2024 from April to December

Posted on 31/08/2025 by patevans

As things are evolving in our life, our travel schedule is also changing. Following our trip to Tasmania in early 2024, we have done a number of short trips over the balance of the year and had our first full winter in Sydney for many years. This blog post covers our time and travels from April to December 2024. Incidentally I started writing this post in May 2025 as we have been consumed with campaigning for an Independent candidate in the federal election from November 2024 to May 2025.

One thing about not travelling so much is that we have enjoyed more of the treats that Sydney has to offer. In April we saw West Side Story performed on a stage on Sydney Harbour, with our friends Anne and David from Port Macquarie.

Then we had a family trip away to celebrate my birthday in April.

Family break celebrating my birthday in the Southern Highlands.

Continuing the indulgences with an anniversary get away on the central coast.

Just so happened that Amy and Neil were playing a frisbee tournament nearby.

We got to watch some frisbee but mostly we played with Ruby on the beach.

Vivid is a highlight if you’re ever in Sydney in May. Vivid is an annual festival of light, music and ideas. Our favorite part is the outdoor immersive light installations and projections that adorn Sydney’s famous buildings and landmarks.

Customs House always puts on a good show.

We enjoyed a NSW Explorer Motorhome Rally in the Hunter Valley in June, and then we finished off the trip with a visit to our friends Kevin and Jenny who live in that general area.

It was a chance to catchup with old friends and make some new ones, as well as supporting small towns in the region.

In August we embarked on a trip to Queensland, to celebrate Pamela’s birthday, visit friends and attend a music festival. First stop was Port Macquarie where we caught up with Anne and David. We arrived there late at 7pm and vowed not to drive in the dark again!

After a lunch the next day with Sue and Grae in Macksville and a tour of their ‘almost finished’ new house (we’ve seen the build progress from empty lot stage, so its exciting to see what a great place they have created), we stopped at a park just south of Ballina. We’ve done that trip to Queensland so many times, and we vary from staying at familiar spots to trying new places.

Our second stop on the Queensland trip. A quiet park with almost a fairyland theme.

Again this trip we enjoyed a great visit with our friends Steve and Denise; dinner, ice cream and a nice walk in the morning. Then we stayed with Allan in Mooloolaba and also caught up with Barbara.

The original impetus for our trip was to join in the 80th birthday celebration for Pamela Petty.

In true Pamela style the birthday party lunch in Noosa was held in a very nice restaurant.

After the lunch we headed for the Gympie Music Muster, which is billed as an iconic festival bringing together the best of Aussie country, blues and rock music in a family friendly atmosphere. It is all that and more when you have 55,000 people camping together in a forest and listening to music all day and well into the night for at least four days.

Again we arrived just before dark and were so lucky that our friends, Phil and Sherrol, had saved us a spot. That was not easy to do when 55,000 people were looking for a place to camp.

Our two Explorers together with a bit of room, compared to the masses in the bottom half of this photo.

This was our regular spot on the hill in front of the main stage with Phil and Sherrol. We got our chairs set up early to save our places for the day.

In addition to watching lots of acts, we like to attend the daily uke workshops. The guy running these sessions was great and an excellant teacher.

We take our uke playing seriously and Dick was even doing extra practices between our daily uke sessions.

If anyone is in to country music, you would appreciate that all the big names in country music were there. Over the four days we saw James Blundell, Felicity Urquhart, Beccy Cole, Tex Perkins, Lyn Bowtell, Lee Kernaghan; and Anne and David Kirkpatrick, the daughter and son of Slim Dusty and Joy MacLean, in a tribute session to Slim and Joy; plus lots more acts including our old favorites The Pigs and The Hillbilly Goats.

Unbeknowst to us (or we thought he was joking), our uke session leader had us performing on the big stage on the last day of the festival. So our four days of uke sessions were getting us ready for a performance. It was exciting and scary and certainly added a new dimension to our uke playing and our festival experience. We were treated like real artists, got free artist bottles of water and were taken backstage to the ‘Artists Entrance’.

Here is our big moment. Our friend Sherrol kindly videoed and photographed our big performance.

A night time performance on the big stage.

