Life on the road Part 1 – Kids 24/7 in an 18ft tin box

So even from the title you can see – this is not a usual post.  When I was in Canberra I asked friends what they thought of the blog (thank you for the positive comments guys) and how it could be improved.  One friend suggested that it would be good to see a bit more of how we actually live on the road, not just the locations.  So this is the first of possibly a series of blog posts on how we live in a caravan travelling around Australia.

I thought the obvious topic for the first of my new style posts is the kids.  It was the number one question we were asked before we left, it is the number one question I get when I catch up with family and friends and a question about the kids is still the number one question we get asked on the road.

ARE WE THERE YET??????

So there is even a book now with that question and I am sure for every parent it is a familiar refrain. I was also expecting us to have to say – quiet back there or there will be no insert treat if that behaviour continues, OR Boys just stop fighting right now!  Really nicely we have not had to resort to much of this at all J  No our boys are definitively not angels and we don’t administer sleeping pills for the journeys.  Our secret – AUDIOBOOKS.  I LOVE AUDIOBOOKS!  We wisely (well in retrospect) bought a small blue tooth speaker I thought for having music in and around the caravan.  The speakers biggest use is in the back seat of our car.  We run audiobooks through my Ipod and Ipad and we can decide whether the parents in the front seat actually want to listen or not.  Mostly we do because the hours of driving are a bit boring for us as well. 

Where do we get all these audiobooks (because already we have gone through hours and hours and hours worth), firstly the generosity of family and friends and then the library system of the ACT.  We had borrowed a number of hard cds and copied those for use before the journey, but mostly we use the online aspect of the library.  From anywhere in Australia (where we can log on) we download ebooks and audiobooks.  From the time we start a story we very rarely get a peep from the boys until they get hungry.  We often have trouble getting them out of the car before the end of a story.

OPPORTUNITY SHOPS

These are a godsend.  We use them like libraries, buy books at one donate them back down the line, buying the next lot again.  The mix of books we get is obviously dictated by what they have, but that in turn means we pick up books we might not otherwise have thought about.  The other upside is that we are still finding things we don’t need or that we have overused (particularly some of the boys toys as they find new things on the road) so we occasionally donate a bag of our excess goodies as well.

Our other place to pick up books is book sale places in shopping malls.  Yep we still hang out in the odd shopping mall and I do keep an eye out for good sales on books.  The boys are reading a Tashi compendium we found in Newcastle for less than half price.  When we have finished with a new book it still goes to an opp shop with the others.  Although we are very attached to the Tashi so may have to send it home.

SO ARE YOU HOMESCHOOLING?

This has to be our most frequently asked question when we tell people we are travelling around Australia.  No we aren’t and I am glad we are not.  Travelling is exciting, challenging, invigorating, but also really tiring.  It would be a real struggle for us to add in formal sessions of prescribed learning on top of most of our days.  If our kids were older this would be a different story but they are still only 7 and just beginning their formal school pathway.

Having said we don’t do formal home-schooling – we do lots of learning.  First of course is all the learning we do on the road.  We are visiting new and amazing places, listening to guides and rangers, read interpretative signs and pamphlets and looking things up on the internet and in books.  We were recently at the Rainforestation in Kuranda learning how to play the didgeridoo from a local indigenous person.  He asked the boys did they know how a didgeridoo was made – Mr L gave him the full story chapter and verse.  The man was most surprised, as were David and I.  We asked him how he knew so much – he told us from Bushwacked and the Townsville Museum.

We do lots of reading, we read out loud with the boys, they do their own silent reading, and did I mention the plethora of interpretative signs we all take turns reading.  The boys have their own tablets and we have restricted the apps on these so they are educational.  We also play family games many with a strategy and/or maths element.  These include Monopoly, card games, Yahtzee, Scrabble and yep for fun Headbandz.  The boys are earning pocket money for the first time so they have to figure out how much money they have and how much they can afford when we visit markets (they are also starting to learn to haggle from this experience as well). 

