Mullumbimby to Ewingar - Monday 24 June 2019
The clouds were dark and ominous as we packed up camp. Our sunshine has come to an end. But, the trip goes on - if we waited for the weather all the time, we’d never go anywhere.
We were on the road before the rain actually started, but it poured down as we drove down the Pacific Motorway, turned off at Ballina, and went through Lismore to Casino. We were making good time so planned to have elevenses in Casino but that town doesn’t cater for caravan parking so given we were heading for the showgrounds anyway to visit the dump point and top up with water, we decided to have our elevenses there. Particularly as we had left over scones - heaps better than any cafe! So Jude set about warming the scones and making coffee while Neill and I did our respective housekeeping tasks - in the rain. That just made morning tea even better and the rain eased as we hit the road, with the intention of having lunch in Tabulam. Greg and I have travelled this road often since my brother moved up here, but the Richmond Ranges always impress. I’ve never towed a caravan up them (we have come from different directions every other time) and the Landcruiser needed all of it’s V8 power but the view from the top is magic - rolling hills, meandering rivers, not so green valleys. As Andrew tells me, they haven’t had much rain up here.
We stopped in the little town of Tabulam for lunch. This is the town closest to Andrew and Greg and I are very familiar with it - we even stayed at the Tabulam Racecourse while we were homeless (in between moving to Tassie) as we had friends visiting with an on road caravan that would never get to Andrew’s place.
Aftre lunch, I messaged Andrew to give him 45 minutes notice and we began the climb. It’s fair to say these roads don’t see too many caravans! The cows grazing along the road clearly don’t either - they were not in a hurry to move off the road! We pulled into Andrew’s driveway and were met by Andrew - he wanted us to do a reconnaissance of his proposed campsite before we hauled the vans in there. He’s never had to accommodate two large vans before! But my little brother has done me proud - he had cleared a largeish area, prpeared a stack of firewood and the track in wasn’t too bad either. As I reported back to Neill, we’ve got into far worse!
So in we went, and after a bit of analysis of the best locations, did some digging to level the vans up. Not as easy as at Inskip Point - it’s shaly rock here! Still, we got our two vans level, awnings towards each other to provide coverage to combat the rain and it was beer o’clock.
When it got dark, we headed up to the house for a warm evening in front of the fire, with the dogs to entertain us and a lovely dinner provided by Courtney. It’s really nice to be back here with these special two members of my family.
posted by Tracey @ 7:15 pm
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