November, English.

I know it has been already more than a month since the last post on the blog. This is not because we‘ve got nothing to tell you, but we been so busy celebrating our holiday. Yesterday I discovered that we just past the 210 day mark of touring around oz.

At the moment we are at the “Gold Coast” just a bit short (100km) of Brissie.

How did we get there?

After the Nullarbor we drove to friends, Lynn & John, in Mildura. We stayed there a couple of days to do some needy repairs on the van (burglar attempt at Norseman). The car a big service, 11.000km, and the replacement of a wheel bearing, which had some play already for a while.

Get some of our clothes washed because we did not do any since we left Fremantle to head for the big cross over.

Besides, it was nice to catch up with Lynn & John and we spent some wonderful time together till in the early morning hours. Talking eating and drinking.

And don’t forget, we got to sleep in a bed and had a shower and a bathroom next to it.

While we were in the area, we drove 400km towards the coast to Bendigo to visit a friend (Ben’s) who became a friend during the last years while ordering singles for the jukebox. Due to regular contact it became both our wish to meet up in live as soon as it was possible. One of the reasons is that we both speak English, German and Serbian and this give a special bond. We can easily say, the trip was worth it. Ivan & Joanne is such a lovely couple to be with and they made us promise to stop over again when we do our trip to Alice next year. For now we spent a very warmly afternoon and evening together before we drove back to the nice and quiet bush camping 12 km outside the town.

The next morning back on the road again towards Sydney because we have a date with Neil Diamond we would not like to miss out on. Just after the start we decided to do some shopping along the Hwy at a big shopping centre. Much to our surprise the navigation took us across through the town to a shopping mall. It was small but nice and the iced coffee and coffee was very nice and we found fresh bread. So we were pretty happy anyway.

After a trip of about 400km through mountains with steep climbs and decent we arrived shortly before five o’clock at the base of the Snowy Mountains at a lovely and very beautiful lush camping called Colac Colac just short of Corryong. This all, with a bleu ski without a cloud and a balmy 30 degrees. To our surprise we had very good tele reception and the weather forecast showed us that a bad system was moving up our way towards the Snowy area. Predicted was a lot of rain and temperature dropping till below zero in the high area. I have to say that I do like a challenge but driving with a caravan in the Snowy with heavy wind, rain and snow without snow chains is not one of them. So instead of hanging around and in the mountains we diverted our plans and decided to move on the following day to reach Cooma before the rains. In the morning while we were packing in we got talking to a Dutch couple (Ivan & Tamara) which were traveling in a small van as we did in 2010. So after ten we left the campsite and I even forgot to take the tap connection of the tap. We just had to stop over in Corryong and had to drink an iced / coffee there. Across the road we found a resell shop with a lot of 50/60 stuff for such a low price I could fill a container with it to send back home.

About twelve o’clock we hit the road again, but after a short distance Els noticed a sign along the road that stated you could not travel with a caravan through the Snowy on this road. Back we went to the info Centre, to get more information about this sign. No problem at all it is for the road to Tredbo and back and we were not planning to take that road anyhow. The road was very small and winding and the surface in most places was very ruff with steep hills and tight corners and lovely hairpins to drive. But there was not much traffic on the road so we cruised with an average between 40 and 60 km to finish the trip to Cooma without any problems. We did see a heavy motor accident along the road. In a corner he must have missed the bend and the motor was still standing up in the bush about 3 meter of the road but the driver must have been further on in the bush. Help was already provided so we moved on. Later on we encountered a fast traveling police car and ambulance came towards us and a bit later a police helicopter and ambulance followed as well.

The planning was that we visited Case and Ann before we went to see the show of Neil Diamond, but on our second day in Cooma we got news that Case got into the hospital in Canberra. So we visited him there. He was feeling better already and it was good to meet up with him and Ann again. Luckily I am back on well-known area and it is easy driving for me without the van behind us.

When we drove up tow Cooma I did see the wrecking yard was still there like in the old days so I paid $10,00 to visit this icon with more than 4000 cars from way back 1930 till 1970. After this visit I realized that October is finished now as well today.

Driving away from Cooma I realized that it was our wedding day so somehow I had plan something. So I stopped over at a motel in Bermagui and even dough the weather has changed completely we walked in the evening to the warf and dined at a very special Italian restaurant to celebrate. I must say that all the help I got from the motel owner made it easy to. He let us park the van next to our room, took care of the power and advised me for dinner.

