Sammy and Danny write a country song: "Longford Station"

July 14:  Danny and I worked in the garden and on the shed and finished our song:  "Longford Station".  We sung it for our hosts that night and they were very happy - Sally had a tear in her eyes and Lindsay said no one had ever written a song about Longford.  (While we have been at Hamilton Downs Youth Camp, near Alice Springs, Danny has put together a video clip with photos from our 2 week stay.  I can't upload more photos at the moment, but will update later on)

July 15:  The morning was spent working on the shed and cleaning the freezers and in the arvo we all set off to see and photograph the eagles.  There were two big babies in the nest.  We also checked on the bores and Sally gave me a lesson in gate hitching.  Yes city folk, there is a knack to it!  That night we watched a Johnny Cash doco we had brought with us.  Lindsay was getting inspired by us playing music and had started to muck around with one of Danny's guitars.

July 16, 17 & 18:  The next few days Danny spent working on the shed - finishing the rest of the perlons and starting the roofing iron sheeting.  It was a big job (and a big shed!) but he and Lindsay had really knocked over most of it.  Meanwhile,  I cleaned the kitchen cupboards, did some cooking, gave Sally an eBay lesson and made some tab curtains for one of the spare bedrooms.

July 19:  Our 14th Anniversay!  We did some work in the morning - Danny on the shed and I made a re-inforced material bag for our solar panel.  Then after lunch we all set off (well, Indigo stayed at Longford)  to Lindsay and Sally's other property "Glenholme", about 120km away.  It's near the town of  MacKinlay, famous for the Walkabout Creek Hotel from the movie, Crocodile Dundee.  First, we checked the bores, said hello to the curious young bulls and then had a look around the rustic homestead.  There was a big pile of miscellaneous rusting objects:  cars, bottles, bullock wagon parts...We had some drinks (not Sally and Lindsay as they were still on the dry July, the troopers) and then went off to the pub for dinner.  Our hosts shouted us a lovely meal and the chef had made us a special dessert.  We headed back to Longford with full stomachs, having had a great Anniversay and last day. 

Thanks Sally & Lindsay and Longford Station for a fantastic two weeks of learning new skills, great food and musical inspiration. 



The Dream

7 years ago: we were driving back from a road trip to Cairns and thought it would be a cool idea to go on a big trip one day in a campervan or motorhome. I think we even looked at some vehicles on the net, but then the idea lay dormant for a few years...


18 months ago: we were driving back from cousin Keith's funeral in Bundaberg, we thought: we can't keep putting this trip off. So we looked again for vehicles...but still were not that serious. In January, 2010 we decided that we needed to commit to the idea and started searching for a slide-on, campervan, motorhome, caravan or bus. After a couple of months, we finally agreed upon the style of vehicle we wanted.


2 weeks ago: we said "the universe will send us the motorhome we want". A day later, Danny was looking at the Trading Post online. He found a Ford Transit Motorhome - $2750. Needs work or wrecking. Been sitting under a tree at Nerang. So a couple of hours later, were at Bruno's place at Nerang, looking at our future motorhome - Danny, Sammy and Indigo Velvet, our black lab x.




The motorhome was big - 20ft long. The motor worked and it had the sort of gypsy feel we wanted for our adventure. We stayed for about an hour and a half, chatting to Bruno: "It's the labour mate. It'd do up, but it's the labour." He said he'd chuck in a new bedroom window and a couple of lights if we bought it.


We went home very excited.

Should we buy it?