Week 1 - Narara to Brisbane via Goolwah Regional Park & Little Styx River Campground

After 2.5 days of last minute packing in scorching heat (35-40 degrees), the time has finally come to hit the road and embark on the long awaited travels. 

After selling most of the household furniture through Gumtree, we were still left with a double shed's worth of personal belonging that either wouldn't sell or were personal belongings. After packing and re-packing the shed twice, it all finally fit (even the king size mattress - although not sure how we will get it out again!)

Then came packing the car and camper. The same question constantly came up, "Do we need this? Will we use it?" Despite the advice from a number of other blogs about packing minimal, we decided to pack it just in case. We figured, the back of the car can be loaded with stuff we are less likely to use and the camper should have food, clothing and a few other luxuries such as the XBOX One and Wii U (kindly donated by a friend). Positively everything fit without feeling cluttered! I am sure as we go, we will re-organise and re-pack according to what we need and what we use.

So finally we left home just before noon on Wednesday 11th January 2017. The first stop was going to be one of our favourite spots in NSW - Goolawah Regional Park (Delicate Nobby Beach Campground). We have been here at least 4 or 5 times prior but as you can see below the beach is vast and picturesque with the campground just situated behind the dunes a few hundred metres walkaway. Most of the afternoon was spent walking the dogs on the beach, taking a few pictures then cooking the evening meal.

Getting to Goolawah Regional Park was pretty straight forwards, however, with a number of new roads been built around the area right the way up to Coffs Harbour, The GPS did not recognise a number of slip roads and turning and frequently got lost. To be fair, we havent updated the firmware yet :-)

The campground was surprisingly quiet considering it was still school holidays so we parked up right next to the beach entrance and walking distance to showers. Below is an old video clip taken of the campground surroundings which can be found on DogExplorer's Website 

In the morning, we woke up pretty early, showered and pretty much set off. However before heading off, we thought we had found another problem with camper as the battery seemed to have drained from a full charge down to 11.8v overnight. After a bit of investigation we had noticed that the freezer was set to -24 but wasn't actually reaching the temperature resulting in the compressor perhaps working overtime to bring the temperature down. We will need to do a proper test on this as the camper should be self sufficient without an external charge for a good 2-3 days especially with the solar panel on the roof.

So off we set onto the next campground, which was more inland (North West from the Coast) to a place called "New England" Little Syx River Campground in Ebor, NSW. The journey to the campground was somewhat picturesque as we followed the windy and slightly hilly "Waterfall Way" route which meandered through rainforest and passed by a number of rural properties.

On one section of the road we caught up to a car towing a boat which probably isnt a good idea up the hilly roads. Consequently, the car came to a halt half way up a hill and appeared to be unable to get momentum again. We noticed that they were driving in tandem with another 4WD which was towing a camper trailer so we decided to sail past them and not lose our momentum :) 

The campground itself is a small open grassy area situated amongst woodland which borders both Little Styx State Forest and a National Park. There were 2 other campers that we could see which gave us plenty of space to choose from. The camp was very rustic with only an old toilet as an amenity so probably not everyone's cup of tea but was totally fine for us. There was a nice creek / river opposite the camper but you had to meander through a fair bit of overgrown grass and bush to get to it.

As the evening drew in, the storm clouds started to form which was soon followed by a thunderstorm and a spot of rain. Skyler absolutely hates thunderstorms, so she thought it would be a good idea to try and hide in one of the small storage cupboards inside of the camper (see picture below) 

Rocky, on the other hand, was not phased by it and decided to use one of the rucksacks and slept through it!

In the morning we headed on towards Brisbane via Wardell Rest Area where we stayed overnight and finally reached our destination in South Brisbane . We set up the camper in scorching heat again (35-36 degrees) and headed to Bunnings to invest in an industrial fan in an attempt to combat some of the hot days ahead. The picture below will be our home for the next 6 - 12 weeks whilst I complete a short term contract in Brisbane CBD.