Easts Beach Big 4 – Kiama

by Dave
Categories: Trips
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Published on: April 24, 2012

13-16 April, 2012

I needed a rest! The first week of the holidays had been pretty crazy and I needed some time to relax. Away from gardens, trees, mulch, shovels… and anything else associated with gardens!

Fortunately for me we had already locked in a few days away with the Trevaskis and Chew families down at Easts Beach, Kiama. After some final shovel loads of mulch on Friday morning, we hooked up the camper and made our way across Sydney and to Kiama. By the time we arrived at about 3, the others had already been there for about an hour and were getting well set up. We found our spot quickly and before long we were all set up… and the relaxation began!

Henry, Lucas and Ella having fun!

The next few days were all about chilling out and spending time with the kids. They had an absolutely great time riding their bikes, running around and playing with their friends old and new. Lucas in particular had an amazing time on his balance bike. He hasn’t had much time on it up until now (it was a birthday present 4 months ago) but he took to it this weekend like a duck to water. After only a couple of hours on Saturday morning he was getting more and more into it, often traveling 10 metres or more with both feet up and balancing.

A few laps of the campground later and everyone went to sleep very easily that night!

It was great not having anything else to do, and just staying put at the caravan park for the few days and being with friends and family. Evenings were spent chilling out and playing board (or as I like to say… bored) games – but even that was pretty enjoyable. (Shh… don’t tell anyone I said that!) The highlight must have been the pain on Leon’s face as Jay attempted to massage out some chest issues… I’ll let the picture speak for itself!

He didn't even buy him a drink first...

Unfortunately the others needed to pack up and return to Sydney before we did, so we had a quiet Monday afternoon and evening. We took the kids into Kiama for an early dinner of fish and chips by the water and had a great time.

Enjoying our Fish and Chips at the beach together.

It has been a while since we’ve had a wet pack up, but at about 6:30am on Tuesday morning the pitter patter of raindrops on canvas was not a particularly welcome sound to wake to. Fortunately after a couple of short showers, the rain stopped for long enough for us to pack away a 99% dry canvas… turns out we got out just in time as Kiama had 70mm of rain over the next couple of days.

Our campsite after the others had left.

So our latest 4 nights takes our tally to 106 nights. As the weather gets cooler I’m not sure when our next trip will be, so this could be the last update for a few months… but then again, who knows! :)

Mont 24 – 2012

by Dave
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Published on: April 9, 2012

23-26 March, 2012

This is the third year in a row that I’ve raced in the ‘Mont 24‘ – a 24 hour mountain bike race held in the sweet single tracks of Canberra. One of the side ‘benefits’ of this event that the accommodation options are limited to camping in a large grassy field with the other 4000 odd competitors. In other words, it is a great excuse to get the camper out for a few nights! The difference this year is that the rest of the family decided to stay at home – I was on my own.

Again this year I was part of a team of 6, and, as always seems to be the case fo the Mont, I was going in VERY under-prepared! In fact I’d been on the bike only once in the past 5 months! Lucky this event is all about having fun.

I decided to take a couple of days long service leave, so was able to leave Sydney early so that I could get our choice of camp sites first thing on Friday morning. There would be 2 teams sharing our space, so I chose a very similar site to last year – a fair way away from transition, but also fairly spacious.

This is the view that we had over empty fields.

As I set up the camper, the wind came up too, making it extremely trying to erect the camper. Eventually I got it set up so that even when the gusts of wind arrived, and the camper acted more like a parachute, no pegs would be pulled out of the ground.

You can see the strength of the breeze in this pic. The camper doing its best impersonation of a parachute!

 

Thankfully the wind died down overnight (although it remained VERY cold) and we had awesome weather for the race. Predictably my form was pretty poor! I had a great time, but the laps were very SLOW!

Given the cold weather, (or maybe it was our fitness – or lack thereof) we decided to stop riding through the night, and start again the next morning. This meant that we would all do 2 racing laps.

Moshe, with the full campground in the background.

 

Burgs getting in some pre-race fine tuning

 

While we didn’t trouble the race favourites for a podium position, but our whole team had an awesome time and have already decided that we’ll be back next year. With a bit of luck and good management, I may even have a half decent preparation!

Afternoon sun on the camper after the end of the event. Bike ready to go for another lap... rider not so ready!

 

While we couldn’t all stay on the Sunday evening due to various work committments on the Monday, those of us who were able to hang around had a very relaxing evening with a few drinks and tasty nachos. We even managed to watch most of the Malaysian F1 Grand Prix thanks to tethered iPads, Androids and phones. Isn’t technology awesome!

Live timing screen showing on the iPad, while the Android tablet was streaming the coverage from the TEN website.

 

Of course these 3 nights have taken the total number of nights spent in the camper to 102. Night 100 was cold (about 3 degrees) and windy! What an awesome way to pass this milestone. I wonder how long it will take us to rack up the next 100 nights!

St Ives Showground

by Dave
Categories: Fraser Island and QLD
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Published on: February 6, 2012

17-28 January, 2012

Well, our holiday was now officially over. Rach had to go back to work on Wednesday, so it was back to Sydney on Tuesday – our destination, Lane Cove River Tourist Park. We checked in and drove down to our allocated site. Unfortunately they had us on a site with a concrete slab, and off the side of the slab was a huge muddy puddle.

It was never going to work! They offered us another option, but again, it was too small and never going to work for a camper trailer. So back up to the office and they were very good about refunding our money… but then we clearly had a problem – somewhere to set up for the next week or so before we could move back in at home!

Our "Home Among the Gum Trees" for the final leg of our trip

We knew that you could camp at St Ives showground, so decided to give that a go (without really having many other options!). It turned out that there was a significant number of people camping there, so it took us a while to find a spot, and the spot we ended up on had a bit of long grass around it. Again, this wasn’t ideal, but it was going to have to do.

So we set up, settled in, and Rach got ready for work. Our first couple of days here the weather wasn’t too bad and I was able to spend some time with the kids at the bike track and enjoy being outside. They even came and cut the grass the first morning we were there! Then the weekend and the rain came, and stayed, for the rest of the time we were there. Fortunately we were dry inside, but the ground under the annexe became a little sodden.

This isn't the ideal view when camping!

By the end of the following week, when we were both back at work and into a routine, we were completely over the rain. So much so that Rach and the kids went down to my parent’s place one night early and left me on my own for Friday night.

Saturday morning was fine enough, so we packed up a mostly dry tent before heading down to my parents place for another couple of nights before we could get back in at home. It was a bit of a strange way to end the trip, the rain getting on our nerves and patience.

We really can’t complain though. For the whole time we were away from Sydney, we had maybe 3 days where there was a reasonable amount of rain during the day. There were storms at night, but rarely did the weather stop us from doing anything.

So now we’ve finished our first ‘big trip’. We’ve learnt lots, and have a burning desire to see more of this great land. But for now, we’re not sure when our next trip will be. I’m sure it won’t be too long!

St Ives showground was our home for 11 nights, which takes our cumulative total now to 99 nights! I wonder where night 100 will be!?!

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