Destination Darwin

We have arrived at our destination; our new home in Darwin! Yep we made it.

Leaving Adelaide we traveled along the Flinders Ranges on our way to our first stop Port Augusta. We stayed at the Shoreline caravan park, Jes thought the cabin was dated but it suited my needs.  The interest the croc  is attracting is amazing with one fella wanting to buy it.

This croc surely has made us the most photographed vehicle on the Stuart Highway in 2016

Up early and 600kms to travel to our next stay Coober Pedy, it's a pretty barren drive but we stop at Pimba and Glendambo and start our sticker collection for my toy hauler I'm towing up. Coober Pedy is a real example of anti social behavior in and around town going out of a night is not an option. We stay at a cabin at the Big 4 caravan park (Stuart Ranges Outback Resort) a little out of town and is a grouse place to stay with a little band playing away at the pizza bar next to reception. Refreshed from a good nights sleep and more travel today we head into town for the morning market, after chatting to many different characters it was sadly time to hit the road..

The Stuart Highway sticker haul on the toy hauler

Another 600 kms today as we head for Alice Springs with Marla and kulgera stop at it is a pretty easy drive apart from the road trains and caravaners everywhere. It's Saturday night and Jess has been great so we decide to unwind with a couple of nights at the casino and relax and sit around the pool jess or gambling macca. It's a very luxurious place and is just what we need.

Monday morning we head for Tennant Creek traveling the Stuart Highway the countryside is stunning  as it changes all the time, we stop at Ti Tree, Barrow creek , Wycliffe Well and Wauchope for coffee and stickers and arrive at the motel about 5pm. We have tea at the restaurant and get a good nights sleep. We head into town and meet a few fellas and one particular bloke had me in tears as he told me the struggles of isolated life and his time in the war and how some locals treat him and three other diggers - a fair dinkum tear jerker. I had a couple of frozen crayfish with me and gave them for him and his mates to enjoy.

Crays caught in South Australia that made their way to an old digger in Tennant Creek

Daly Waters here we come - 400 kms until I can have a beer at the oldest pub in Australia. We collect stickers at Renner springs, Elliott, Dunmarra to name a few.  Temperatures have changed dramatically since Coober Pedy 18 degrees to Daly Waters 33 degrees, ah feeling better already. We book at the Highway Inn and enjoy the night.

Darwin and our new home at Howard springs are 600kms away it's a very easy drive with Mataranka and Katherine to enjoy with rivers flowing because of recent rains.

Although we did have our new toy hauler with us, it was so jam-packed with stuff and it was first of all too cold, then too hot and we don't have air con or heaters sorted in there yet, so we opted to find accommodation along the way. Below is a few pics of places we stayed, reviews on these to come.

My initiation into Darwin life has been one of going shirtless and shoe-less, and pouring water over my head in attempts to prevent myself from overheating (quads have no body temperature regulation).

Jess has also been struggling to adjust to the heat but her real initiation has involved the wildlife in her nightly trips out to the outdoor bathroom. This morning the squeals were due to a giant grasshopper perching on the shower curtain (a google search just showed this is actually a thing) and a green tree frog hiding under, and then refusing to get off the toilet seat.

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There's going to be steep learning curve I think in terms of life in the tropical north. We just learnt today there's a scary disease you can catch from mossie bites... any other stuff we should know fellow Territorians?!

We've spent our first few days cleaning, unpacking, buying up furniture and home stuff, and exploring the neighbourhood... and we'll likely remain busy doing all of that for a few weeks as well as tidying up the property and house improvements... luckily I love to work myself hard, and Jess is a goer too, when not snoozing the afternoon away!

The plan at this stage is to spend the next few months in Darwin, and see how we go in the wet season, with perhaps a trip south in the new year. Let us know if you're coming up for a break, and tell any locals WE HAVE ARRIVED!

Tasmania Travels - Triabunna Cabin Review

For our first week we stayed at the Triabunna Cabin & Caravan Park on the east coast of Tasmania, about an hours drive from Hobart. It's a lovely quiet quirky little fishing town with everything within walking (or wheeling) distance.

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We enjoyed our stay at this small but busy cabin & caravan park. We had the Superior Cabin which is a new one bedroom, wheelchair accessible (level entry) cabin with a roomy lounge / dining area, and full kitchen. It suited our needs well.

