Our First Day

Toowoomba to Tweed Heads (Gold Coast) and back (Friday 13^th July)

Yesterday we drove from my parent’s house in Toowoomba to the Gold Coast to pick up the motor home we’d hired for our 16 day trip into Australia’s outback. We were excited, the many questions that we’d been waiting for answers for were just about to be answered.

We’ve been planning this trip for over six months, and dreaming about it for I don’t know how long. Many Aussies think about going out to see places like the Stockman’s Hall of Fame in Longreach, to see the Northern Territory, and Uluru. Certainly many non-Australians go there every year. It is ironic how many of our international friends have been there compared to the large number of our Australian friends who haven’t.

Our questions were about to be answered, but we weren’t prepared for how many questions we didn’t have that would be answered too. In our nearly two hour orientation session, we learnt about all number of things we hadn’t even thought of in relation to using a motor home. Like how to turn the fridge on! How to manage all the difference sources of energy the motor home relies on (battery, gas, electricity, and solar power). By the end of the orientation my brain was overfull! Information was bouncing around in my head to the point of feeling discombobulated.

Our day was far from over, however. We then split up. David and the two younger boys drove in the motor home back to Brisbane to pick up something we’d left at our house sitting situation. My eldest son and I took the car we’d been borrowing back to Brisbane, to pick up my new glasses (green!) and some perishables to put in the motor home. Then we met up again at the place where we dropped the car off.

Unfortunately it all took longer than we’d anticipated and we were on the road way too late. We aren’t supposed to have this 4.49 tonne vehicle on the road after dark, well I’m afraid it was quite dark by the time we’d gotten back to my parent’s house where all our belongings waited to be loaded up into the motor home.

Thankfully mum had made us a delicious tea and we were able to eat as soon as we got there and put the kids through showers then into bed. As tired as we were, for having driven for about six hours, we still had to get all our “stuff” into the motor home for an early start the next day. I was surprised at how much fitted into all the little nooks and crannies around the place. It has a great deal of “overhead” cupboards (in inverted commas, because they really aren’t over our heads!).

By 10.30pm, though, I was exhausted. And just a little bit scared. With all the information about how to take care of this massive vehicle sloshing around in my head plus all the little decisions about what to take (like , “Do we need a table cloth?”) the new kinaesthetic feeling of being in a vehicle that swayed and rocked more than the usual vehicles we travel in had me a bit concerned. The knowledge that I’d have to take my turns at driving this massive vehicle tomorrow left me feeling worried. You know, worrying about all the things that could go wrong. It left me in a not-so-good state of mind for sleeping.