Well week 3 has certainly been eventful, and we continue to learn more every.single.day!
We’re still working out the best way to tell our stories about our adventures as we travel this incredible country on a mission to Transform Children’s Health In Australia. Our idea at the moment is to have a post like this – a personal family tour diary, then separate posts specifically around our mission. What do you think?
Anyways, here’s a little bit of our learnings and adventures from our Family Tour Diary Week 3.
Home is where we park – Lithgow
This week’s home is beautiful Lithgow. Well in fact, it is Charles Darwin Park on Lake Wallace in Wallerawang – about 10 minutes from Lithgow town.
This was such a peaceful spot, with amazingly neat grounds. There was a cycle track and a park for the kids too. What was truly amazing is this beautiful location is provided by council as a free camp. We are totally self sufficient with enough solar and water capacity for the family for 4 or so days, so this place was perfect.
Lithgow is gripped with Halloween with the town set to come alive on Saturday 31st October, for an all day and night long Halloween 15 festival. The kids are so excited about being here for it. Every shop window in Main Street has decorated their shop fronts quite elaborately. We’re super excited because Lithgow Council are forward thinking and have agreed to allow us to park our big green mobile billboard for our mission to Transform Children’s Health in Australia in Main Street – which will be closed off and be where all the action is. We’ll be handing out Green Goblin Juice and Ghoul Gummies n Gizzards and talking about how our eyes are for seeing, and our tongue is for tasting. Oh and plus casually telling everyone who stops about the state of Children’s Health In Australia. A big thing on a day where candy is celebrated but we’ll be talking about how sugar is no longer just for treats and celebrations, but about how its now in 80% of the 80,000 packets on supermarket shelves.
Driving Checklist
This week we learnt we need a checklist of things to check before heading off. Specifically:
1. Check all the nuts on all 14 wheels (between the bus, trailer and car). Otherwise you may just see one of your trailer wheels go rolling down the road past the your vehicle on the freeway. Yep this really did happen. We lost a wheel of the trailer on our first day of travel from Newcastle to Lithgow, and had to be escorted off the freeway.
2. Make sure the bus door is closed tightly before driving. Otherwise you may find the door flies open as you round a bend. Yep, this really did happen. And it was Israel’s brilliant driving that ensured the swinging door didn’t hit a car on the side of the road and my acrobatics to reach out and close said door whilst the bus was in motion.
These 2 events has made us realise a checklist is required before we drive. We’ve added to the above 2 items to check the oil, coolant, water, etc. Plus our learnings from last week, such as empty the grey water tank before driving off so you don’t stink out the bus.
Other Learnings
1. Our old bedtime routine has officially gone. Expect when you are sight-seeing and the kids have spent 4 hours walking, that they will have a sleep in the car on the way back to the bus, which means they will not want to go to bed until late. Argh…
2. Raising Awareness is part of our mission. We expect a lot of ourselves and this week we’ve been beating ourselves up about not having any schools or pre-schools booked in for this part of the trip. Then we realised that in every place we’ve been, we have successfully managed to get some media about the state of children’s health in Australia. Our mission to Transform Children’s Health in Australia is part education and part raising awareness about what’s happening. Sure we need to book schools because we need to earn money to keep this bus trucking along the road, and feeding our own family, but we have been doing plenty of raising awareness.
3.Relish this time with the kids. One of the challenges of this travelling lifestyle is learning to relax and realise we don’t have to be out of bed, having breakfast and getting ready to get to school or work. We’re slowly starting to realise it’s nice just to lie in bed, cuddle and read with the kids.
Personal Growth
This week’s award for personal growth goes without dispute to Israel P Smith. Not only is he a master at driving the bus, but when the wheel came off the trailer this week, he had to turn his hand to finding a replacement wheel, sourcing a new drum head (the bit the wheel attaches to), fixing the suspension, then removing the old drum head in order to put on the new drum head, before fitting the new tyre. It sounds simple but all of this tool some 7 hours. It was a massive day, and an even bigger achievement.
Jenolan Caves
We visited Jenolan Caves this week. What can I say but it was incredible. The caves were formed 340 million years ago. The enormity of them is beyond words. Thank goodness John Lucas back in the 1860’s had the foresight to realise how precious this site was and made it into a National Reserve. It is thought Jenolan Caves was the first National Reserve in the world and given it is one of the oldest geological structures in the world, it is being studied to see what impact climate change is having on structures such as this.
Here are a few of the pics I took on my iphone. Israel took his proper camera and he’ll share his shots shortly.
Next week
On Sunday we’re going to head out to Wollemi National Park to see the Glow Worm Tunnels, then Monday head to Bathurst for 5 days.