Sydney were now going under.

'Let's head for the Blue Mountains', I said, 'surely there is no flooding up there'.

Sadly, Penrith, at the foot of the mountains also got a drenching and we had to move on to the central tablelands and a tiny village called Oberon, with the hope of visiting the Jenolan caves.

Again the weather was against us as the roads to the caves were closed as were plenty of others and the caves because of a combination of the weather and covid were only open to the public on Saturdays.

But the rain did eventually subside and we could relax for a couple of days and Oberon lake (pictured above) was a great place to visit.

Driving miss daisy

While we were in Oberon the weather did relent enough for us to visit Bathurst, a town on the edge of the Blue Mountains famous for a motor race called the Bathurst 1000.

The track, carved into Mount Panorama, is, day by day a public thoroughfare, meaning that everyday folk can get to 'experience' what the race drivers do on that special day on the Australian motorsport calendar in October every year.

Granted the V8 cars can get up to speeds of 300km per hour on the circuit and the normal everyday speed limit around the track is just 60kph. So my lap took seven minutes (don't laugh) as opposed to the 2:03.481s lap record set by Scott McLaughlin in practice in 2019.

But I reckon I hold my own special place in Bathurst history... the first in a Toyota Hiace Campervan and the first in the wrong bloody direction.

Yes, you heard right, I was told by many observers, or so-called friends (LOL) that I went the wrong way.

So to put things right I went the right way and realised just how hard a track it is.

But even though I stuffed up first time, I can still say I did it and I am proud of that.

Say cheese

To say our first few weeks on the road were hectic would be an understatement.

But finally as we escaped the rain at long last, it was back to some sort of normality. Cooma, the capital of the Snowy Mountains, was a brief stop-off and then another slight plan change as Bega, the cheese capital of Australia, came into our sights.

Bega was just a short hop from the mountains to near the coast, so we headed there before going further south.

The town's showgrounds, (pictured above) again, were our home for three days, as they had been in Oberon.

Showgrounds are a much cheaper option than formal campsites but they come with power if you want it and hot showers and most of all clean toilets.

For those working on a budget as we are, showgrounds, and most towns have them in Australia, are a fantastic option.

Again our plans were thrown into chaos as the cheese factory was temporarily closed to the public because of covid.

Hopefully we can return on our way back up the coast. We did, however, taste some of the local product with our homemade burgers, it would have been rude not to!!!

Bega is a good base for the lower Sapphire Coast, so beautiful seaside towns, such as Tathra (above) and Merimbula are stand-out places.

But as we headed south on the next part of our journey we found the real gem of the Sapphire Coast (so far).

A pee stop, and trust me at our age there are plenty of those, led us to Quarantine Bay, just off the Princes Highway heading to the border with Victoria.

It was jaw-dropping and again somewhere we want to stay longer on the way back up, if only for me to break my drought on the fishing front, which sadly still stands at one caught in more than six weeks.