Committed Travellers

It was a teensy bit cooler this morning, so I took Bluey for a walk to Papercup for a coffee. We then drove to Bunnings to buy a baby/pet gate. This will be installed downstairs near the doggy door so Blue can be confined downstairs when we go out leaving him at home.

He sometimes has trouble going up the stairs, getting three-quarters of the way up before losing confidence. If we are not immediately there to help him, he will stop or turn around and go back down. Tilly sometimes bullies him on the stairs, so his fear of falling down the stairs is not unfounded.

I have trained him to go out the doggy door, but he prefers us to open the front door for him. He doesn’t willingly go down the stairs if I have told him to use the doggy door. I doubt he has ever taken himself outside when we were not home. The gate will remove any risk of Bluey hurting himself on the stairs when we are not home.

I have lots of outside jobs to do, but am not prepared to tackle them in this heat and humidity. I ordered a fresh packet of tile repair paint, which arrived today. This is a fiddly time-consuming job, but effectively hides small chips and scratches.

We have abandoned our efforts to have a new air conditioning unit installed on the Bushtracker. No other model will fit in the space between our solar panels. Our old unit is noisy but effective since the junk was removed from the inside. If the Truma breaks down, we may have no option other than to replace it with another Truma.

We tidied the house ready for our housekeeper to work her magic. I took all our scarves, gloves and beanies outside to shake off any black perished rubber from an old pair of ski gloves. We culled a few items that went into the charity bag.

When in Europe in October/November, the temperature could drop below freezing in some places, so we will need very warm clothing. Beanies, gloves and scarves purchased in Australia might not be adequate for late autumn in Europe.

Once the cleaning was done, Tilly graced us with her company sleeping on the big bed. She half opened her eyes when I got close to her.

Bluey hasn’t had a run on the beach with any of his friends. I’m not sure why we haven’t seen his favourite canines, but it might have been too hot for some of their owners.

We spotted this swan paddling by, but it turned into a double- headed swan, then became two swans.

I finally had some energy to tackle a couple of indoor jobs, starting with the glasses cupboard. After removing about 100 glasses, I drilled some extra holes to lower the shelves, making each one except the top shelf reachable without a step ladder.

There are another 50 odd glasses in a different cupboard. When I asked Anita if we needed all of them for a household of two, she was unwilling to part with any of them!

While I had the ladder upstairs, I cleaned the bathroom extractor fan. I removed the outer grill, then took the fan out because it was covered with blown-in ceiling insulation.

While we were away in Tamworth, weeds bloomed in a couple of our garden beds. I made a start on the creeping weeds in the front bed as they had started moving into the grass.

Other jobs are lined up for tomorrow.

We ventured out this morning taking Bluey to the HOTA markets. It was drizzling but too hot to wear our raincoats. We parked on Chevron Island and walked across the Green Bridge. He was trembling when I lifted him out of the car because we were near the grooming salon that he really doesn’t like.

It was too unpleasant to sit outside, so we bought takeaways coffees from the Bonsai cafe and retreated to our air-conditioned abode.

I wasn’t prepared to do anything outside, so sat down to do more research for our trip. Yesterday I pulled out our overseas electrical plugs from our travel drawer and discovered the outside rubber on our Qantas luggage tags had deteriorated. The resulting mess has to be cleaned off with methylated spirits.

Today I made a similar discovery in our gloves and beanies drawer – the rubberised palms on two pairs of gloves had also disintegrated, leaving lots of small pieces of black tar-like goo. That drawer will need to be emptied and cleaned, but first, I will have to lay a tarpaulin on the floor before removing any clothing.

Fortunately we could spend time watching the cricket. Bluey had a quick walk to the park, but wasn’t keen to linger. Our friend sent this photo of Bluey “wearing” his water bowl at breakfast yesterday.

We caught up with our friends over breakfast at Salt Cafe. Bluey sat on the bench seat where he could have his very diluted coffee and snacks.

It was another hot day – too hot to do anything outside, so we watched the women’s cricket and did some more research for our trip.

I unpacked much of the car and found a gap behind the rear seats to store the ladder in its cardboard carton. The air cooler we bought in Tamworth is now taking up space in the garage.

The rest of our day was spent researching hotels for our trip. This is time-consuming checking locations, prices, additional costs, whether there is a lift, check-in and check-out times etc. Bluey kept reminding us of his presence, as though he knew we were planning a long trip away from him.

The tree on our nature strip is in flower. It reminds me of the hair worn by Sideshow Bob from the Simpsons!

