A "rest" day

Sunday, a “rest” day (15^th July)

On Sunday morning I awoke early and after another trip to the toilet realised I was in for another stress-induced urinary tract infection. Not fun. The irony of it is that when I've visited Springsure in the past, I've frequently gotten sick! And usually at Christmas time, for that is the time that we’re most usually up here. Therefore the hospital (the only after-hours medical option) has a chart on me. 

Last time I visited the Springsure hospital I’d managed to bite my cheek at the very back and developed a nasty infection (a couple of days before Christmas, no less). I’ve also had gastro and various other infections in this town. I wonder if it is the stress of seeing my in-laws or maybe just the long drive to get here?

But first we had to organise our first meal in the motor home. That meant booting the person sleeping in the table position out of their bed so that we could put up the table. Actually organising a family in one of these things takes a bit of finesse. With so little floor space, and a lot of double-usages, it just isn’t possible to be very much out of sync. You can’t have staggered meals, for example, but you do need to take turns for getting dressed and using the bathroom.

Sunday was a rest day, a day to spend with family. We headed off across town on foot to the Anglican church where David’s cousin’s child was being baptised. It was a bit of a cultural challenge because I’m not sure the boys have ever been in a liturgical service before.

After church I walked the boys to the playground and then myself to the hospital. It really is a tiny town (600 people). But the streets are wide. You could fit several lanes of traffic on them! And hardly anyone walks. I felt weird walking the streets yesterday, it was very quiet and almost the only people were in cars driving past. I don’t think I’ve seen one bike here. There is so much space, the yards are big, the houses (though mostly quite old) are sprawling, and the footpaths wide. The one place that isn’t large is our motor home and I feel quite at home in it!

The sky as we headed out for lunch to David's cousins'
property. Amazing! David calls it a "mackerel" sky.

After I got some antibiotics we headed out of town to David’s cousin’s property for a post-christening/first birthday party. A lot more relatives were there, I hardly knew anyone. But by this time I was starting to feel the effects of the infection and just needed to sit still, quietly shuddering on the inside. Do you know what this is like? It is kind-of like shivering, except that it your insides, not your outsides that are shaking, it didn't help that there was a chilly wind blowing.

Mid afternoon we came back to our home-on-wheels and I lay down and read for a couple of hours.

While I was doing that David was investigating the motor home. Not because he was particularly curious, but because there was still one thing we hadn’t figured out. The motor home wasn’t switching power sources. When we unplugged the connection to power it was supposed to switch over to the “house” batteries, but that wasn’t happening.

At about 6pm David’s family came over again. Did I mention that we are parked in the backyard of a “family” house? It is a “town” house owned by David’s aunt who lives a long way out of town, so far that it isn’t always possible to get home after a trip to town. Many extended family members use it, and we’ve slept there ourselves. It is a quite old and, because no one lives there permanently, is a little soul-less. But my in-laws have many memories of the place as they’ve spent many a night there when visiting family during holidays.

We had a lovely relaxed time with David's immediate family over a simple meal of toasted sandwiches. A good memory to take with us as we go on our way, probably not seeing them again for another two years.

We finally take off on our grand adventure

Saturday (14^th July)

This morning started pretty well. My pretty rotten sleep was cut slightly short when my phone bipped to tell me a text message had arrived. Not welcome at 5.18. Neither of us went back to sleep after that. At 5.45 we got up and got going. Finished the final bits of packing, ate food that I didn’t feel like, dragged boys out of bed etc. It was all going well and we exceeded our at-the-latest departure time of 8.00 by 20 minutes. Our goal was Springsure, the small town where David’s brother, sister, and Dad. It is 800 km from Toowoomba, roughly north-north-west. And no, they aren’t on the other side of the country, but only about a third of the way up our state of Queensland (Toowoomba is close to the bottom of the state). Queensland is an enormous state, bigger than Texas (but less populated).

Unfortunately we forgot all our pillows and the doona (quilt-thingy). Fortunately Mum and Dad found them, and called us. Unfortunately that was 25 minutes after our departure. Fortunately Dad saved us some precious minutes by meeting us halfway with the missing goods. But the whole thing set us back again. Alas, today would be a day of no long breaks for stretching the legs (Ed's note: it turned out to be our second longest single day's journey). 800 kilometres is a long way to drive, especially in a motor home. We’d been advised that the best speed to aim for was 90 km/hr. That is less than we’d normally drive in a passenger vehicle (the speed limit is mostly between 100 and 110 km/hr).

I took lots of "road" photos. To remember what various
landscapes looked like, but also to show you. This was
a typical piece of road that we drove on on the way to
Springsure.

And remember, we’re aiming to get there before dusk, but it is winter, so the sun goes down earlier. I’m typing as David drives, between driving stints. I just hope that we make it in time. We don’t want to risk an encounter with a kangaroo, I’ve still got bad memories of the last time I encountered a kangaroo on the road. The kangaroo fared well, but my car didn’t.

Oh, and you’re wondering how driving went for me earlier? I was very nervous, but managed okay. It has cruise control and that makes it pretty easy on open roads that are pretty flat and straight. You set the speed and then just steer, while staying vigilant about road conditions, speed signs etc. Oh, and flicking the windscreen wipers off and on. We’re in the land of droughts and floods. Not much drought happening now, plenty of rain, though.

The round-up of Saturday (written the next day)

On Saturday we drove from Toowoomba to Springsure, just beating the sunset. It was a long day, 800km, taking 10 hours. We felt pretty ragged at the end. But the day wasn’t over. First we had dinner with various members of David’s family. We had a delightful meal of fish and chips and a good time of reacquainting ourselves.

