20170211-16 – To Werri Beach

20170211-16 To Werri Beach

Jeff told me Friday night that he would have to be at the airport at 8 am Saturday morning and so would have to be up at 7.00 am to make sure he got ready in time.

Friday night at about 2.30 am I noticed that my weight scales were missing and remembered that Jeff had taken them to weigh his luggage. I decided to message him to ask him to bring them back before he left in the morning. I thought that he would be in bed asleep and so would not hear the “ding” when I sent my message. Not so! The next thing and he comes charging down to my flat with my scales and puts them back. He was still dressed and still packing at 2.30 am! He will  be exhausted by the time he gets on the plane Saturday morning.

I asked him if he wanted me to drive him to the airport thinking that I’d better make sure he didn’t miss his plane by falling asleep and not waking up in the morning. He didn’t give me a proper answer but nonetheless, Saturday morning, I got up at 7.00 am and went and filled my car up with petrol and then parked my car and trailer on the road and waited for Jeff to get up.

Jut then Jackie Pearce drove up – so Jeff had asked her to pick him up and still had me “standing in the wings” as a backup. Jackie and I grizzled that at least one of us could have had a sleep in if he could only make up his mind who he wanted to take him to the airport. How men get away with it I really don’t know.

20170212 – Adelaide to Balranald

I left home some time just before 4 am and went to Vilis at Mile End, for breakfast. I had eggs and baked beans and some salad. I left there at 4 am and drove from Vilis up the freeway on towards Tailem Bend and then on towards  Pinnaroo. I listen to the Bible all the way.

At 5:45 I got very tired, so I pulled over to the side of the road and slept until about 6:05 am. On my way again, I was passing through Pinnaroo, and I searched the white pages and found the address and phone number of Max and Enid Wurfel who I had met accidentally at the museum in Pinnaroo, last time I was travelling home from the Oldies Conference at Rathmines. I had stayed overnight with them in Pinnaroo in August of 2015.

This time however, it was 8.00 am in the morning and too early to call. However, I decided to find their house again, so I would know how to get there more easily another time. I had pulled over at the side of the road when a car on the other side stopped and the driver asked me if I was lost. I told him I was looking for Max and Enid Wurfel’s  house and, of course, he knew them and showed me which was their house. He told me his name was Stephen Venning which of course is a well-known Pinnaroo name, and his Grandfather was good  friends with my Dad. I have often heard the name Venning talked about by my Dad.

Stephen told me that Enid has not been well and suggested I go to the local road house and have breakfast and then ring Max a bit later on. I did as he suggested and rang Max from the road house. He told me that Enid has stomach trouble and is suffering a lot of stomach pain. She has an appointment with her specialist today and they are hoping that he will know what is the problem. I wished them both well and then continued on my way.

I drove on to Murrayville, stopping there at the “Cobb and Co Cafe” ordering a salad and a piece of chicken for my “second breakfast.” This is pretty well what I will be eating for the next fortnight or so, because I definitely intend to stay carbohydrate free, at least as far as sugar, rice, pasta, bread and potatoes are concerned. This morning before I left home I weighed myself and I am 104.8 so I have lost over 2 kg. All I have to do is just keep on doing it. This particular cafe is open at 7.30 am in the morning.

I am so glad that I am on my way, because for the last few weeks I have been stressing about all the problems that needed to be sort out before I could travel. I worried about this and I worried about that, and of course, all my worry proved to be a complete waste of time and energy. My trailer is all ready for me to sleep in tonight, I have a charger to charge my iPhone and iPad. I am charging also as I go along in the car and can use my phone for my GPS and when that is sufficiently charged, I can then charge up my iPad, so I probably won’t even need the new charger that I purchased.

I left Murrayville and drove on towards Ouyen. I got tired and slept for 1/2 hour from 10.30 to 11 am. It is 12.30 now, and I am at Manangatan. I went to the rest rooms there in a reserve in Coghill st. The rest rooms have a shower which is great to know. I took my sugar level is 11.1 which is pretty wonderful for me. There is no question in my mind now that no carbs diet will ‘cure’ my diabetes. All

I have to do is stick to it. Now I must find coffee shop!)

