Thursday 03 March 2011 - Maleny Queensland

Spent the last few days travelling back & forth between Maleny & various other places, looking at caravans, & deciding whether to buy the very nice Toyota Landcruiser son Trevor lined up for us.  Things are so different here as far as registration etc go, so Stu has taken out Queensland driver's license to make it easier ($30)  Decided last night to take the Landcruiser, and has also opted for a brand new caravan as anything we saw secondhand was either not what we wanted, or so little difference in price to the new.  It is a 21' Voyager Marlin, queen island bed, beautiful ensuite bathroom, club lounge/dinette & the usual kitchen things including microwave but no oven.  Good excuse not to bake.  One disadvantage is that we now have to start from scratch to fit it out, so lots of lists & visits to cheapie shops for crockery, cutlery, linen etc.  Now that we have our own vehicle that will be so much easier as we have had a little old one of Trevor's for a few days which naturally we were very grateful for. We pick up the caravan tomorrow, so Stu has spent most of the morning on the phone insuring everything.  We are so lucky to have Trevor to direct us in all these things & lucky to have an address in Queensland as it is all much harder without one.  It's been very hot & humid of course, one lot of heavy rain early one morning, but that's not unusual this summer & the ground is constantly wet.  We are woken early each morning by all those noisy Aussie birds, like kookaburras, whip birds, cockatoos, rosellas, & the noisiest of all, a wild guinea fowl.  In the evening, just as it begins to darken, we have 100's & 100's of bats fly over, heading for some poor person's fruit orchard to gorge themselves for the night.  Stu & I thought they were birds.  This morning I had the first experience of an aussie spider, a huntsman a little smaller than my fist which was in the house.  Little Tynan (4)  informed me I could touch it if I wanted - what!!!  I tried to take a photo but it was whipped away in a jar & deposited in the garden, in which I will now be more observant in case I tread on one.  Obviously they do not harm you???   We are collecting the van tomorrow, & will take it to a caravan park nearer the shopping areas so that we can get fitted out with all the essentials & get the feel of it, then hope to be on the road by Monday 7th.   Look out Austalia!.  Be glad when all the bureaucracy is completed - the theory that everything is much the same here as in NZ is a myth, especially as each state is different.  Oh well, we'll get used to it.