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Travels With Elly May

This is us, for starters. Zan is the Navigator and Person in Charge of the State of Things. She is an avid gardener so travelling might seem an odd thing to do, but she is also of the philosophy that 'work is good for you' and gardening is work. Planning is also work, and knowing where we are going is certainly work. Looking at all sorts of different houses is work; enjoying a glass of wine can be work, too, given that she has learnt heaps about wines in her real work in the Cellar Door at Annie's Lane. Reading, impossible Soduku and Solitaire, bowling well and having noisy fun with mates are all work, too. 

Zan, looking across the Bay...

 Below is Elly May (with awning partially extended) and Jethro.  This photo taken at Hall's Gap on the way home from Traralgon, where Ian Grant Caravans had introduced us all. At this stage the annexe is still packed away and we had no idea the hot water service could be run three ways, so the ensuite site was safest. As you can ppossibly see, she's 6.5m long and weighs just under 2 tonnes, so Jethro and Elly are really matched well. Jethro's towbar maximum load exceeds Elly May's maximum laden weight by about 50 Kg so the tray is the spot for extras.

Next, this is me, Pete.  This year is going to be momentous, with a retirement birthday in the middle. Retirement from teaching R - 6 computing, music, performing arts and allsorts after 42 and a half years, I have also some skills in building from a stint working with Zan's father. Zan & I also ran a screen printing business that started me off seeing photography and arts differently. I have always played some sort of sports like footy, cricket, squash and now bowls, with enough success to suggest that I could do a lot better if I just tried harder. I love driving, and buses and CFS trucks have been in the mix, so the outfit is my special joy.

So that's a start. We live in paradise at Ochre Ridge, Clare, in SA's mid-north, and every time we leave we look back and ask ourselves why we're going, but that beggars our lives' experiences. We said the same when headed for NZ, Canada & bits of USA  and finally the European Grand Tour.  Each trip made our earliest travels in Australia look better and better. WA, the Ghan, the Disco and Broome, and cyclones. Darwin. Alice Springs and Uluru. Brisbane, Cairns. Tassie and a frozen windscreen - and scallops, and cider!  NSW's wineries and Victoria's coast and ranges...  and everywhere we went, there were places we noted down for future reference. Places we passed through too fast, glossed over - like Talbingo and the Glass House Mountains. Marlborough in WA, Cessnock in NSW..  now it's time to go really looking.

Being good planners (that means we have made enough mistakes already) we have warmed up by visiting some SA places, and in the next Blog I'll show you what we found.