Reflections on Kinka Beach, Yeppoon

Our first week of camping was a steep learning curve. One of the challenges was getting Grace to have a bath. Who would have thought it would have been so difficult?

The baby bath at Island View Caravan Park, Kinka Beach is designed with child safety in mind. It is small - only big enough for babies under about two years of age. Even then, it would be a cosy bath and not much room for toys. The tap is fitted with some kind of spray device which, I assume, is to stop you from burning the child. You could sit your child under that spray and give them some kind of luke warm shower, but I know that Grace, for one, was scared of it. I'd
hate to try and poke her head or her legs under it. Instead, I had to wait at least 15 minutes while this incredibly slow and cool water eventually filled the tub. Meanwhile, I had to chase Grace around the counter and the womens amenities which is exhausting. When it was
finally full enough for a small bath, she refused to get in so I just wiped her down with a washer.

The next day I decided to take buckets of warm water to give me a head start. I needn't have bothered as she refused to hop in any way. I was frustrated and didn't know what to do about it.

I obviously expected every caravan park to have a different type of bath for babies and children. I didn't expect Grace to refuse to hop into any bath that wasn't the one she'd been in all her life,... including those at her Nanna's and Aunty Laurel's houses. After trying several methods: - standing beside the bath and having a splash, standing in the bath and having a splash, and chucking such a tanty that I gave her a sponge bath in the van, I eventually decided it would be easiest for all involved if I took her into the shower with me.

It's been a learning process. Even the way I dry myself and keep a naked sopping wet toddler within the confines of a shower cubicle has been a new challenge. I have decided to buy a hooded poncho-style towel to throw over her when she comes out of the shower and a toweling robe for me. I wash her while holding her on my hip, then we both return to the van to get dried and dressed. I don't actually get a chance to wash myself when I'm in the shower with her. I still have to go back later and have my own shower. [sigh] I know it sounds like an ordeal, but it is less of an ordeal than trying to get her to sit in strange baths when she really doesn't want to.

Sometimes it's hard to keep my chin up about this trip, sometimes it's easy. All I know is that if God wants us to do this, He'll contend with all the challenges on our behalf.

Amen.

Nap time at Kinka Beach, Queensland

Hey there,

Grace is having her morning nap so I thought I'd take the opportunity to fill you in on my side of the story so far. Last week was one of the most tiring and confusing and crazy weeks I've ever had. I know moving is hard, but throw a toddler and an extremely tight budget into the mix and you have a recipe for something that's going to hurt the morning after. [sigh]

Scott explained the dramas we faced with our journey here,... I think it took all three of us until yesterday to recover from the road trip. 750kms in one hit is way too far when towing a van. It was an ordeal and even though Grace was so well-behaved, it was still a painful trip. I decided to have a go at towing the van and so we swapped over just outside of Gin Gin. Inadvertently, I hopped behind the wheel just prior to the commencement of a 10 kilometer stretch of extremely windy road. We swapped back about 1 kilometer into the windy section after I had caused the van to wobble all over the road and given myself a fright. What I needed was a nice calm stretch of straight road for my first towing experience. Yes, I'm shaken.

Staying at Kinka Beach has been lovely. The breezes coming straight off the sea keep us cool, but the humidity is still high so I am sticky and sweaty and urk. I'm glad we're going south after Christmas. Neither of us cope well with the heat.

There's plenty more to say but we're going out in five minutes for lunch at the club with our relies, so we'll talk to you later.

Byeeeeeee.

Test Run In Progress

Well we have been here in sunny Yeppoon since Saturday - sorry for the lack of updates so far but it's been hectic one way and another. We have had a few trials and tribulations, but the majority of these have been inexperience and/or lack of knowledge, both of which (thankfully) should be relatively easily overcome.

Our trip up was good but we were both surprised about how much work towing a caravan is. By that I mean the need for supreme smoothness around the corners, and the need to stay right in the middle of your lane at all times (the van is a good 2 feet wider than the car!). The smooth cornering was the one that caught us out a few times - if you're jerky in your cornering, the van tends to slop side to side until it either corrects itself (which it does most of the time within 10-15 seconds) or you straighten it up using your manual-override on the electric brakes. The feeling of 1700kg trying to pull the back end of your car to the left, then right, then left, then right etc is NOT pleasant. The brakes are great on the van though, and hitting the override almost pulls the van straight. Very impressive. Also worth a mention is the fantastic weight distribution hitch we're running - it turns the (understandably) saggy rear end of our Commodore (understandable when loaded with a big caravan on it, atleast...) into a beautifully level towing machine. Very sweet.