Attending the Gympie Music Muster was a unique experience and unlike any other festival we have been to. Glad we were there with Phil and Sherrol as at times it felt like we had been transported to a different world, one that was very country and western, and full of tradition as many families had been attending it for years.

Getting 55,000 people out of that camping area in a forest was going to be slow going so we gave ourselves a sleep in and left camp at 1:45pm. After a short drive to Moloolaba, we happily settled in for five night’s at Allan’s place. This gave us a good rest, a chance to get things done with Belle and time to explore places in the area, as well as check out new restaurants and dress shops. We also had a nice catchup lunch with Gordon and Joanne, and another birthday lunch with Pamela. We joined in with Allan and Barbara’s Friday night outing with Gerda. So all in all we had a relaxing and social time in Moloolaba.

Somehow the technology keeps them both interested until it sends them to sleep.

Lots of beautiful places to explore and lots of good walks to do.

Next stop was Teewah Beach, one of Dick’s favorite beach camping spots. Aside from a 3 k walk along the beach amd playing our ukes, we didn’t do much for two days.

A quiet peaceful break, with no internet.

Then we headed to Rainbow Beach, where we had internet and could catch up on mail and news, plus a bit of shopping. Camped on Inskip Point at Sarawak Camp, had a nice walk on the beach and met people to chat with. Before leaving that area we did an interesting walk on the Carlo Sand Blow.

Next stop was a return visit to Hervey Bay as we like the area and there are good places to stay close to the beach. We spent a couple of days there so had time to catchup with a few things, as well as do some whale watching.

An afternoon whale watching trip with the company called WhaleSong. Compared to our last such trip there, and in spite of the calm seas and sunny weather, this trip was disappointing as there wasn’t much to see and we were not very close to the whales.

It was mother and baby time for the whales and we learned that the babies suckle for one year and may be around for 2 years unless the mother has a new calf, and then they are gone. We did see the mum’s teaching the month old babies how to head lunge and tail flap. Humpback whales have had the greatest comeback of all species. At the end of whaling there were about 200 left and now there are more than 45,000 and humpbacks are off the endangered species list.

Ending the cruise – it was a nice time out on the water-what’s not to like!

Leaving Harvey Bay we drove back to Mooloolaba, had a good walk with Barbara, and then dinner out with Barbara and Allan.

Lots of places to explore around Moloolaba. This was a nice walk we did with Barbara around Pt. Cartwright.

The next day we returned to Scarborough, parked at our friends, Steve and Denise’s place (even though they were away). We were up before 6am so we could get to the Explorer factory by 7:23am for our service on Belle. Left there at 3pm and got a good start on the trip home. The next day we managed to drive to our friends’ place in Anna Bay.

Had a good night at Anna Bay with our friends, Kevin and Jenny, and enjoyed a lovely end of day beach walk.

It was a good way to end our Queensland trip – 29 days away and about 3000 kms driven. And then we managed to get home in time for Zoe’s birthday on15 September.

Marking the exact date of my arrival in Australia, 50 years ago, with a nice dinner out.

The ambience and food were appropriate for the momentous occasion (only momentous in my head).

In mid-October we visited our fourth Kangaroo Valley Folk Festival. Its a great little festival, close to home, with lots of our favorite performers and always some interesting new ones like Gladys, A Musical Affair.

This was my favorite performance, certainly worth seeing if you live in NSW and enjoy political satire. Gladys was the former premier of NSW who left office under a cloud. Its a musical comedy and has also been called an affectionate parody.

A Few Good Spooky Men always put on a good show

Lots of variety- from Fred Smith to The Royal High Jinx to The Bushwackers.

Since we don’t need much of an excuse to have a party, and we do like to dress up; to celebrate my 50 Years in Aus we had a party with the theme of Australiana / Green and Gold, and we asked people to dress for the occasion.

My first friend in Aus, Lesley, came from Canada for the party and we had lots of other iconic Aussie characters at the party.

Pamela came down from Queensland for the party, as did Steve and Denise who also went with us to another Explorer Rally, this time in Gunning, NSW. It was a good chance hang out with Steve and Denise and other Explorer friends.

