Week 1 : 23 - 29 Feb 2012 - - Rathdowney and the Scenic Rim

Home Sweet Home

“This trip has been a long time coming. We have both worked long and hard to get to this point. We are leaving home with open minds and a great sense of anticipation of what lies ahead. I consider us reasonably well travelled already but we know that there is a lot more yet to be seen and experienced,” says Rod.

Vicki adds “I feel we have earned our time away and know with our children now adults and settling into their adult lives it is time for us to enjoy "Ourtime" while we are young enough to do the silly things if we want to. We are not financially rich so this trip will be a combination of work and pleasure.”

“We know in our own preparations we searched for as much information from as many sources as possible including like-minded experienced travellers who have been “round the block” previously, magazines, DVD’s and via the internet. While Vic is computer literate, I don't profess to know much at all about this blogging stuff. Neither of us have any journalistic training or profess to be great writers but hopefully when you read this blog it will feel like a couple of mates having a chat over a beer. If you have been considering a trip like ours then maybe it will be enough to push you to follow your dreams and get moving,” says Rod.  

Enjoy....

• Week 1 : 23 - 29 Feb 2012  Off we go & Happy 30th Birthday CJ!

RATHDOWNEY and the SCENIC RIM

We drove out of the driveway of our home at 9:39am on Thursday 23 Feb 2012 with anticipation of this new phase of our life with no fixed address.

It has been a long road to this point with the decision to turn our dream into reality over a year and a half ago. Selling my mobile cafe business in May 2011 could have been a little early but being such a painless event was probably meant to be. 

Vic finished work in late December 2011 and apart from 2 weeks post Christmas, all her efforts have been channelled toward this day. While I've been off working casually she's packed basically the whole house, organised the storage, transferred all our accounts to online, redirected the mail plus a myriad of other things. We sold stuff, have given heaps away and dumped more than I care to remember. We've reduced our lives to 27.5 square metres of storage and an 18.5 foot caravan. We've helped both our kids and bought a new towing vehicle that will enable us to have a carefree trip (we hope!!). Let's go....

Picturesque Rathdowney

We headed to our great friends' property at Rathdowney, a lovely little spot 30 minutes south of Beaudesert in South East Queensland, with the intention to stay a week or so. It was here we also wanted to try and free camp for as long as possible. This was quite successful and we are now confident that we will be able to free camp around Australia for at least a week at a time, with our water capacity being our only issue. To date we are not using solar or a generator.

Over the weekend we had planned a camping weekend with family and some of our daughters', Cara Jay's (CJ) friends, to help her celebrate her 30th birthday.

Unfortunately the rain started on the Thursday and didn't let up throughout the weekend. It was so heavy the road into Beaudesert was closed due to floodwaters crossing the highway. This meant some people could not get through to Rathdowney and had to turn back.

The weather also played havoc with some of the planned festivities which went by the way side, but kids will be kids when mud is around (especially our big kids!).

Big kids and little kids alike
all had fun in the mud!

Her birthday cake was a specialty and a very big thank you to Amy at Poppit Cakes for doing such a wonderful job on the two special cakes she made for CJ. Both were delicious!

We were really pleased to see those who did make it through the flood waters particularly when they had travelled in such torrential rain from Brisbane and the Gold Coast. As parents it was wonderful to see so many turn up and enjoy the surroundings in the adverse conditions just to help CJ celebrate her big day. We know she appreciated everyone's effort throughout the weekend.

CJ's rainbow cake. Amy made her a pink cake
as a joke (CJ is not a pink girl) only to
surprise her later with the real one.

CJ's magnificent cake courtesy of Poppit Cakes!