2 Weeks 'till Take Off!!

Well the countdown is really here!! 2 Weeks - but trying to tell the kids that's actually 14 days is not so much fun in their eyes. Today is the trial for the lawn mower bloke that will be looking after the outside while we're away and tomorrow is the trial for the cleaner for inside the house while we're away. Andrew's parents will be here looking after our dog Chilli while we trip around and they need a bit of help so that's why we've got people doing a few extra things.
We have the Kindy Easter night tonight which should be an ok social event if it doesn't confine all kids and parents into the kindy building if it rains. Declan is really looking forward to meeting the Easter Bunny and they have their bunny ears to take along. Andrew's out at work so he misses out on the chocolates!!
There's still a lot of things to get done before our departure, mainly organising bills and mail and there is always the last minute packing of clothes, shoes, and pillows to be done at the last minute. Now it's just me thinking everyday of all the things that we shouldn't forget, and my brain's on overload thinking about just that.
Oh well, fun night tonight with the kids so I must charge the camera!

Cyclone Delay

Well the unexpected happened - a cyclone hit our neck of the woods only 3 weeks and 3 days before our departure date. It was a good test to see if we were prepared to be self sufficient for 2 1/2 months on the road and I can sadly say that we weren't as prepared as what I thought. Apparently there was something wrong with the gas fittings not fitting one of the gas bottles that was in fact full but it only fit the gas bottle that we had run out of gas with. Oh drama, drama!! Anyway to our surprise Camping World was open the day after the cyclone hit and they were able to fill up the gas bottle and they had the right gas fitting for us to survive if we needed to run the gas cooker and the 3 way waeco fridge for a few days. We were expecting the power to be out for several days, but to Ergon Energy's credit they had the power back on in our area just over 12 hours after it had gone out. Sadly though there are still a lot of house without power still and have to rely on generators for the time being.

With only 2 weeks and 3 days until departure the clean up of the yard has taken up a lot of time. To be fair to the cyclone, I've probably done more damage than it did to our yard but considering while I was at it I figured why not really clean up a few things. Sad to say the cannas and the spineless pandanas have seen better days and they are probably better off this way than dying from neglect. Next onto cleaning the house....

Our Caravan

When we were starting to think about this trip we couldn't figure out which way to go with buying or renting a campervan, caravan, or camp trailer and do we go new or secondhand if we buy one??? The indecision didn't last long with Andrew finding a Jayco Hawk outback campervan (up and out style) for sale on Trading Post and he said that if we sat around long enough thinking about it we would miss out so he bought it with the only problem being that the campervan was down in Nerang, not near where we live. So he came off night shift slept all day and headed off during the night to go get his campervan. We were committed by that stage and there was no going back. He hooked it up and turned around to start heading home with it. Once he got home after one overnight stop on the way to catch up on sleep he parked it in the backyard and set it up. I was actually very surprised at how much space we were actually going to have with the two double beds at either end, the lounge area and kitchen. Because the campervan was third hand we were lucky enough to have a few extras like a full annex, but since we've had it we have added a few things like a microwave, a new fridge, and we had the laborious task of making new curtains that will block out the light and hopefully keep some heat in when we need it.

No Real Plan

So normally I'm the type of person that has to plan absolutely everything, but for this trip we haven't really got much set in place. Because we live half way up the Queensland coast we figure that our first stage of our trip is to get as far south as possible as soon as we can before we get too cold and want to come back. Yes, we are going against the general caravaning population traveling route of going north for the winter, but both of us have lived in Far North Queensland and I grew up in Weipa so it's not really on the list of things to see again. We want to see as many places that we already haven't and a few that we have, and to of course see some long lost friends and family that we haven't had the chance to see in many years.

We do have a sort of plan for our travelling days of in between places and that's to keep our driving times down to about 4 -5 hours at the maximum and have a nice long break for lunch in a park with a playground. Where that will be on the way we have no idea.

We generally have the places that are a must and things we do want to see and some of those are Canberra War Memorial, National Art Gallery, and for the kids every zoo that we can get to and that's only if they don't get sick of them.

Basically we will visit the east coast of the country with inland NSW and Victoria on the list. We're not sure how much we'll get to see and do, but it's 2 1/2 months on holiday so it's bound to be fun.

I have read a few other blogs and how people are super organised with everything with their mapping and booking into places so I would like to know is there anyone out there that just goes with the flow of traveling and how successful is it when you do??? We would love to hear any advice that anyone has on travelling with kids.

Who we are, where we're from and why we're doing this...

Welcome to the Hurrell family blog......

Who we are:
Dad - Andrew 39 shift supervisor at a mine
Mum - Sam 29 stay at home mum and the blogger
Kid 1 - Declan 3 & 3/4 years
Kid 2 - Kira 2 years

We live in Sunny Queensland in the town of Mirani which is situated just west of Mackay up the Pioneer Valley. Last year Andrew came up with the idea of taking his long service leave and somehow that idea progressed onto buying a second hand caravan of some sort and travelling. We have been lucky enough to have seen a fair bit of this country already so we thought for the age of our kids and the general areas that we want to see that 2 1/2 months would be enough time for us to survive on the road.

Before we got to this decision we were thinking that we were going to go for a holiday over to Japan for 2 weeks this year and I had the plan to re-learn some Japanese that I had learnt at school. So off I went and got the Japanese for tourists on CD and started getting excited about getting travelling really back on the agenda for our family after having kids.

We did an experimental overseas holiday last year to New Zealand (north island) for 10 days to see how the kids would fair overseas travel and we could say that it was probably about 90% successful with the only hitch was Kira coming down with a virus. We were travelling in between the summer and winter tourist periods so the overall ease of travel was in our favour.

So now obviously the idea of going to Japan is out the window, but still on the list for future travels we are going to depart on April 13th 2010. And no it's not a Friday!!! (like Andrew keeps saying).

We have the opinion that you just have to get out there and do it, and certainly before it's too late. We love travel but the idea of caravaning honestly wasn't on my list of things to do. This is surely going to be an adventure anyway you look at it.