It's About The Journey

We heard once that transitions in life can be made easier by recognising that one door needs to close before a new door can be opened…well, certainly a door shut for us out there on the Nullarbor. After leaving Perth behind, sure enough, a few days went by before another opened on Perlubie Beach, near Streaky Bay…we are now intrigued about what our future holds with a lot less anxiety about everything…

Camping for us has always been about getting away from everyone and everything but we’ve now realised if we open our minds a little, including connecting with strangers, our experience is so much richer – Perlubie Beach will always be a special place in our lives, shared with a wonderful couple from Shepparton, who became surrogate grandparents for the week – Zeke was fixed on catching them a King George Whiting for their dinner (didn’t happen) – together with an amazingly awesome and legendary local farming family…such generosity, giving us delicious meat, inviting us back to their farm for a very welcome hot shower after a stormy night, trips to collect the eggs, pick fresh tomatoes, feed the chooks, and help fix farm stuff… all a wonderful story that we won’t forget.

Oh, the places you’ll go! There is fun to be done!

• Swimming with dolphins and seals in Baird Bay, looking them in the eye in the water was simply magical, seeing them looking Zekie in the eye, even better!
• Picnic lunches under granite overhangs at Point Sir Isaac and thirsty bees in our camp at Black Springs, Coffin Bay
• A sleeping pod of about 20 dolphins south of Arno Bay on a scenic (breath-taking) 4wd drive after advice from a top local
• A willy wag tail alerting us to an eastern brown snake heading straight towards Zeke and Lani sleeping in our tent at Arno Bay Caravan Park – he was looking for water and stopped to have a poo before Kevin from Queensland picked him up by the tail and walked him 200m up the beach to let him go

From all this, into (R)Adelaide for Miss Lani’s fifth birthday treat in Glenelg, to a ferry across to the incredible Kangaroo Island.  A microcosm of Australia – sheep farmers and ‘real’ Aussie animals everywhere (echidnas, koalas, possums, wallabies, emus, leaping fur seals and a big daddy boxing kangaroo). Put all this with an incredible beach to ourselves at Antechamber Bay, holding owls and snakes at Raptor Domain and family hiking to have breakfast on a beach overlooking the wild Southern Ocean – all this only a couple hours from Adelaide (via McLaren Vale, mind you!).

Back to Adelaide for some car repairs, epic family bike rides (and stacks), new books and body art, plus some settling into school work.

The next door is ajar and our hands are pushing it open…

 

 

We left Perth on Friday 22nd December 2017 for a gorgeous Christmas with family at the Shack. Heading east just before New Year:

We have camped at ruins, on beaches, in the bush and in the desert. We have slept on cliff tops at the edge of the country and we have seen skies we could never imagine…

We have seen sunrises, sunsets and super moons from places we never dreamed existed…. explored caves and spent long mornings soaking in nature’s stunning playgrounds.

We have been bitten by flies, mozzies, midgies and ants, we have had spiders in our bed and nearly tripped over an eastern brown snake.

We have seen kangaroos, emus, bustards, lizards, swam with stingrays and spotted large sharks patrolling the Great Australian Bight.

We have been bitterly cold and ridiculously hot.

We have made weapons (lots of weapons), learnt how to do sudokus, learnt to read and to ride without training wheels.

We have cried tears of happiness and joy, as well as pain and anger (mostly Lani).

We have nightly first aid sessions (operations) to fix the day’s injuries and we keep running out of bandaids. Lani has been told we are going to start charging her for bandaids. She thinks we’re kidding…

We have created and eaten some incredibly delicious gourmet meals, and we have had vegemite sandwiches for breakfast and 2 minute noodles for dinner (although not on the same day, Jules). One of us may have also eaten so many oysters that it might have caused a little accident the following day….

We have broken stuff (quite a lot of stuff actually), seriously dented our car to the point that we needed to use a hammer and a screwdriver to open the passenger door, broken more stuff trying to fix stuff and have even managed to fix some stuff, much to our delight.

We have listened to Danika’s party mix from the early 2000’s… for 3 straight days…. along with Snugglepot and Cuddlepie audiobook.

We don’t know where we are going – even with three GPS’ and a map – or what we are doing when we get there. We have no plan beyond what to eat next…

It’s so much more than we even hoped it would be and we are only just getting started.

We have never laughed or loved so much.

Here are a few pics of the journey so far.

 

On a three week camping adventure across the vast Nullarbor Plain region of Western Australia in July 2016, a plan was hatched. ‘This is incredible, what if we just didn’t go back?’ And so the seed was planted. It would take 18 months for the plan to come together, but come December 2017, The Masters Clan are off on our greatest family adventure to date – 12 months exploring the most remote and spectacular regions this incredible country has to offer. This is our story.