The owners were friendly, they introduced themselves upon our arrival and were eager to hear our feedback and to improve things where they could.

Only things that let it down was the shower bench wasn't installed properly and thus didn't fold up as it should - I was concerned I would injure my feet on it while showering - hopefully this will be fixed. Also the bed was a little too high (we usually find them not high enough!) but the feet could've been removed if we'd wanted it lowered, other than that it was a comfortable bed with lots of room (we had it set up as a king bed, but it can be separated into two king singles).

Other notes:

• The laundry, main toilet block (for campers), & reception office were not wheelchair accessible. 
• My companion dog was allowed to stay, but not in the cabin. 
• The free wi-fi service was very good - much better than the usual camping ground networks.

One of the greatest attractions in Triabunna is the ferry service to Maria Island (pronounced Mariah -  like the singer), apparently a beautiful pristine island with great walking tracks - I'll never know as this proved to be yet another ferry service that has a strange definition of wheelchair accessible. This ferry is definitely NOT wheelchair accessible - hopefully thanks to the chat I had with the booking lady, they won't be telling people from now on that it is - there's no way I could make the trip sadly.

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Highlights of the town for me was watching the activity on the wharf - there were tonnes and tonnes of squid being bought in while we were there, an archaeological dig that was underway at the old Barracks next to the Spring Bay Hotel, and the friendly locals including John who kept offering us plums off his trees.

Next stop... Snug Bay Cabin & Caravan Park...

Barney's Place - Gold Coast

On November 24th after booking 2 weeks earlier and planning on staying a week in Beaudesert I was faced with the need to find somewhere else to stay (I'm saving that story for a later post!)  and I somehow stumbled across this gorgeous house with an odd name - read on for my story of a man trying to bring change in the way we look at disabled accommodation.

I make a call to the manager of an amazing looking holiday house on the Gold Coast called Barney's Place. Jess is skeptical that it'll be available, or affordable, but I give it a go anyway. What have we got to lose? The manager is Tracy and she tells me it's actually booked out for the owner to do maintenance on it... but he could possibly be open to giving us a few nights there... we can't get hold of him so she suggests we head over there to see him. We get back on the road and plot the course for Barney's Place in Mermaid Waters... hey it looks worth a look at the very least.

We turn up to a seemingly ordinary residential street, a very tidy looking property from the front, with level entry from the street, through the garage we can see ramps to doors, OK so far so good. Andre the owner meets us out there and says yes, he's open to booking it out to us for a few nights, he shows us in, we pass by the pool with a seat lift thingie, nice. We come in through the wide front door and our first reaction is WOW... this IS nice... open plan, wooden floorboards, newly renovated, SPA with a lift too! Oh, and I get my own bathroom?! Brilliant! Wet floor, plenty of space, able to get under the basin... full marks from me.

Not only is a beautiful house - that feels homely – it also backs onto one of the canals, and the deck looks out onto sandy beaches and water. I would've loved to get down onto that beach so I could throw the dog a stick, but alas, this was one thing I couldn't do due to a steep flight of stairs to that level.

There is three bedrooms; a single hospital bed if you want it in the smallest bedroom, bunks for the kids, another single electric bed, and a queen bed in the master bedroom looking out over the canal (which is where I slept). Andre was helpful to the point of going to get some elephant feet for the queen bed so it was a better height for me to transfer in and out of my wheelchair. There were also modifications to the kitchen cabinetry to allow the spaces under the kitchen sink and hobs to open up for wheelchair access.

This is not a budget holiday option, but for the extra cost we had all the home comforts including things like; a wheelchair accessible car (if we'd wanted it), a decent BBQ, wireless internet, washing machine and dryer, dishwasher... the list goes on. Jess was impressed with some of the simple things like disinfectant for the bathroom, a vacuum cleaner, and plenty of tea and coffee supplied.

We truly felt at home there and would've loved to stay longer than the five days we had. We really enjoyed our stay and would recommend it to others. I'd only deduct points for lack of footpaths in the area (but the streets are very quiet until you get to the ones with them), far too close to Pacific Fair shopping centre (Jess disappeared for a couple of days), and not being able to get down to the waters edge myself. Probably a little far removed from the main beaches too but still a 9/10 for me.

If you go to the Barney's Place website the owner Andre also runs a business in Thailand called Phuket Access Travel that provides links to reliable accommodation and transportation... if I was interested in a holiday over there I'd be going with him for sure.