Not All Went To Plan

Hard to believe but I’ve been living on the road for 53 days already; how is that possible?

98% of the time I’m loving my new life. The other 2% is spent towing my caravan and it still terrifies me, but I will feel the fear and do it anyway, and I do feel I am a little bit less terrified than I was 54 days ago.

So, I do believe there’s hope for me yet and I’m looking forward to the day when I can say I’m loving my new life 100% of the time.

I thought I’d give you a brief rundown of where I’ve been so far.

Distance-wise, not far at all, as I’m only 1.5 hours out of Brisbane but there’s still plenty that I’ve seen, experienced, learned and thoroughly enjoyed.

It all began when I left Brisbane and my first stop was Atkinson Dam. Here was my maiden voyage, my shake-down journey getting to know how everything worked in my caravan. Unbelievable how much there was to learn, from water pumps to 12 volt / shore power, my first load in my washing machine, to grey water disposal, toilet mechanism and awning set up / closure.

It was all new to me.

Atkinson Dam was my room with a view, and what a view it was. I stayed two weeks and never got sick of that view. I experienced it in the dead of the night with the moon rising, on a bright summery day with pristine blue skies, as the dawn broke and masked by hovering black clouds, full of the gods wrath and epic light shows, as storms surrounded me.

A view that never disappointed.

The park was considerably run down, in some places an eyesore, but I had the best site of all and it made up for the shortfalls, as did the peacocks that wander freely wherever their little hearts desired. 

After leaving Atkinson Dam, I headed a short 10 kilometres down the road and spent two glorious weeks at Coominya Farmstay.

I was parked in a well maintained and comfortably level paddock with a dam at the far end. A beautiful quiet and peaceful site that I had to myself for most of the time, a couple of neighbours stopped in for the weekends.

It was here at Coominya Farmstay that I got to unwind, desperately needed I assure you.

Next up on our travels was the Toogoolawah Showgrounds. This was my first experience at staying at a showground and I was lucky to score a little section of land away from most of the other campers.

Toogoolawah is a small town with one short Main Street that seemed to house most of the businesses in town. So small, that I was unable to find anywhere to buy a coffee at 2pm on a Saturday afternoon. I had to wait until 7am Sunday morning for my hit of caffeine.

Although there’s not much to see in the town, I enjoyed the quiet time all the same. I only stayed a week, and with my working ten hour days Tuesday to Friday, I really didn’t mind that there wasn’t much more to do than sit back, relax, and enjoy the country air.

I did get to experience the pink and grey galahs feeding their noisy young, and the beautiful plumes of the rainbow lorikeets.

When it was time to leave, I backtracked back towards Coominya and headed off in the totally opposite direction from Toogoolawah, until I pulled up at Helidon Spa, at the foot of the Toowoomba range. The perfect place to base myself so I could explore Toowoomba.

With the steepness of the drive up the range, there’s no way I’d comfortably pull my 3 tonne caravan up those windy hills, so it made sense to base myself at the bottom of the range.

Again, I feel lucky to have the best site in the park, where I managed to manoeuvre the van to face the water. Lying in bed I can watch the ducks swimming on the lake and the geese waddling on the grass. 

Staying at the Eco Village has been very pleasant. I was booked in for a two week stay but extended that by another week.

Unfortunately, when I was pulling my drinking hose from its bag after I arrived at Coominya, I tore the major pectoralis chest muscle where it joins the arm bone. For about ten days I found it extremely painful to breathe, laugh, cough or use my left arm.

Then when I was unhitching at Toogoolawah two weeks later, I tore it again. This second time is taking a lot longer to heal, to settle so it’s comfortable.

It’s now almost a month since I tore it the second time and it’s still a little painful, hence why I extended my stay at Helidon Spa.

The torn muscle? Not part of the plan!

I do hope you’ve enjoyed my introduction to the places I’ve been and I hope you’ve enjoyed the photos. Thanks for sticking it out this far.