November 21st, 2018
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| Pumba - Feb'15 |
I had gone down to Melbourne for 24h to have a look at a car I'd found online. A green Subaru Forester, to be precise. The exact same car I had bought in Melbourne almost 4 years ago.
I knew those kind of cars and had come to love them very much during my 5month road trip in 2015. So I headed out to a south eastern suburb of Melbs to go have a look at this Forster I found online.
Long story short, I wasn't convinced of the Subaru and fell in love with a Toyota RAV4 in stead.
And so Nala had come into my life.
That day I drove back home to Kyabram, an almost 4hour drive which should've only taken me 2 hours. But anyway.
I BOUGHT A CAR !!
I had to stretch my budget to the limit but as I was working at the vet clinic, the problem got solved pretty quick. so all was goooood.
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| my dear Nala, back home Nov'18 |
Meanwhile I was still looking for a horse job, which lead to my very first road trip the next weekend. Hence I bought a cheap mattress and headed north east for the weekend. Unfortunately the job didn't work out, on the bright side I had a great inaugural road trip !
The job opportunity I was driving to would be on a showjumping and (apparently) racehorse yard. As a horse trainer who has quite some specific experience in showjumping I jumped at this opportunity to possibly be able to train show-jumpers again like I once did back home.
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| carlife |
So Friday morning I headed off toward Sydney area, the start of a 700+ km one way journey.
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| Rocky hill memorial |
Day one I drove up until Goulburn, almost 600k's from home where I decided to stay the night. Goulburn, as it turns out, is actually a lovely city in the Southern Tablelands of NSW. I arrived around 5pm and after discovering that the tourist information centre closed at 5 I started to look around for a place to stay the night (without paying waaaay to much money). So I stoped at the K-mart, bought myself some sheets and headed up to the rocky hill memorial for sunset. And what a glorious sunset it was.
Fun fact: the city was proclaimed as Australia's first inland one by Queen Victoria in 1863
On Saturday morning I drove the remaining 2 hours north toward the yard where I tested for the job. unfortunately I didn't get the job. But I had a fun ride, new experience and a shower before heading back off. The time not straight home. As I now had time to explore more and make it an actual road trip I, obviously, opted for the scenic route. This kept me off the highway for over 50k and through wonderfull south western edge of the Sydney Basin.
Back to Goulburn, where this big Merino ram stands his ground as a monument to the local wool industry.
And through to Gunning, a charming tiny town with a free camping spot next to Meadow creek. Here I set up camp, only to realise that I recognised this place however vaguely. And so it turned out I had indeed been here before, again almost 4 years previously at the end of January 2015, as I drove out of Canberra I also found this charming town with it's free camping area.
Having gone through a cold night previously in Goulburn, I decided to buy a doona. As I would eventually need one and love a warm bed at night. (And let's face it, nobody likes waking up in the multiple times in the night from the cold knowing you're already wearing everything you can to keep you warm)
Needless to say I was extremely happy with my beautiful camping spot and a warm bed. And to top that off the next morning I headed into town and had the absolute best breakfast burrito and flat white everrrrr.
Only down part was the weather, talking about if its just a sandstorm or wild fires coming through kind of freaked me out for a second there I must admit.
But a conversation with the owners of the cafe and some googling later, we established it must just be a sandstorm. And so, I set of into a sandstorm.
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| Nala on the Gundagai view point hill |
Which obviously cleared up pretty fast after a couple hours drive. As i wasn't in any hurry to get back home i decided to take all other scenic drives south, turns out though there weren't too much of them going in, even the general direction i needed to go. But i still stopped in loads of little towns and drove up to scenic views points. Australia is really good at this, setting up scenic viewpoints that is. And so i was reminded that the best view points are to be reached in second or even first gear uphill drives.
The rest of the drive home was long, hot and through a lot of emptiness. Stopping in all the little and bigger towns I drove through for a break to stretch my legs made it a great end to the very first road trip!
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| a beautiful spot along the Murrumbidgee river in Wagga Wagga |
Once home and working at the vet clinic again I set to build an actual home out of Nala.
Step one was to build a bed in the back. the main structure of my little home.
Let me tell you now, it was one hell of an adventurous afternoon !
As I had little to no experience in building stuff like this, I am ever so great full for the friends I have back there for I was able to use their drill, saw, electric screwdriver ect.
So in an afternoon I had my bed/main structure fit in and I couldn't've been more proud of myself for putting it all together myself.
Bed✔
table & chair✔
pots, pans and everything nice (for cooking)✔
And off we went !!
The start of our great adventure together up the beautiful east coast 🙌🌊
Next on the blog, up and over the Aussie Alps and to Mallacoota. And hopefully it's not going to take me another month to write that up haha. I've got soooo much to tell you and so much more exciting things to come!!
xoxo Liz