I passed through a place called Tooleybook. Such strange aboriginal names everywhere throughout Australia. There are new vineyards and trees, olives and other kinds of trees being grown which were not there last time I drove this way and it is wonderful to see. They plant trees all the time in Israel and it both beautifies and makes the land and air more healthy.

I drove on to Balranald and just before I got there I decided to have a sleep so stopped at at the Junction rest area at Balranald. I slept for about 20 minutes. I am wondering whether I will stay here for night or not. It is still early but I am still tired even after my short sleep. When I saw that Hay was the next stop I decided to stay at Balranald and take on the Hay Plains next day.

I looked around at all the free places to stay overnight, but then decided that I would just stay this time at the Balranald Caravan Park. It was only $15 for the night, so I thought it was worth it. There were not a lot of people there so I had mysection pretty much to myself which was good.

It gets me that I have travelled all this time since 4.00 am this morning and yet having reached Balranald, google maps tells me I have 8 hr 25 minutes to get to Werri Beach. That means that in all the time I have been travelling I have only covered what Google maps says should have taken me about 6 1/2 hours, instead it has taken me double that time. Well I did stop a fair bit on the way, to write up my diary, eat and get petrol and such. Doesn’t bother me though, because it has been a good trip what is important, I am safe.

I have listened to the Bible the whole time I have been travelling. I love being able to do this. It means my “data base” of Bible knowledge is growing on a daily basis. I have been listening to the Bible almost every day for 18 years now, and it has made such a difference to my life I used to wonder how anyone could ever “study all the day,” as David did, but that is all I want to do these days, now that I am “retired.”

After I got myself settled in the Caravan Park, I sat on a bench under a shady tree and checked my emails and facebook and wrote up my diary. It is now 5.00 pm. I have eaten the rest of the salad that I had for lunch for my dinner and that will do me until tomorrow I should think. I also have a cooked sausage if I get hungry during the night, and some jellybeans if my sugar levels get too low, and tins of fish if still hungry.

I went to bed very early about 8 pm and listened to one of Neville Clark’s studies on Ecclesiastes. I so enjoyed it, I really like his work. He is so diligent in his research and I feel I can trust what he says. My beautiful bed is so comfortable. Night excursions were easy because the toilets were nearby.  I slept until 8.00 am in the morning and was packed and ready to go in about 10 minutes.

20170213 – Tuesday – Balranald to Yass

In the morning I drove to the Balranald Road House and had breakfast, eggs, bacon, baked beans and no toast (hence – few carbs). Afiena Beard rang me and chatted for a while. It is now almost 10 am , so time for met to get on my way.

It was a beautiful day for driving, and I felt really euphoric, a combination of the the beautiful scenery (I know the Hay plains are flat and brown with few trees, but it was still beautiful as far as I am concerned). What I did notice and loved was the rows of trees that have been planted along the road side in the Hay plain area and there are the belts of green along the Murrumbidgee River and there are new vineyards and olive orchards and I enjoyed and loved it all. Listening to the Bible along the way added to my happy mood. “Godliness with contentment” is what my life is all about these days and that is what Neville Clark’s talks on Ecclesiastes are all about, and it is Solomon’s conclusion after all his searching for the “meaning of life.”

I stayed overnight at the Yass Caravan Park and it is the last caravan park for me I suspect, because this caravan park cost $29 and that is a waste of money as far as I am concerned, so it is “free camps” from now on, and anyway, my little trailer has everything I need.  I charged my iPhone, iPad and charger up in my trailer and they were all charged up in no time. Thank you Mitch and Geoff for your work done on my trailer in 1915.

I listened to study 3 of Ecclesiastes by Neville Clark before I went to sleep and didn’t actually go to sleep until about 1.00 pm. Slept like a log again and felt my sugar levels were a bit low so ate a couple of Jellybeans.

20170214 – Tuesday – Yass to Wirriwin camp site

When I woke up in the morning at Yass, I tidied everything up and went for a shower and washed my hair. I have let my hair grow specifically for this trip and it is just long enough for me to put it up in a rubber band and clips and a tortoise shell clip, that means I don’t have to worry too much about my hair while I am travelling.