We had enough motorhomes there (about 40) to take over the showground.

We enjoyed a weekend camping at Patonga with Helen and the kids in mid-December.

It was lovely to celebrate a family Christmas.

We finished off the year with Dick’s birthday.

Thus ended an overly long blog that covered from April-December 2024. In spite of not doing much travelling, I struggled to find time to do the blog. Started working on this in May 2025 and finished in August 2025. Will try to do better…………….

Northern Tasmania and then home

Posted on 09/10/2024 by patevans

This post covers our Tasmanian travels from the 15th of March until we returned home on the 28th of March. For some reason its been a challenge finishing the posts for this trip. I guess we were too busy to write anything while we were on the trip.

Afterr leaving St Helens, we headed to Ben Lomond National Park (NP) just so we could drive up and down Jacobs Ladder. Of course there is more to see in the park, which is effectively a mountain island set in a sea of agricultural and forested lowlands. It is a 1500 m high plateau with distinctive alpine moorland plus vast screes and boulder fields of dolerite, which were created during recent ice ages. The park plays an invaluable role in regional flora and fauna conservation.

Jacobs Ladder is one of Australia’s most photographed roads. The zigzag mountain road is made up of six hairpin turns that head straight to the area’s alpine plateau.

The alpine moorland is home to over 200 different plant species and an abundance of Bennett’s wallabies, wombats, pademelons, Forester kangaroos, eastern quolls, echidnas and platypus. We saw a few kangaroo-like animals but not sure which ones we saw. As we approached Jacobs Ladder, it doesn’t look like such an adventurous drive, but we had seen photos and videos from others so we knew what to expect

As we climbed the Ben Lomond Summit Track, we enjoyed great vistas of the alpine plateau.

From here we entered the Great Western Tiers, the name of a popular touring region and a collection of World Heritage listed mountain bluffs that form the northern edge of the Tasmanian Central Highlands plateau. The Tiers stretch northwest to southeast over 100 kilometres and are places of diverse beauty with spectacular natural features, history and heritage and amazing geological features. The region is in the Meander Valley and boasts a rich heritage, amazing arts and crafts, gourmet food, wilderness and adventure. We had no idea how varied and interesting this area would be as we could have used more time here. However we did manage to see a lot of the highlights.

Our first day in the Great Western Tiers turned out to be a mega day with heaps of variety; scenic drives, amazing silk artwork, extensive museum, lunch with Explorer friends, Marg and Paul, hiking at Liffey Falls, and seeing pencil pines at Pine Lake.

First stop was Deloraine, which had a great Visitor Centre that housed an excellent museum and this amazing artwork, Yarns Artwork in Silk. This large scale textile project consists of four large quilted soft sculpture silk panels, one for each season, depicting the landscapes, culture, local characters and different stages of the Meander River. Very beautiful.

The history of the artwork is a good story about community and craft that started in the early 1990’s. If those areas don’t interest you, you might want to skip this paragraph. A retired farmer got inspired by a theatre curtain he saw in Griffith, NSW so he got a group together to work on a textile artwork project. Eventually over 300 volunteers were involved in the project. They cobbled together funding from various places and had community involvement in the designs, coordination and production of the artwork. Techniques were developed to enlarge the designs, dye the silk and incorporate various materials and embroidery styles to complete the four panels, which depict the flora and fauna and post-colonial settlement of the region. It is estimated that it took some 10,000 hours to complete, over 200 square metres of silk, plus tulle, wool, cotton, velvet, lace and enough thread to circle the world several times. Craft techniques used included crochet, applique, patchwork, quilting, spinning, weaving, beading, rouche, tufting, embroidery, silk painting and dyeing. Certainly worth visiting if you are ever in Deloraine.

It was a one hr return hike through towering eucalypts, myrtles and massive tree ferns to Liffey Falls. A pleasant walk and nice falls,

Our next stop was Pine Lake where we got to see one of Tasmania’s rarest trees, the pencil pine (Athrotaxis cupressoides). They are the dominant trees at Pine Lake and one of the most frost-resistant trees in Australia. You will notice that the leaves are reduced to small scales which wrap tightly around the branchlets. This reduces heat and moisture loss, which enables pencil pines to survive in a climate which would kill most other trees. It probably helped them survive during the last ice age. The altitude here is 1200 meters so we were lucky to be there in summer.

