Tag: Australia

NSW, The Characters You Meet6 Comments

Loose Ends

Itching for Hitching

It’s 2014 and we are camped in the Coopernook State Forest in NSW. We chat with our neighbour who is from nearby Port Macquarie. Our neighbour and his wife have sold their house and have several months to wait for the new one to be built. They intend to go north in their camper trailer but have a few loose ends to tie up before they hit the road. Thus here they are 70 kilometres south of home waiting. One of the loose ends is our neighbour’s dying mother in law. Continue reading Loose Ends

WA, Why Caravanning9 Comments

Different Lifestyles

Itching for Hitching

We have new neighbours. The couple on our right are from NSW and have stayed here in Broome fifteen times, I think they like it. And they’ve just sold their house to go on the road permanently. On our left is a couple from South Australia. He’s a retired maintenance man and she was a house mother in a boarding school. They do short term postings at caravan parks and farms, they were even rat catchers on a pig farm. They’re on their way to take up a posting at a cattle station that is run by the Indigenous Land … Continue reading Different Lifestyles

NSW, The Pubs4 Comments

A Top Pub

Itching for Hitching

A cold wet and wintry afternoon is saved by an exceptional dinner at The Top Pub in Uralla, NSW. Like Country Life magazine, an elegant dining room warmed by an open fire, good wine, good food and that reserved New England feel. The kitchen has obviously been outsourced to a good chef and Woody complains that he must pay for the meal at one window and the drinks at the bar. The polite and efficient waitress agrees with “Yeah, it really gives you the shits doesn’t it.” Continue reading A Top Pub

Why Caravanning6 Comments

Endless Summer

Itching for Hitching

Is it any wonder that so many Aussies hit the road every year in search of an endless summer? I recently read that there are a million people out there just travelling the country, that’s 1/24th of the population! To wake up to an Australian summer morning is ethereal and they’re doing it every day of the year travelling north to south and south to north chasing the warm weather. Oh the smell of new morning freshness wrapped in warmth and the prospect of a hot day. It’s a sound, it’s a feeling and the warble of a magpie. It’s … Continue reading Endless Summer

Qld, Weather8 Comments

Cyclone Season

Itching for Hitching

From October to March most Australians hold their breath in silent hope that nature won’t be too harsh on us this year. In the southern states the fear is for bush fires. In the tropical north its cyclone season. Sadly once more nature has unleashed a damaging cyclone. Cyclone Debbie is lashing the Whitsunday Coast of Queensland with 260 kmh winds and all that they bring. Our hearts go out to our mates in Queensland. Continue reading Cyclone Season

Places, Qld11 Comments

Rollingstone on the Coral Sea

Itching for Hitching

Flotsam and Jetsam One lonely starfish. 10 million peripatetic hermit crabs scurrying and climbing over each other and rocks in search of food and a larger home. Rocks the size of golf balls, no two the same, some red some golden all granite. Sponges scattered on the sand. Tongues of rocks reach out to sea. Chunks, spikes, mushrooms and paperweights of dead coral strewn roughly aside by each tide, cast offs from the reef. Tree trunks water logged and bearing the scars of oysters, blackened by the sea and age. Mangroves flank the shore at the creek mouth. Palms have … Continue reading Rollingstone on the Coral Sea