It takes me less than 5 minutes from the time I exit my trailer to when everything is ready to go. Mine would have to be the fastest ‘pack up’ of any “rig” I have seen.
I have injected my insulin, taken my drugs, and driven to the Yass Road house and have had eggs, a sausage and tomato and bacon for breakfast and a lovely cup of coffee.
Now I am ready to go.

I decided my next overnight stop would be at the Wirriwin Rest Area for the night. I got there early and used the facilities and had a meal and then did some typing and thinking. When I went to bed, I decided to read the comments written by other campers about the Wirriwin site. What they had to say was not encouraging. They ALL without exception complained bitterly about the mosquitos. Mosquitos? Oh dear!

Well, it wasn’t long before I was complaining too. I could not sleep I was being bitten, in fact, positively devoured and I knew with certainty that I had forgotten to pack the fly spray. NO fly Spray. Eventually, at 2.30 am in the morning, I decided that enough was enough! I packed up and drove on to a place I found in WikiCamps that was about 20 minutes away called Kevin Walsh Oval or Jamberoo Reserve.

Jamberoo reserve looked a whole heap better than Wirriwin, but as I drove down the entrance to the reserve towards where I could see other Caravaners and campers parked, I found that there was little room for me to park my “rig” so I just stopped the car and stayed where I was. I lay back in the front seat of the car and tried to sleep. I knew it was no use getting in the trailer because it was still full of Mosquitos and I had no spray to get rid of them. So that is where I found myself when I woke up in the morning. Actually I didn’t sleep too badly, all things considered.

When I first woke up and found myself sitting in the front seat of my car, I felt surprised, and I wondered why I was not in my little trailer. Well, it had not been the best of nights but it wasn’t the worst either. I was the last car in a whole group of cars who were parked in the shade beside the river. When I arrived last night I was not able to see well enough to know whether the road extended on past the caravans and cars or not, so that was why I had parked where I did. Now I could see that the road did extend on, so I started the car and drove along until I came to a spot that was wide enough for me to do a U-turn and go back the other way.

I went to the toilets near the entrance. They must surely have been built at least 100 years ago. I parked on the verge between two large trees and then climbed into my I trailer and went to sleep. I didn’t sleep for very long, but every bit helps. When I woke I searched for the local LGA in the little Jamberoo township. I purchased some food and water and then drove back to the reserve. I had breakfast and then got into my trailer and once again tried to sleep. This time however, I had some fly spray, so at last I got rid of all the nasty little critters and settled for, hopefully, a good sleep. Mosquitos worry me because Meg Clothier has got Ross River fever from being bitten by mosquitos and she is so sick. It takes ages to recover from it.

When I woke up, I drove along the river, looking for a spare park.There should have been one because many of the people who had been there last night had left. The ground near the river was sloping and so I could not find a spot that suited me, so at around 12.00 noon I decided to go somewhere else.

Wikicamps had some “Rave” reviews for the Bendeela Camping Reserve which was some 38 k away from Jamberoo. It would take over an hour to get there, but since I couldn’t find anything better sounding that that I decided Bendeela it would be.

It was a very scenic route with some very steep places on the way. The road ascended very steeply and then descended, also very steeply. I was hoping that all the comments made by the “happy campers” at Bendeela were true. The most important things for me were that it be free to camp there and that it be preferably, by a river, and that there be plenty of space so that there is a choice of camping sites.

Well it had all of those things, so soon I became a “happy camper” too. It is a lovely spot and has lots of wildlife and I had read that I should also get to see some wombats. There are ducks everywhere and they obviously like company because two of them have come and set themselves down next to me and are generally keeping me company and making themselves at home right at my feet.

An Italian woman came to talk to me. She told me her name was Grace, and she and her husband rented out their house some years ago and have been “grey nomading” ever since. They have been in this park for three weeks so far. There are toilets but no showers here. There is potable water which is great. I had a good wash in the sink there. I found you can drive down by the river with a trailer and then you can drive up again to another part of the camp site. There is swimming and kayaking on the river. Someone comes down each day to hire out kayaks.

My car is half full of petrol at the moment which is a good thing because I don’t think there is petrol too close by. I wanted to stay up late enough to see the wombats but was too tired. The couple in the tent nearby had loud music playing and some equally loud visitors talking to them, but they didn’t stay too late, so that was okay.