I thought this sign gave an interesting perspective on the history of these pencil pines which are found only in Tasmania but they belong to the same family as the tallest tree in the world, the giant California Sequia. They have their origins on the southern continent of Gondwana and are among the great survivors of aeons of ravaging change. They can reach ages in excess of 1200 years.

An easy walk on the boardwalk took us through the alpine landscape of small mountain lakes, pencil pines, cushion plants and pineapple grass to Pine Lake. Despite their ancient origins and having survived several ice ages Pencil Pines are now in a very vulnerable position. They are extremely fire-sensitive and large numbers have been killed by past burning practices and escaped campfires. They are, therefore, vulnerable even in protected areas such as national parks, and their white ‘skeletons’ are an eerie reminder for us to take care with fire. It felt like a special place to visit and we were the only ones there at the end of the day.

Our free camp at the end of day was just a pull off at the side of the road with an impressive view and lovely sunset. One of the benefits of being self contained.

The first stop on the 17th of March was the Alum Cliffs/Tulampanga (a sacred celebration place which means ‘red ochre hill’). This country was very spiritual and sacred to the Pallittorree Peoples. The ochre from this place was held in high regard and was traded with other tribes. Only the Pallittorree women were allowed to dig or gather the ochre from the hillside – men were not allowed in this domain. After the women had gathered their ochre, they would proceed down to the open plains and corroboree grounds (now Den Plains) where a range of busy activity would take place. Women, men and children would paint themselves, creating ochred hairstyles and painted body designs to dance into the night. The limestone from which these caves have developed was formed about 450 million years ago. At that time, Tasmania was part of the supercontinent Gondwana and lay close to the Equator.

KING SOLOMONS CAVE – where we did a one hour tour and enjoyed the views and the story of the cave. The cave is regarded as a relatively ‘dry’ cave as it has no stream flowing through it. A stream has previously flowed through the cave but this has long since cut deeper into the limestone and abandoned King Solomons Cave. While the stream was important in the corrosion of the limestone and the formation of the cave, its abandonment of King Solomons has meant the development of a stable environment that has allowed spectacular stalagmites and other formations to form. King Solomons Cave is part of an extensive “karst’* landscape, which contains over 200 caves, in the Mole Creek area.

At the end of the day we tackled the 40 minute return hike to the stunning Devils Gullet Lookout. Again we had the place to ourselves.

From the lookout we could see Cradle Mtn and Mt Ossa, the highest peak in Tasmania. We had end of day sun which has good and bad points. The Central Plateau we can see was formed over 200 million years ago and it has been glaciated (covered by ice) at least 5 or 6 times over the last 2 million years. The last ice age reached its peak on the plateau about 20,000 years ago. Not surprisingly over 4000 lakes lie on the surface of the plateau.

We got a bit dizzy looking down from that cantilevered platform amd I still get that feeling from the photo. Its about 220 metres high.

For a change we stayed in the Mole Creek caravan park, and we’re glad we did. In the morning we saw this platypus swimming in the creek next to our campsite. Always great to see platypus in the wild.

Our next stop was Sheffield, the town of murals, where we spent an interesting few hours. We visited the Visitor Info Centre, a large gallery and we walked all around the town viewing the murals.

In 1986 a group of locals decided to make their town become an outdoor art gallery to save the town from economic hardship. That worked well! With over 100 pieces of outdoor artwork on display on the town buildings, Sheffield is now known around the world as ‘The Town of Murals’.

This mural really impressed me as it is a moving tribute to the local GP who served the municipality for 30 years (1946-1976). Underneath the picture is a description of the role he served in his community as follows:. “A huge practice for one man and he did the lot! For over thirty years ‘Doc’ Sender was on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, many specialists rolled into one, even a vet on occasion, at times dental assistant to his wife, June. Dedicated, skilled, determined and without fuss. No medical challenge was too much for him to tackle. No nurse! No Secretary! No appointments! 2 sessions a day at the Sheffield surgery. Once a week at Railton, once a fortnight at Wilmot. One weekly surgical session– Latrobe Hospital. Daily house calls after hours all over the district. Accidents and emergencies all over the district.” It was kind of special to see that GP acknowledged so publicly.