The boys get involved in reading maps, working out distances (the how far are we along a walk is a good incentive to work out some maths), constructing material for this blog and are now picking up words in foreign languages as in Far North Queensland we have been meeting kids mostly from Europe.  We have a map on our table in the van and are tracing our journey on this.  We also left a map with the boys class so they can see where we are going.  To add to this and to provide a bit of more structured project work we design and send posters back to the school.  In our recent trip back the boys visited their class and even gave a power point presentation.

If you were to ask me where I think they are at present I would have to answer their reading is great, their general knowledge super, their confidence is excellent.  I will also admit they may end up a little behind in formal maths (you know x + y = z style) and probably physical writing.  I anticipate that next year we might have to focus on some aspects to bring them up to the rest of their class, but maybe not.  We do also have distraction bags in the car with workbooks and pencil cases for times when we stop for food and are awaiting our orders, or having lunch at a picnic table in the rain.

Like our real journey, the boys learning journey is also evolving.  David and I are learning to incorporate opportunistic learning better as we go along.  They boys are learning more so we change what we do with them, hopefully we are learning to be better parents as teachers.  We are about to do much longer drives when we leave the coast and head to the Northern Territory.  I can see an opportunity to expand some of our in car learning activities there (I am not sure even audiobooks will get us through 6 or more hours of driving). 

Hopefully this new style of blog post is of interest to at least some of you.  Please let me know if it is and if there are any other questions you might like us to answer.  You can do this by leaving a comment on this post or by emailing us at tcdstravelling@gmail.com.

I will end with a poem written by the boys (their class had also been working on poetry so they added the poem in some posters we sent back).  You may have noticed that wet weather has been a recurring theme for us on the coast.  So it maybe no surprise that the rain was a key topic for them to write about (this poem was after 4 days straight of rain).

Mission Dunk Island - Mission Success!

We are going there!

By David

So one day Tracey asks “do you think we could spend a night camping”.  When we started out on our lap of Australia we had always planned to do the odd night camping away from Cool George, so of course I answered yes.  But then she added, what if we camped on a tropical island could we possibly manage that?  Ahhhh sure, well I think so, maybe, most likely.  And that is how our first camping adventure ended up on a tropical island.

By Tracey

I was more than a bit nervous.  We aren’t really campers, we have done a bit with family but not much by ourselves.  In fact until this trip we weren’t caravanners and we are definitely still learning how to do that. Could we pull this off?  But the other side of me said – start with one night if its super bad just sleep the next few days. How much could really go wrong anyway?.

We packed up all our gear (hoping we didn’t miss anything crucial because there was no going back), thought through in our heads how this would work, what could go wrong, what would we need then.  We had three things that made it easier, it was one night, the island had a working toilet and water and it was the home of the repeater for Mission Beach so had great mobile reception if things went pear shaped.  Then we watched the forecast and hoped the miserable wind and rain would just take a break.

By David

How lucky were we.  The day arrived and the rain disappeared. We arrived at the water taxi at 11am and loaded our gear on to a sort of trailer, we then had to wade out to the boat (my mid thigh, Tracey’s well bum and the boys up to their waists) and load our gear on to the water taxi.  Getting off the water taxi was interesting, Dunk has a jetty and our boat pretty much rammed itself gently up the stairs with the driver gunning the engines to stay there.  The day trippers got off and then us – me handing the stuff to Tracey on the stairs, her hoisting it up on the jetty (no help other than the boys who tried so hard to be helpful). 

We lugged our stuff to our campsite.  It was a treat – beautiful view, path right to the beach.  We couldn’t believe this was all ours for the princely sum of $23.95 per night (+ the taxi of course).   Setting up camp wasn’t too hard – it had been a while since we set this tent up but the brain cells still worked and in not too long a time we had our set up for the next 28 hours.

Our view! 

Us set for the night.

By Tracey

We had brought an esky which we filled with ice just before leaving and basically picnicked through all our meals.  Our table was a bit too sunny so we used nice shady one next door.  For dinner we chose another spot with a better view of the sunset, for breakfast a different vantage again.  As it turned out no-one else had booked a site.  Our own tropical island for $24 hard to believe.