The trip up took a long time - 11 hours in total, which is excessive for 650km! We were stopped for 1.5-2 hours waiting for an accident to get cleared just outside Miriam Vale - this crash served as a good reminder not to overtake when a semi trailer is coming head on. We also stopped for about 2 or 2.5 hours in total for breaks, and otherwise sat on between 90 and 95km/h which is a good speed without being crazy. I was very concerned at the first petrol stop to find a thin film of oil smeared across the front of our brand new bright white caravan. This car has to do us for a LOT of miles, so we really need to fix this! It looks like the guys who serviced our car a week or so ago have over filled the oil, which I am reliably informed can cause this kind of oily exhaust behaviour. I hope this is the case, and there's not something else happening. K-Mart Tyre & Auto (Rockhampton) are looking at it tomorrow, in order to hopefully fix their Brisbane counterparts' errors without much effort and/or cost.

I had considerable trouble putting the annex up when we got here, and to be frank I made a mess of it in a lot of ways (mental note - align sail track on rear end of annex - NOT rear awning pole - to rear of concrete slab). But it's up, and stopped us getting wet on Saturday evening when we got a reasonable sized storm. Nothing got wet, so it can't be THAT bad I guess :) Still, I have learned a lot and next time will be much better. I refuse to redo the whole thing (which is what it really needs) because it flaps in the breeze a bit - sounds like too much like hard work for little reward. It might be sub-optimal, but it works fine enough for now. Next time will be better.

Grace has been unsettled since the travel the other day, I think she's out of kilter with her routine quite a bit. She is often quite grisly, but once she gets used to her new home she should be right we hope. She's sleeping as I type this about 2 feet away from me. Cute little thing she is. It's so difficult - all she wants to do is run around and explore, but the place being as it is, you need to keep her in check at all times - she is literally into everything!!

We're staying at a place called Kinka Beach, which is about 10km south of Yeppoon. It offers nice views of Great Keppel and surrounding islands, and a beautiful bay which is a beautiful turquoise colour. The van park is directly across from the beach, so we get nice sea breezes and sea noises.

We visited my Aunty Mavis & Uncle Ron yesterday, it was great to see them again. They don't change much. My Aunty Mav is special, she was always like a second mum to me, she's a real peach. Looking forward to catching up with them again a couple more times before we leave on Saturday.

Our plan at this stage is to go back to Brisbane on the 23rd, spend Christmas and New Year with Anna's and my families, and head off to NSW early in the new year.

On The Road...

Well the last few days have been some of the most hectic in living memory for us,it has to be said. Our house went unconditional on Monday, which is fortuitous, since we were moving out on Tuesday whetehr it went through or not!

We have spent the last while madly packing all our gear up into boxes, moving it to my brother's place (for storage in a spanking new shed), and cleaning up our old house. This sounds easy but has proved to be anything but... We have been helped unbelievably by our families (you guys rock!). They have been awesome. There is no way we would be anywhere near finished without them..

Today we handed the keys over to the real estate agent, so we are officially homeless now, and it feels great :) We have spent the last couple of nights in the caravan in my brother's front yard, and leave at 3am tomorrow for a week at Yeppoon.

Sorry for the brief entry but I am very tired, and need to get up early to drive. More soon.

Last drinks at Scott's bar,...

We have been talking about this since mid-July and now the time has finally arrived. The caravan has been delivered. The moving van is cued for tomorrow morning. Our house is a mess of half-packed boxes,... yes, it sounds like time.

On Saturday night we celebrated our last party at Scott's gaping timber slab of a bar. There was beer, dancing, food and violent piniata bashing until we all fizzled out and went to bed. [sigh] It's the end of an era. Not only is it our last bash behind the bar, but once again, we are walking out of our friends' lives for an extended period of time. It feels like when we moved to Melbourne. Good times were had, but now it's time to go. Time for us to move on to a new adventure,... this time with a gorgeous little girl in tow.

Conversations have moved on to what we might do on our trip and where we might go. We're considering travelling north to Townsville, then west to Darwin via Tennant Creek. Then, we'd go around the West Australian coastline down to Perth before doing the Nullabor Plain and you get the picture. Anti-clockwise around the continent.

I'm not completely at peace with the idea. There are issues. What happens when you take a toddler across the Nullabor? How many times do you have to press replay on the Wiggles DVD in the back before she cracks it and won't sit still any more? What would happen if our car broke down on a deserted piece of road that is only driven on once a week? Frankly, I don't want to think about it too much. It freaks me out and I don't want to be afraid. This trip is supposed to be a pleasant adventure, not a terrifying one.

[sigh] It's probably the exhaustion talking,.... We're tired. We're cranky. We've packed 50 boxes too many today and I never want to see another roll of packing tape ever again! I'm too tired to even be particularly nostalgic about the end of the era thing,... but think about this - while living in this house (ie. in the past four years) we became puppy parents, I started uni at QUT, I went through IVF and Ovarian Hyper Stimulation Syndrome and spent a week in hospital with that, and we finally became parents after eight years of trying. We have seen Grace grow from a 7 cell embryo to a climbing dancing chattering 16-month old blessing.

There is only one technicality about us leaving our old house - the contract is not due to go unconditional until tomorrow. We're still holding our breath but we're not letting it stop our trip to Yeppoon. Soldier on.