After being so impressed with Sheffield, we were very disappointed with Railton, Town of Topiary. That name is misleading and should be called false advertising as we only saw 3 or 4 topiary characters in good shape and we could hardly find any. We must have missed the heyday.

Our home for the next three nights was Narawntapu NP. It used to be known as Asbestos Range NP, so no wonder they changed the name. Actually it was the first NP in Tasmania to revert to an aboriginal name. We camped in Koybaa, one of four campsites there and just 100 m from the beach. We finished our day with a sunset walk along the beach.

We decided to do the main walk in the park, up to Archers Knob. It was a great hike via a well-constructed zig-zag track, up 114 m high to the top. There were lots of pademelons, bennetts wallabies and forester kangaroos and it was almost like we saw something around every corner.

Panoramic views of Bakers Beach, the Springlawn lagoon (paperbark swamp) and Port Sorrel estuary greeted us at the top of Archers Knob.

We did do the last 2.5k’s in the rain; so out of 8 k’s that wasn’t so bad. We had rain coats and managed ok. Here we could see the rain and storm coming at us from both directions.

We scored some nice sunset colors after that rain in the afternoon.

After a lazy day we had a final beach walk on a windy and beautiful Bakers Beach, before having final drinks with Steve and Denise who joined us for one last camp.

This is our view of Devenport harbour from the ferry as we leave Tasmania on the 22nd of March. It was an early start for us to get the 8:30am ferry, but we made it and had a relaxing and calm daytime crossing in our booked recliner seats in a very quiet room.

Some final impressions of Tasmania – herds of cows, very windy roads (mostly driven by Dick which I appreciated), beautiful sunny days, stunning beaches, farmlands, forests, dramatic mountains, great walks and waterfalls.

BACK ON THE MAINLAND – we had a very social time in Melbourne, visiting Stephanie and Ron for a couple of days, enjoying a delicious lunch at Elizabeth’s with her and Sal, and catching up with Margaret over coffee.

In Melbourne we had a nice visit with Stephanie and Ron, and slept in Belle on the street and used the pool and spa room in their building as our ensuite. It worked well!

Our first stop out of Melbourne was Golden Beach (C-9) which is on 90 mile beach, part of the East Gippsland coastline and an area we had not visited before.

The Trinculo was an iron sailing barque which was driven ashore in 1879. This 90 mile beach has always been challenging for sailors as the long sweeping expanse of beach means there is no where to escape when an onshore gale is blowing. We finished our day with a nice walk along this beautiful beach.

After a stop in Sale we drove to Cann River and camped in a free camp along the river. The area used to be a caravan park and is now run by the Council as a free camp, probably to help the small number of businesses in the town. We didn’t contribute to the town as we ate in Belle.

We were having such a nice time we decided to have one last stop on the drive home. After having lunch at the Bega Cheese Factory, we stayed at Pretty Beach, in a great National Park campground. We had time to do a 3 km walk and explore along the beach.

This is a classic NSW south coast scene, kangaroos by the beach.

On the 28th of March we arrived home, 45 days after we left home on the 13th of February. It was a good trip and I was surprised at how much there was to see in Tasmania, especially since we have had 4 trips there since 2010, and numerous other trips before then.

This map, courtesy of **whereUbeen**, Dick’s travel app, covers the route of this final Tasmanian blog post.

This map covers our complete Tasmanian trip, from the 13/2/24 – 28/3/24. 5100 kms travelled over 45 days AND WE SAW HEAPS!!!!!

Just for our interest, we check out our statistics on the kind of camps we stay at. Here are the results for this trip. Interesting to note that over 40% were free camps and even some of the National Parks were also free, plus our driveway/street camps were free. Without trying we had about 50% free camps and if we’d wanted to, it would not be too hard to increase that number of free camps.

This marks the end of our 2024 Tasmanian trip posting (and it only took me 6 months to get it out).