By Mr L

Dunk Island makes me feel happy because there were so many butterflies and we found some wings on the ground. It was the best day we ever had, because we did camping on the beach. At night we saw toads and frogs, they were easy to see because they were gold, green and brown. They made me feel a bit grossed out because they were all over the place.

You should go to Dunk Island because it is so beautiful, you can snorkel and see coral and fish, build rock towers and swim in warm water.

The ground was a bit hard to sleep on I would prefer to try our stretcher beds next time.

Mum and Dad let us have a midnight (around 8pm) feast consisting of biscuits and special treat fruit chew lollies and we played UNO by torch light.

By Mr C

Dunk Island is AWEMAZING!  I would recommend it totally. I liked the beautiful butterflies that were everywhere on the island.  We were the only ones camping there it was like we had the whole island to ourselves.  The beaches were excellent and there were no crocs near here.  We swam in 3 different beaches and they were all beautiful, we even found some kids at one beach.  I really liked camping there. We got a great site with a little sand walkway right from our tent to the beach. I also loved the trips on the water taxi they were amazing.  On the way back there were lots of waves making the water fly against my window and wash into the back of the boat.  The ride to the mainland was better than a theme park ride!

The Beaches

By the time we had set up and had a leisurely lunch it was time to head to a beach – but which one.  We decided on Muggy Muggy which was down the beach in front of us and through a short rainforest walk.  As we headed to this beach all the day trippers passed us heading back to the jetty.  By the time we arrived we had a deserted tropical island beach all to ourselves.  The water was warm, but unfortunately the last few days of wind and rain meant that it was murky making our snorkelling there a bit difficult.  Still over the next two days we all had a good practice and we got to see some coral and tropical fish.

Muggy Muggy Beach 

Brammo Bay Beach

  

A Ghost Town?

Most of you probably all know that Dunk Island was once the setting for a major resort (in fact I stayed there with a friend many years ago).  Unfortunately Dunk and Bedarra Islands were also the epicentre for the landing of Cyclone Yasi in 2011.  From the beach the ~500 people resort appears abandoned and deserted.  The once premium beachfront accommodation is wrecked and vegetation is beginning to claim it bit by bit.

But a bit further along the beach was the main entrance to the old resort and it and its signature Ulysses butterfly pool were pristine.

We were perplexed by this, and only Mr C and Mr L were able to solve the mystery.  As I have said before kids love kids and ours are not unique in this.  As we swam on the beach in front of our campsite two kids and their mum started walking along the beach.  In a minute one of the kids had their clothes off and was in the water with ours.  Mums of course then chat as we watch kids swim.  It turns out there is a small staff at the resort which was sold after the cyclone.  The owners use the resort for private functions and are planning to turn it into a 6 star resort in the future.  For the present some accommodation off the beach has been restored and the landscaping is being reinstated.  There is also a café near the jetty which is open Fri to Sun.  However, all this information didn’t stop the place having an eerie feeling especially later in the evening when the resort was mostly dark. 

View from our campsite to the resort

Night time on the island

Dinner was a relaxed picnic with us still in our swimmers, but with magnificent views and a superb sunset.  We got to shop around for our dinner table so of course chose the best one.  After dinner we decided to do a night walk on the beach and went down to the jetty.  To our surprise there were people fishing and apparently they had heard us laughing our way through our dinner (the boys were doing silly voices).  They said it made them really smile.

We went back to the tent for our tropical night feast instead of dessert.  I won’t say it was a restful night of great sleep.  But it was a beautiful, warm tropical night.  The breezes were soft, the stars were out and there wasn’t a drop of rain.  Really can it get any better than this.

Sunset Café

The next morning we were up with the sun and the birds, albeit a bit stiff and sore (well David and I were the boys seemed fine).  Again we had the choice of the island for our breakfast table so went in search of some sun to warm us all up.  We found a lovely table next to the Sunset Café near the jetty and to make my life totally blissful the chef turned up (turned out he was the father of yesterday’s kids) and offered me a cup of tea.  I had been wrong, life had just got even better.