The fact that cousin Case will still be spending time with the nurses and doctors we took up the invitation from Chris and Jeanne to spend some time with them at Westwinds before moving on towards Sydney. To get to Milton we have to drive over mountains again and to avoid the long dirt road to their house we have to take the last street in town. Of course our navigation was telling me to take a different route and I had to ignore her. Just when we drove out of the village I thought I saw the last road to turn in to. It was an uphill dead end road and I could barely do an Uwee , but getting back on the Hwy was something ells. From the left traffic was coming down the hill without proper sight to see them, from the right the traffic started to speed up coming out of the town. In front of me a deep ditch to cross while where still parked on a hill. After waiting and looking for a while without any use I let out a curse and a deep sight I flattened the gas pedal and crossed the road. All went well and sometime later on we drove over the muddy road towards Westwinds.

We received a warm welcome from Tony and Ucki and later on from Chris and Jeanne.

Here we spent a couple of relaxed, fun filled days in comfort with lots of laughter, food and drinks.

From Westwinds, we moved on towards Sydney with a funny felling in our tommy’s because it the 9 of November toady. One feeling is the drive across the busy traffic through Sydney to get on time to our pre booked campsite “Lane Cove River”. The second feeling comes from the fact that after all this time we are going to the concert of Neil Diamond tonight.

Looking back the drive was pretty easy to do and we got to our destination without any problem on time to set up everything before Ucki & Tony arrived to pick us up to go to the Olympic area.

The concert was fantastic, almost lasted three hours nonstop, with music from his complete repertoire and all the years. With such a powerful voice, like a young guy in his 30^th instead of a senior of 73 years old. One of the top moments was when he sat down on stage and did the longest version of “Brooklyn Road” with behind him the ( out of the private collection) super8 movies and photos of that period to complete the picture. He also sang some of his songs of his new album and there you can see what kind of big artist he is, there is no different between life of the cd.

Ucki arranged a VIP ticked for us, and we received a bag full of goodies when entered, in the bag was a book which had a cd inside as bonus. Last year there was a story about Neil that he did a unexpected life show at his old high school in Brooklyn. This bonus cd is the life performance from that show. We are so happy with this.

From Sydney we moved on to New Castle, to park our van from Ucki, (Robbin & Stephan) to camp there a couple of days. This would be the home base to do our next concert. This lovely couple took care of us like family, thanks guys!!!

From here we went all together to the show of Fleetwood Mac in Hunter valley. We got very seats straight in front of the stage on the hill. This is another event we want forget. Here are a bunch of guys between 64 and 76 years young rocking and singing as a couple of young gods. The only different is that they changed singers regularly. In short an unforgettable event on this unforgettable trip around oz.

Just a couple of weeks ago, we were traveling in the dry warmth of WA and SA now we are on the road to Brissie to attend to the party of Eddy and Susan. They are already celebrating their 50 wedding anniversary and Susan turns 70.

But like usual we stop along the road at campsites, this time at Port Maquari and already during the build up a woman approached us about all the stickers on the back of our van and the one which really did something was the one from Broken Hill. She came from there. Before we knew it we got invited to spend some time with them at their BBQ. To make it easy for us, all the guys where called John. Together with them and Fran and Joanne we talked drank and finished of the BBQ till ten o’clock at night, beside that we got a new friends to visit when we get close to where they live. The list is growing and growing.

The next stop is Coffs Harbour and after setting up the van for the night we found out that just 500 meters away the daughter of David and Thea lives there (Allison and Chris). Of course we visited them in the afternoon and the next day we spent time there having a lovely BBQ with them and the parents of Christopher. In the mean time we went to the beach, climb the cliff and looked at the beautiful crystal clear water of the Pacific Ocean.

We are sorry to leave this nice area but we are still on the move to go to Brisbane. We like get to Ashmore, Hans and Nelly, and this is about 100km before Brisbane. They live in a nice area in the Domain. We stay at first one night with them and I have to drive backwards up hill to park the caravan just around the corner next to their home. Next day we move on for 4 days to Surfers Paradise, between nice old gumtrees and close to the beaches and shopping malls. On Saturday afternoon we drove to Brisbane city where we picked up Hans and Nelly, so with the four of us we went to the party of Eddy and Susan in Carseldine.

We got there close to vive o’clock and the house was filled with a lot of familiar faces and Eddy and Susan enjoyed every minute. Even dough Eddy wasn’t feeling to well he was pretty happy with the big turn up and all of his friends and family around the both of them. It became a nice and lively party with nice people, good food and drinks and a lot of joy. Everything went well and by early morning we were back at our caravan at the campsite.

The sad thing is that Eddy’s health deteriorated fast and by Thursday he passed away in the hospital. His funeral will be on the 4^th of December, which we shall attend. Before that I will try to get the blog up dated to let the world see what we been up to the last month.

After the 4^th we will start moving on again, slowly towards the ACT.

A bit of a different story than usual, but hopefully it shows what we been doing so far.

Till the next time, dear followers.

The Downunders.