Day One
Well, we made it out of Sheldon…. barely. Frankie and the Tramp are all set up in a free camp spot just North of Gympie (or a mere 2 hours from home), and Ben is currently digging a hole for Isabelle to poo in. Welcome to my world for the next 5 weeks.
The day didn’t go as planned, but we are nothing if not flexible. At about 11pm last night, Ben decided that Frankie was carrying too much weight at the back. No amount of “She’ll be right” could sway him, so we delayed our departure this morning for Ben to install airbags under her rear. There was drilling, welding, making brackets, fitting things, taking wheels on and off, fitting shorter axles, and fitting longer axles…. all in all a good 10 hours of Ben lying underneath a car working while I fannied about trying to look busy so he wouldn’t ask me to help him.
So far, nothing exciting has happened. Isabelle lasted 30 minutes in the car before going to the toilet. Rohan fell asleep as soon as the car started moving and briefly woke at 10pm, when we arrived at our camp spot, to demand dinner. After inhaling his dinner, he promptly fell asleep, leaving me to wonder whether he actually woke up or was his subconscious demanding food on his behalf. Jazzy is allergic to one of the trees here at Bauple and has already drenched one of her hankies.
Jazzy’s hayfever is a nice lead-in for me to talk about one of my brilliant camping ideas (of which there are many, but I’ll try not to bombard you with too much brilliance all at once). As most of my offspring, and Ben, are cursed with allergies to all sorts of things and constantly require some kind of snot rag, I imagined the trip would be spent with me frequently screeching, “Whose tissue/hankie is this?!?” (I hate snot) To alleviate this problem, I decided everyone would have their own coloured hankie. I enlisted my little seamstress, Jazzy, to whip them up for me, and now, if I see a handkerchief lying around, I can immediately determine who the owner/culprit depends on its colour.
I envisioned we would make it halfway to Cairns today, so I am totally unprepared for this Southerly cold. We are all in bed at the moment, freezing our buts off. I’m going to leave it there for today as I want to get to sleep.
I was separated from my huggy pillow last night (she was packed in Tramper), and I slept terribly. I am soooo excited for our reunion tonight.
Thanks for reading!!
B xxx

Jazzy is sewing hankies.

Eating dinner at 10pm in Bauple.

My day started at 4:30am when Rohan slithered into my bed and clung to me like a frozen clip-on Koala toy. When he had suitably defrosted (from stealing all of my body heat) his instinctive drive to ask for food set in, and he began squawking about breakfast.  Torture.
I wish the day got better from that point, but after 11 hours of driving, we are now camped in a petrol station next to a refrigerated truck that is making a LOT of noise. You can all fill in the blanks. My bum is numb from sitting, I am wearing the same clothes I wore yesterday, and I miss my creature comforts.  Whinge. Whinge. Whinge.

This part of our journey is mainly about getting from A to B so I don’t expect it to be brilliant. Tomorrow we arrive in Cairns so hopefully I’ll have much more to report on than numb bums and snotty kids.
With all that said I thought I’d share with you a few more of my brilliant camping hacks.

Food:

I have made about 2/3 of the meals we will need & they are either vacuum sealed (I can’t spell kryovac) or ready-to-go meals in “dump bags”.

Despite sounding disgusting dump bags are my ingenious idea to save on food preparation. For the days when I will use the Dreampot, which is a thermal cooker, I have saved time by putting all the ingredients in a little bag which I then froze.

You can see from the picture that everything is chopped up and ready to go & the dump bags even contain homemade stock paste and spices.

Any potatoes used in the dump bags had to be parboiled first, as raw potatoes should not be frozen.

I also made up dump bags for things like scones, muffins & bread – all of which can be cooked in the Dreampot!!

Here is a super yummy lasagne I made in the Dreampot.

The Dreampot works by holding food at temperature for up to 12 hours. So this morning, I put a stew on before we left freezing cold Bauple, and it was nice & slow cooked, ready to eat when we arrived at the petrol station at 9pm tonight.

All our food has been carefully packed & planned to make sure we have a really balanced diet while we are away (and to ensure Rohan doesn’t starve to death – a deep fear he holds).
Clothes:

There isn’t too much to say about clothes. Everyone only has about 4 different outfits & I’ve eliminated pj’s (for everyone, bar me. I love pj’s). So the kids are sleeping in fresh clothes each night, which they will pack the next day.

The clothes are packed in tiny Globlite travel organisers that fit nicely in one of Frankie’s drawers.  We are all wearing neck to ankle clothes to protect against the sun & bugs.

I’d better get off to bed. I have a huge day ahead of me tomorrow, napping in the car & passing Ben his water bottle frequently, so I’d better be well-rested.

Hopefully, I’ll have more exciting things to write about in the coming days!!

Take Care,

B xx