The story so far...

On Tuesday the 7th of July we headed off on what we hope will be the adventure of a lifetime, this trip had been two years in the making and it almost seemed surreal that we were really leaving. It was a stressful morning as we packed our lives into our tiny caravan, Brenton was stressing that we would be too heavy and not be able to drive over 60km as we are only towing with a 4 cylinder 4 wheel drive, so we had to offload some cargo, the surfboards were taking up way too much room so we decided to leave them at home, if we wanted to surf we could always hire some boards.

We said our good-byes and then headed off in the little caravan who could, it was about 3 minutes in when Brenton looked at me and said the car was not going to be able to pull the weight, its was way too heavy and the car is hardly moving...... then we realised the caravan brakes were on,so after stopping, taking the caravan brakes off, we were off again, although this time slightly less confident.

We hit the western hwy and headed through the hills on our way to Horsham, if anything was going to test our caravan we thought that would, surprisingly it did well.
Just before we got to our rest stop for the night we were lucky enough to see 'The Big Koala', a very
ugly take on our koala bear, but it was good for a giggle.

We pulled in at the Horsham rest area called Green Lake, excited to be getting free accommodation on the first night!
The supposed lake, that once took up about a kilometre of the land here was now a dry sand pit, with a bevy of dead animals. This pic is where the lake used to be.

We collected some fire wood and made a fire then tried to organise dinner before it got dark, we cooked packet alfredo with some corn, it was just what we needed.

It was a freezing night and I hardly had any sleep, being so close to the hwy you heard the trucks pulling in and out all night, but the place had toilets and was free so who was I to complain, Brenton slept fine and had to put up with me coughing and sniffing all night.

Wednesday was a nice easy drive, very straight flat roads, which the caravan liked and we loved!

That night, after having lunch in a small town called Nhill, and stopping to take some pictures at Keith we stopped at a town just of the Hwy called Coonalpyn, only a very small town with a population of only 215 people! We were finally in South Australia!

We stayed at the caravan park, which was unattended and relied on a fee box for payments, although the caretaker did call past later that night. It was only us and another couple who came later, a very quiet caravan park! It was $21 for the night and there were showers and a laundry, although even if you weren't staying there you could have a shower and pay $4 into the honesty box.

 The surrounds were nice,  very green with a few large trees that provided shade. It was still a little noisy though as it was just off the freeway. We cooked chops, veggies and some amazing potato chips on the webber, very enjoyable!

We were on our way again, not too early, the grey nomad departure time of 10am.
On our way to the Adelaide Hills we stopped at Old Tailem Town which is Australia's oldest pioneer village, it was great to have a look around and as we got there early it was very quiet and slightly eerie, so after a look around and a few home made tomato sandwiches it was on the road again.

This drive proved to be a bit tricker , the Adelaide Hills are not called that for nothing, thank god it was a 2 lane hwy because at one stage we were in 2nd gear doing 40km/h to try and get up one of these hills!!

After a quick trip to bunnings we arrived at Hahndorf, a cute little german town which is situated in the Adelaide hills, we didn't have any plans of staying here but after seeing it we fell in love and decided to stay.

The main strip was very busy and reminded us a bit of bright, there was lots to see and do and we tried to squeeze as much as we could, which included eating a hot spud with ham and cheese, amazing, and only $5, we shared it of course, trying to stick to some type of budget!

We found some great accommodation at Hahndorf resort which looks like a German ski resort, there is a lake with lots of ducks and some great views, but beware the ducks are VERY friendly as we found out when we were cooking that night. We had our caravan door open and the next thing you know we have 3 ducks hovering at our door,when Brenton went to grab the camera from the car one of the ducks even jumped inside the caravan! So I had to bargain him out with bread.

The caravan spot was great, very picturesque but some of the spots were not very flat, so could be a problem for some caravans (the cheaper ones like ours!). We paid $27 for the night for a powered site, there was a laundry, showers and toilets were good and we even had a little fruit and veg market at the bottom of the resort, would highly recommend this place!
Just remember to always keep some $1 coins on you for laundry, we learnt the hard way and had an abundance of $2 coins but had to chase people for change!

We did our biggest day on Friday, as much as we wanted to see Adelaide we decided to come back and do it when the weather was a bit warmer so we could enjoy places like Glenelg and Victor Harbour more.

Instead we decided to head to Port Augusta 'the crossroads of Australia', our flattest yet toughest drive yet as we were driving straight into the wind!! The car would not go over 80km/h and at one stage I think we were holding up about 12 vehicles, including a few caravans and a road train!
We decided to pull over and have a toilet break in the middle of nowhere to let them pass, they had been very patient sitting behind us griswalds!

There were overtaking lanes but they just never seemed long enough.

It was great countryside on the way to Port Augusta, one minute it looked like the English country side the next like we weren't to far from the beach.

Then we started to see the Flinders Ranges, amazing!
So we stopped to take a few more pics (and let a few more cars past!).

We drove into Port Augusta about 4:30pm a very long day of driving for us!

We found a caravan park called Shoreline Caravan Park and they were charging $25- per night for a powered site, but as the name says, it is right by the water.
This is the busiest park we have seen lots of people coming and going, most coming down from Darwin or heading across to Perth.

We have spent 3 days here so far and it has been nice not to have to un-pack and re-pack after one night.

We went and saw a local footy game, and attempted to do some fishing.

We came out empty handed, but after speaking to a local fisherman this morning there isn't much fish to be caught at the moment, although he did say about a month ago he was catching trout.

We can just use that as an excuse!

The weather has been really up and down here one night we thought we were going to blow away and only had two hours sleep because of it. Today was really nice though, sun was out and although still cool nothing like Melbourne's cold, even got a run in.

We lashed out and had fish and chips for dinner and they were awful, we did eat them all though, we cant afford to waste anything!

We sat outside a lot of today and spoke to all the other travellers, giving us hints and tips and information on anything and everything. 

They were all a bit surprised about how young we were and what we were doing, they all thought we were on a 2 week holiday!

Tomorrow we are back on the road and are heading towards Woomera, that is after we get a bike rack welded to the back of the caravan, we are getting sick of lifting them in and out of our tiny little house.

It's almost 10:30pm now, a very late night for us, and we have an early morning for a change.

Hope that has brought us up to date with everything!

xxx