smo’c-touring

All set up for a cosy night Our big adventure starts here - finally, after lots of planning and organising, upgrading and list making, on a sunny Wednesday 3rd of June 2026, we were ready to go!  Navigating our way through the traffic and the many merges on busy freeways, we made our way past Ipswich, cruised up the narrow and winding Cunningham Gap and across the tablelands, through Warwick and on to Inglewood, our first stop. We decided to spend our first night in a caravan park, on power and water, to iron out any issues and ensure our next few nights “off grid” would go as smoothly as possible.  After setting up the van, we wandered along the Main Street, checking out the local shops and information centre and chatting with the barmaid while we enjoyed a celebratory drink in the pub. As the sun disappeared so did the warmth so we opted to cook and eat inside - it’ll take us a couple of days at least to get used to chilly nights, I think! Dinner at Nindigully Pub Our advent...

In a year where we decided to keep it simple and get to know our new abodes in Yarra’s Edge and Paradise Point, we have managed to be very busy! It is only July, but so far we have had “the month of mum’s 90th” in February, a birthday month in April in Melbourne and a trip to New Zealand and the Cook Islands, plus various short boat cruises, on our own and with friends and family. We sold Vanooka in January and decided we would take our time looking for a replacement, wanting something not much bigger but with a bathroom, a solid roof not a pop top, with everything we enjoyed and just a little bit more. We were not actively looking, but the van meeting all our criteria came up and we swooped! Vanooka 2 is a 16.5 foot Jayco Journey Outback. Three years old and in fabulous condition, we hooked her up on the Sunshine Coast on Wednesday 23rd July and headed west, away from the Bruce Highway and into the hills. A rookie error, relying on Google rather than getting out the proper map, had us...

It’s been a busy 2024; we moved in to Paradise Point at the beginning of January and spent a few months settling in (with five out of six weeks in Sydney for Sue while mum had surgery). Then in May we headed north in Liberty, reaching as far as Port Douglas before flying south to buy the other “half” of our home in Docklands, and cruising south from Port Douglas to Hervey Bay in order to set it up! After a few weeks re-establishing ourselves in Paradise Point we decided to re-acquaint ourselves with Vanooka…. On Thursday 21st November, after Sue’s yoga class, we headed to Ashmore Caravan Storage and set Vanooka free, crossing the M1 and continuing past Nerang for our first night, at Canungra. There has been a week of heavy rain, but the forecast suggested that conditions were improving so we took the chance. We parked on the Canungra Showgrounds in a relatively dry spot with power and water available. We visited the local IGA for some supplies, including two nice eye fillet steaks for ...

  https://manookatoo.blogspot.com/2019/06/warrego-wandering.html

  https://manookatoo.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-darling-river-run.html

  https://manookatoo.blogspot.com/2019/05/mildura-on-murray.html