 Sunrise on Dunk Island (after all we were up with the sun)

 

We went for a nice long morning walk on deserted beach after deserted beach.  We tried to get the boys to do the mountain walk but all they wanted was to go back to Muggy Muggy beach and do more snorkelling and rock tower building.  Who were we to argue?  The morning taxi arrived at 9 so after that we actually had to share the beach with other people (the cheek of it). 

We lunched back at our campsite – this time at our own table.  Packed our things up and went swimming again.  We all indulged in an icecream from the café and then it was time to go back to Mission Beach.  The taxi was totally full (fortunately a passenger or two helped us on this time) and the ride was bumpy.  The boys loved it!

All of us loved the feeling of being on a tropical island and would love to do it again sometime.

And in answer to the earlier question, yes we can handle camping away from the caravan and actually can’t wait to do it again.

13 - 18 June Time in Townsville

We really liked Townsville – it probably helped that it wasn’t continually raining and trying to blow our caravan away, but there was such a good diversity of things to do here and we could see ourselves coming back for a holiday here.  When the weather was inclement we were able to escape to the Tropical Museum and Reef Head Quarters.  When it was nice there are fantastic walks and free pools and good kids parks in Townsville.  This time we stayed at a caravan park far from the sea and just outside Townsville – there was no bouncy pillows, or pools, but it had a great atmosphere and the kids loved the freedom to ride around up and down the grass hills near our van.

The Strand and Fort Hill

You can swim in the sea in Townsville, we didn’t because the wind was still blowing a bit - I had assumed that you couldn’t swim up this far because of the crocs, but apparently not.   However, Townsville has also built a lovely strip along the sea called the Strand.  The Strand included a beach with life guards and located just near this was a lovely free pool called the rock pool which was bordered by a cool kid’s park with the grooviest six person swing we have ever seen (actually it would be the only six person swing we have seen).

At one end of the Strand is Fort Hill which had a lovely walk with interpretative signs and even radio recordings explaining all about the attack on Townsville in World War II.  David and I were aware of the raids on Darwin but not Townsville, it’s good to know that our twins aren’t the only ones learning on this trip.  It was also cool not just reading about what happened, but also listening to the old radio recordings.  The kids had a great time exploring the hill and learning about the different guns and how the old fort used to work.

Fort Hill walk is also provides a great vantage point to see Castle Hill which has a very imposing presence across the whole of Townsville.

After all our walking and exploring we finally discovered a gelato shop on the Strand which had the best views while you are enjoying your cones.  Some days it’s a hard life, not.

The Museum of Tropical Queensland

Definitely the biggest spider we have seen yet!

The Museum of Tropical Queensland is a branch of the Queensland Museum located in Townsville.  The museum, in large part, is built around the HMS Pandora which was the ship sent to catch the famous Bounty and her mutinous crew, the Pandora sank off the coast of Queensland in 1791. Hundreds of artefacts have been recovered from the wreck and are on display in this museum and there is a type of replica including one of the cannons.  You can be part of Running out the Gun where you can learn how to load and fire a cannon.  They choose members of the audience to take part and crew the cannon.  In our case our family was the audience so I was crew # 1 and 3, Mr L # 2 and 4, the presenter had to be # 5 and Mr C was the powder monkey (David was taking the photographs).  We had a blast (ha ha) doing this, it was one of the best hands on learning exercises we have done on our trip.  We all learned our parts and managed to coordinate enough to fire the cannon.  Then we had to do it in under 60 seconds. Both Mr L and Mr C got a turn at firing the cannon and we all received gunners certificates (we believe we made a major contribution to sinking the enemy fleet – just not really sure who the enemy was).

 Put your backs into it!

The museum also has a really kids friendly display called the Enchanted Rainforest, which focuses on North Queensland’s rainforests. Built around a recreation of a quandong tree and featuring a slide and rope bridge, the kids had a great time exploring and learning about rainforest plants and animals – without them being able to bite or sting.  The museum has a small but interesting range of dinosaurs, a cool coral exhibit and while we were there a whole gallery of stuffed African animals.  We had gone there expecting to be able to while away a couple of hours – we stayed much longer than that and only left because the museum was closing.