Old Friends

Dear Family and Friends

I didn't write a caption on the photos so in case you didn't know who was who Photo 1was Sharon, Roman and Nathan. Photo 2 was Sharon, Roman and me. Photo 3 was Snowflake, Photo 5 was Natalya and Lachlan in their cub uniforms and last photo was John landing his twin seater Foxbat at Porepunkah near Bright. John flew up to see us when were staying there for the ten days.

It is Sunday afternoon and we find ourselves staying at a caravan park at Mt Barker. The closer you get to Adelaide the fewer free camp spots you see and the one we did find was very unkept. Lots of graffitti on brick walls nearbye so we decided to give it a miss and stop in a park instead.


We have come from Horsham today. Robin and Pauline, our friends we spent the night of the cyclone with are down visiting Robin brother David who lives at Horsham. It was very nice to see them again. It's nice when you can pick up a friendship again as though you had seen each other just a day ago. We had tea together and chatted for ages. David had said we were welcome to stay the night so we parked near their Motorhome. It was great. It rained quite heavy in the night. Robin had said if it did rain we might have to move the van or we might get bogged in as it got very slippery and boggy pretty quickly. So we left about 8.30 and headed off on the next leg of the journey.

We have had a noticeable change in the temperature. Our first night (Frid) on the road we stopped at a free camp spot just before Aararat and it was nowhere near as
cold as Bairnsdale, so warmer weather so soon was nice.

Tomorrow we are planning to get to Port Hughes. We have decided we will follow the highway through Adelaide so we expect to get there by early to mid afternoon.

That's about it for today

Love to one and all

Ken and Lyn

Farewell to Bairnsdale once again

Dear Family and Friends

We have stayed in Bairnsdale much longer than we had expected.It is now about six weeks all up since we arrived home. We have had a lovely time catching up with friends and family. We spent just on a week in Melbourne staying with Sharon, Nath and Roman and had a wonderful time with them. Roman has grown into a lovely almost four year old. I was lucky enough to attend kinder with hiom for Mother's day. Sharon unfortunately had conjuctivitus and of course couldn't go anywhere near the children so I filled in. It was lovely to do this with Roman as I have been to these occasions with both Natalya and Lachlan and it was nice to be able to do it with Roman too.

Leanne and Tim were having the floors in their house being polished and her new kitchen was being installed so we couldn't leave until we had seen it. It was looking lovely. They are so happy to have this part of their renovations completed. The house is now totally different inside than when they purchased it. It is a credit to both of them for what they have achieved.

We have done our own bit of renovating since being here. We have taken out our three seater couch which was opposite the cafe table and in its place we have two recliner rockers that are much more comfortable for sitting in and for watching TV of a night.
When we took the seat out we left the back cushioning and only took out the seat part. We couldn't help but damage the wall a little when we pulled the seat out so to cover it we carpeted both the wall and the wheel arch thanks to Justins help.

We have also had the chair pads refilled and they are much firmer and more comfortable to sit in. Ken and Dale mended under the seat where we discovered a hole in the tin that was under Ken's seat from where we had the tyre blowout. They think that when the tyre blew it flipped and hit the tin damaging it in the process so it's been sealed up now too.

We have also done a big clean out in the van as we had to rearrange where we put things as we lost the storage area under the seat so we have taken quite a lot over to the house, especially if we have not used it or are unlikely to use it in the near future. We have decided to take the push bikes as there are plenty of times that we would have used them had we had them with us.

We now have two Jerry can holders on the back of the van for water and two on the front of the van for additional fuel The satellite dish is now attached to the back of the van and Ken should be able to pull it into whatever position is needed without taking it off and putting it on the stand.

All in all we have pretty much got ourselves organised. It won't be long now before we head off again, at least within the next day or two. We are heading to Horsham where we will catch up with our friends from Ravenshoe, Robin and Pauline, who are visiting family there We are really looking forward to seeing them again.

From their it will be over to Pt Hughs near Moonta for a 10 night stay at a caravan park there. Our long term goal is that we would like to be back at Willow gemfiels in July ready for their saffire Festival they have in August. Barry, Kens mate will be up there too so it will be a catch up with him and with the friends we made while we were there last year.

so whilst we have had a good time here we are also ready to head off again to new adventures and new friends along the way.

Love to one and all

Ken and Lyn.