Bluey was a bit pongy, so I gave him a bath.  He puts up with having a wash in the laundry sink and being trimmed with scissors, but he really dislikes the clippers. I managed to cut and trim enough fur from his front paws to find his claws to cut them. The back paws will wait for another day.

It was also clothes washing day, but Tilly decided this pile of washing made a comfortable bed.

We have put away most of our clothes and other gear unloaded from the caravan. The  car is on my list for tomorrow.

This afternoon we confirmed our house/pet sitter for while we will be travelling in Europe later this year. We also booked our plane tickets, so we can organise the rest of our itinerary.

We were on the road by 8.30 am. There was no rain overnight, and it was dry and sunny for the 4 hour drive.

Our only hiccup was turning right off the Ipswich Boonah Rd onto the Beaudesert Boonah Rd to see these signs.

We had pulled over to contemplate our options when a car drew alongside. The passenger looked at our Bushtracker and said “We’ve got one of them”. Their van is a 14 footer while ours is 15 feet long. These short vans are rare as most Bushtrackers are 19 to 22 feet long. The couple assured us the road was open, so we drove past the signs and did not see any water on the road once past this bend.

This flooding was from Teviot Brook, which had covered the road a little further on, but was flowing under the bridge when we passed.

We were home just after 12.30 when we did a quick unload, before taking the Bushtracker back to the storage depot.

Bluey and Tilly had a run together on the carpet, something they both miss when we take them away in the caravan. I took him for a walk to the park, but none of his friends were around.

Last night there were interesting cloud formations around Tamworth, and this morning it was very humid, which is unusual as Tamworth is known for having dry heat. We completed our packing and drove out of Tamworth. Our first stop was Uralla for coffees.

There was little traffic along the New England Hwy, and we were not held up at any of the active roadworks. Our only traffic issue was a slow-moving car doing 60 kph in a 100 kph zone. This is dangerous so we were pleased to finally be able to overtake.

We set up in the Stanthorpe caravan park, and then I drove down town to walk along Quart Pot Creek and to view heritage buildings. Anita opted to keep the critters company in the van. A lot of water is flowing in the creek.

Stanthorpe has some interesting murals. A laneway has a timber arbour covered with grape vines, with murals covering the walls of buildings on each side of the lane.

This clever Gone with the Wind artwork is outside the public toilets. Unfortunately there is graffiti on the portrait of Clark Gable on the Gents toilets.

My favourite is the Italian village mural at the piazza. This is a very detailed mural completed in 2019 by three artists in collaboration with the owners of the building.

There are several heritage listed buildings in Stanthorpe. Many date from the early 1900s, such as the decorative Central Hotel.

The Commercial Hotel is no longer trading and is for sale at $2.5 million. Part of the building is currently being used as a cafe.

Across the road is the impressive 1911 post office with a clock tower

Almost every shop along the main street in Stanthorpe is occupied. The Stanthorpe Plaza is occupied by Woolworths and a liquor store, but the other shops are vacant. There is an Aldi and a large IGA behind the main street, and plenty of parking. Tourism is a growing industry in this attractive town.

Back at camp I walked Tilly and Bluey. Each one visited the gay men on the next site who are enjoying their brand new motorhome.

The motorhome packed up and headed home today. Before they left, Leo had a couple of visits with Bluey while Tilly was outside.

We are staying one more night which allowed us to catch up with other friends over lunch at DECO on Peel St. This restaurant is in an Art Deco hotel that was beautifully refurbished.

Our lunches were good, with three of us choosing the salmon. I should give up on desserts because I consistently find them way too sweet. It is a quiet venue allowing us to have a good catch-up. We must remember to take a jacket into the dining room as we were freezing.

While we were out, I monitored Bluey on our WiFi camera. He moves around a lot, constantly checking the window. Tilly sleeps at the door, where it will be a little warmer than the rest of the van, which we keep cool with the AC. This evening, he fell asleep on my shoulder, which was not very comfortable for me.

After lunch we went home to pick up Bluey before taking our ladder back to Tow World because one rivet was not properly secured. A replacement ladder was provided. While Anita shopped in Coles, I refuelled the Toyota.

Back at camp I topped up our water tanks, then removed the hoses and shade screen. Our site is too steep for us to hook up the Bushtracker today, so we will do that in the morning.

We will be keeping a close eye on the weather forecast tomorrow as current predictions include heavy rain and flooding in the area we have to drive through.

One of our Roadie friends took this great photo of Beccy Cole playing her guitar while Gabi Louise played her fiddle during Beccy’s show