Van Morrison: Bright Side of the Road

Well looky here, it’s been quite a few weeks since my last post. 
 

There's been quite a kerfuffle this last week or so and last Tuesday, we were driving a hire car to our last destination, while the Hilux was all bent out of shape on the back of a truck to it’s home.

And Van Morrison was towed on the back of another truck to be retired in a car port.

So we were a little busy that Tuesday due to factors out of our control.

In my last post we were still (only just) in Western Australia.

Since then – in just 2 weeks we’ve travelled over 3,000 kilometres across 3 states, flown in to Sydney for a friend’s wedding from Darwin, caught up with family in Queensland and found ourselves in a car accident.

So let me stop on some of the highlights of the last 3 weeks as we find ourselves over 100 days and 20,000 kilometres on the road and exactly 16 Tuesday’s after we set off.

Starting with Northern Territory, a state that we didn’t give the attention to which it deserves, due to lack of time on our part.

We spent about 4 days at Litchfield National Park, a place well worth a visit – only 130kms south of Darwin. It’s super impressive with waterfalls and crocodile free swimming spot. There were a good few days in the 32 degree heat sitting in ponds filled with freshwater from the flowing waterfalls.

The only thing that got me out of these freshwater pools – and very quickly – was a dirty big golden tree snake.

I was casually swimming along when about half a metre to my right I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. It was the snake as it headed OUT of the water… quickly explaining what had felt like reeds wrapping round my ankles moments before.

You would never have seen so much splashing about in the few seconds it took for me to get out of that pond.

After Litchfield, we headed to Darwin for a few days. I flew back to Sydney for a 48 hour round trip on 2 red-eye’s for the wedding of two lovely friends. It was gorgeous and fabulous and loads of fun – and completely strange for me to back teetering in high heels around the city.

When I got back, we left Darwin and had 5 days to get to the Queensland coast and drove for 8-9 hours a day. The best stop-over was a place in NT called Larrimah – if you ever find yourself there, do go in to the pub.

Not only is it totally outback, with various rusty car parts strewn around as decoration, a big old wooden bar bench and your average outback locals – they have their very own zoo.

The zoo has a variety of massive deadly snakes (in glass cages that did not look strong enough for my liking), birds, emus, wallabies and big old crocodiles.

It was not just bizarre, it was actually pretty awesome. Especially when this little wallaby gave me a smoochie:

Staying at a variety of outback roadhouses, we filled the car with very expensive petrol and changed a flat car tyre by the side of the road. It was by and large uneventful and we were very happy when we finally got to Mackay.

We spent a day in Mackay seeing my cousin Mark and his wife and their 3 little kids. So cute. Then headed south and spent a few days at Yeppoon – a gorgeous little beachside town and

another few days at Hervey Bay before heading to Noosa to meet up with my friend Megs, who is on her own little around Australia trip going the opposite direction to us.

On what was inevitably our last day with Van Morrison in tow, we cruised into the Gold Coast in the early morning and parked Morrie at my aunt and uncle’s house before heading out. We were at the gold coast at this particular time so that Husband Man could join his man mates for a bucks weekend.
After picking up one of his friends at the airport, I drove us all to their destination for the weekend.

We only got five minutes up the road, when a car pulled out in front of me, in a place where I couldn’t slow down in time to avoid crashing right into it. It all happened very quickly and was quite horrific, but it could have been worse. All of us came out of the crash un-injured, the other driver is ok. Our bull-bar took most of the hit, but the whole incident meant the Hilux was no longer road-worthy.

So Van Morrison has been retired to the car port of my parentals on the north coast, until we get some more time and money for another little gypsy adventure.

On the bright side, we're super thankful that Van Morrison wasn't attached to the car at the time, that there wasn't a car behind us at the time, that there was an ambulance close to the scene and there in a minute and that everyone came away without injury.

In just a few weeks we’ll be back in old Sydney town – but as we travel there we’ll be seeing loads of family and friends along the way….

Not quite over yet and still so much to look forward to.