Day 14 - On The Move Again

After a few hours repairing the broken door to the hollow rear bumper which holds the canvas awning poles, the TV antenna and the pole for mounting the washing brush, we were on the road again - not before a last coffee of course!

Our two days in Tamworth were well spent. Apart from double checking that my hands were okay after the swan dive from my pushbike, we also attended to a few other matters we should have remembered before we left. It was also good to catch up with Jacquie and Sam for dinner on one of the nights and Chris for lunch the following day.

A fair bit of the full day we had at home was spent reorganising the itinerary, which has been affected more than we first thought. Now, instead of heading west through NSW to Broken Hill and on into South Australia for the Flinders Ranges, we are heading down along the Hume Highway for a ways and then across the Hay Plain to Mildura. We’ll have to miss Broken Hill, Flinders Ranges and the places we were going to visit on the Fleurieu Peninsula but the compensation is three days on Kangaroo Island. Like Tasmania, it one of the few places in Australia we haven’t yet paid a visit to. We will still see the Maudes in Adelaide and the Richardsons in Melbourne and also spend time with my brother and his family in Canberra as well as Kevin and Amanda … friends we met in the England when we were there in 2012 and have been trying to catch up with ever since. Unfortunately, we will have to miss Bendigo and therefore a former Tamworth friend and mentor to our daughter Sarah, Penny Richmond.

You can find the new itinerary on the SA/Vic 2014 tab.

Leaving Tamworth just after noon, the trip to Morisset, just below Newcastle, was uneventful. We listened to Les Miserable for the first part of the trip and then all the Renee Geyer I could find and stopped just the once, at the park beside Muswellbrook Railway Station. I again almost missed the turn off the Hunter Expressway onto the M1, having missed heading to Sydney nearly two weeks ago. The GPS is of no use, as yet not having the new section of road which bypasses Maitland and saves forty minutes off the southern journey.

Our detour to Morisset has come about because of the failure of the water systems on the Cruiser. The pressure limiter has jammed on the mains pressure line and the 12v pressure pump isn’t operating properly. There are some other minor issues we’ll get them to fix while we are here.

Our digs are the Lake Macquarie Caravan Park in Morisset which seems to be full of mostly cabins with limited space for vans. There is quite a generous area for tent camping and management were kind enough to offer us a spot beside the camp kitchen which will make it possible to keep the van attached to the car - an asset when we have to take it to Avan Morisset tomorrow for the day.

Cheers to Sarah and Robert

Finished the day with sundowners overlooking Stockton Creek, a tributary of Dora Creek which flow out into Lake Macquarie. We toasted Sarah, who has been overcoming a rough start to her month in Greece with her typical tenacity and Robert McDougall, a young Tamworth singer who yesterday stepped up from understudy to staring role, singing one of the lead roles - Javert - in Les Miserable at Her Majesty's in Melbourne.

 ... and that's all she wrote.