Then we settled down for our first night sleeping in the motor home. The biggest surprise was the earthquake simulator effect. After ten hours of driving in this large vehicle the earth was rolling for us anyway, but I soon discovered that while I was lying on my bed I could tell whenever someone was rolling or moving in almost any direction. The van’s suspension produced quite tremor-like movements. Needless to say, I had to keep reminding myself that we were in the land of almost-no earthquakes.

After such a big, tension filled day, I found it hard to wind down and go to sleep, even though my bed was wonderfully comfortably. In the middle of the night I had to make a trip to the toilet, about 80cm from my bed. Unfortunately we’d not put the chemicals into the toilet yet, so I had to go and find the chemicals too. It just added to a restless night.

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.

Hopping back on the horse

Well, we're safely back from our long trip to Uluru. So, it is about time I got back on the horse and posted here! I did write blog posts every night, but didn't have access to internet (or time to seek it) for the whole trip. I wrote over 10,000 words, and I really haven't figured out the best way to post the sixteen entries here, so I guess I'll just post them a couple at a time, interspersed with daily happenings for us. We head back to Japan next Tuesday, so there'll be plenty of happenings!

(I'll keep my journey posts separate, so my next post will be the first day of our 8,000km motor home journey.)

Sizzler fantasies

It's funny what you fantasise about when you are away from your home country. In my first and even the start of my second term I had a rather idealistic memory of Australia.

I do miss Australia these days, but nothing like the homesickness of those early years. The boys don't really get homesick for Australia, but there are things that they look forward coming back to. Actually it is the same with Japan when we're in Australia.

Tonight we go to one place that we all like to come back to: Sizzler. There are Sizzler restaurants in Japan and other all-you-can-eat restaurants. But there is something we really like about Australian Sizzlers. I think all the boys have their personal records, you know, how many "course" they managed last time. In fact the last time we went to Sizzler was the last meal we had in Australia in 2010. Now we're not out to make pigs of ourselves, but rather enjoy a special place.

I certainly wouldn't have thought Sizzler would be something that we would miss. If you were to leave Australia for a lengthy period of time, what do you think it might be for you?

Dental dramas

I forgot to mention yesterday that I also made an unexpected trip to the dentist. You may remember the dental dramas I experienced back in March (see here) when a chunk of one of my molars fell out and I needed a large filling.

Well, in the last week or so I've been experiencing a little bit of discomfort, especially a feeling of "fullness", like I've got something stuck between my teeth up in the same area. Additionally the cold-sensitivity that developed back then has never gone away. As we're about to do a long trip out west, David advised me to go to a dentist here before we leave.

I'm glad I took his advice. The dentist, who I've never been to before, listened to my story then started probing around and shooting cold air between teeth. When he got to the tooth that was filled in March I nearly shot out of the chair. He drilled out that filling, which had taken three visits to acquire, and found more decay underneath it, as well as decay on the neighbouring tooth.

Conditioned by the Japanese method of dentistry, I expected I'd have to come back at least one more time for the fillings, but he did it right there and then. I was impressed, though I'm getting close to losing the tooth, however, so much of it has been drilled away!

Doing it all in English, however, was so easy. Times like that really make me miss living in an English speaking country.

The conversation strangers who discover that we live in Japan usually goes something like this:

"You live in Japan. How long have you been there?"
"Nearly 12 years."
"Oh, you must like it there."
"Well, we've gotten used to it. We love coming back to Australia though."
"You speak the language?"
"Some. Enough to get by, but there's lots I can't understand."
"My nephew's going there for a couple of weeks at the end of the year. He loves Japan."

I find it slightly odd that people assume we really like Japan. I guess that is the only reason they can quickly come up with for someone choosing to live there instead of Australia. It is also odd that the conversation is almost the same every time.

I'm thankful that this dentist didn't get upset that we are missionaries. We once had an experience of an Australian dentist going off about, "Leaving people to their own religion . . ." That kind of passion is a bit scary when he is the one with the needle and drill!

Our trip is getting close

Today was messy. Being a family is messy and when you are linking up with other family members it is even messier. Even though none of us are working, we each had things we needed to get done.

We did get to the library and borrowed many hours of books on CD for our 7,000 km journey. We proved on Sunday that a few stories to listen to can bring much joy and unbelievable peace when kids are getting fractious.

This afternoon was given over to cousins reuniting. And on a rainy, foggy winter day, it was all indoors and pretty noisy.

This evening we've spent some time going over our itinerary for our trip and writing down phone numbers etc. Here's a rough map of our trip:

To give you some perspective on distance. Many of these arrows are more than 600km in length!

On Friday we leave Toowoomba to go and pick up the motorhome down on the coast at Tweed Heads, then we'll come back here for the night. After that we'll take off on our adventure. It's getting really close and excitement is building!

I'm thinking about blogging on the trip. I don't think we'll have much WiFi on the trip, but I think I might blog anyway, and then put the posts up whenever I get the chance. That we we'll have an online diary of our journey. Others have expressed interest in hearing the stories and seeing the photos, so I think that will probably be the best way to do it. If I leave it to when we get back, stories will be forgotten and life will overtake me, leaving me with no time to tell it all. What do you think? Will you mind reading a few posts of our trip in one go?

But for now, off to bed. And we're praying for a non-rainy day tomorrow to get the boys out of the house for a while!