20170215 – Wednesday – Left Bendeela for Werri Beach, Camp site 1.

During the night I woke up and got out of my trailer intending to go to the loo. A wombat came waddling up to me and he was so friendly. It was too dark to see his face, but I could tell that it was uplifted and looking at me. I guess he wanted food if I had any. When nothing was forthcoming, he turned and waddled away.

In the morning, the campsite and the hills at Bendeela were enshrouded in mist. I drove to the loo and after that, I decided to leave the campsite and not to stay for another day because I couldn’t get the internet or my GPS there and besides I simply felt like driving and it turned out to be a very lovely drive through the hills land valleys between the camp site and Werri Beach.

I went to the Office site of the Werri Beach Holiday campsite and booked to stay the night. She found a really nice site for me. It was Number 1 and it had big trees around and lots of shade. I went to the local LGA and bought some groceries, mainly fruit and some small tins of fish, spaghetti, baked beans and soups. The weather is so hot and humid. I looked at the camp site I am going to have tomorrow and it has no shelter whatsoever. I wondered if I should ask at the office if I could change my booking to No 1 for the whole weekend, but in the end, thought I would leave it as it is.

I sat in the car with the air conditioner on and ate my dinner, mainly fruit, and tomato and a small tin of spaghetti and baked beans. I drove along the sea front at Werri Beach. There are amenities at both the north and south end of the beach. These are the things you note when you are traveling I have found. I drove around the corner from the toilets and found a beautiful little reserve right by the inlet. A man was just packing up his van and putting his surf board on the side of the van. After he left, I sat at a little bench in the reserve and typed up my diary. The bench is under some pine trees and is cool and shady and the breeze from the water funnels right through the little park. It was simply delightful.

I went to bed fairly early in the evening, and slept pretty well, but woke a few times and got out of my trailer and sat on the tailgate (which my dad made very strong and I use it as both a table and a seat – thank you my darling dad! You’ve been dead since 1995 but I still thank you often for this wonderful little trailer you built for me some 35+ years ago). It was cool and breezy outside by this time, but the breeze didn’t make it into my trailer so it was nicer outside than inside. So I spent some time outside in enjoying the breeze.

I was very glad of my chamber pot that I purchased from America before I went to the Oldies Rathmines Bible School in August of 2015. My white camping chair, however, has let me down three times on this trip. It became very unstable and I have fallen out of it three times so far. I decided that tomorrow I needed to go and purchase a new camp chair.

Darren rang me during the night and I told him about the chair and asked how was the easiest way to find where to go to get one. He told me to use the search box in google maps. Well, so far I have only used that search box to find the next place for me to stay, so I ride it, and of course, it made everything so much easier, and in the nick of time as far as I was because, because tomorrow I need to buy a new chair and finding where to go to find one would have been a problem.

Darren asked me to send him some pictures on Whatsapp so I did that. He has booked his trip to Europe and is pretty chuffed about that. He is gong with four or five of his colleagues from work.

 

20170216 – Thursday – Werri Beach – at camp site 1
I woke up after a very hot night. I was wondering what it was going to be like in the new camp site, site 20 on the morrow. I wondered whether I should see if I could stay on site 1, but in the end, just decided to stay with my original plans.

I went to the Werri Beach Holiday camp office and organised and paid for my new camp site, No 20, and then drove to it to check it out. It was right behind the Camp Kitchen where the Joseph bash was to be held The Camp kitchen also had a gazebo attached and some tables bench seats to sit on. I decided that I would park right near the wall on the grass and not on the pad in the idle of my camp site. That would mean the middle could be used for any of or group who needed to park a car or put up a shelter.

I drove along the sea front and checked out the amenities at the southern beach and then drove to the northern end of the beach and the toilets were pretty good at both places. I found a little reserve right by an inlet where people could swim and kayak. I watched a man packing up his gear after taking out his kayak. Then I sat a little bench and did some typing. It was very cool there because the reserve was like a funnel between two houses. It was lovely there. I decided to come back again maybe tomorrow.
I had a good night’s sleep