Road Trip

With a long week end coming up, we were faced with another 3 days of working on number 3.  As much as we have enjoyed this year, spending weekends working on the bus and trying to get it finished, we really needed a break from it all to recharge our batteries, so we decided to take a road trip.  It had been a year exactly since we had gone away, so we were long overdue for a few days away.  Where will we go, what will we do?  We had in the past, discussed going down to the Huon Valley.  In the 8 1/2  years we have live in Tasmania, we have never really gone any further south than Hobart, so I got on google and had a look.  Yes, there was plenty of accommodation options, and some of them were pet friendly too, however, we decided to leave Horatio behind.  It would restrict us too much if we brought him along, he is not the sort of dog to sit quietly in the car while we go exploring places.  As it turns out, it was a good decision because it got quiet hot, and we wouldn't have been able to leave him in the car anyway.  So we got up Saturday morning to what was promising to be a lovely day, and got ready.  With the car finally packed, we set off on the approximate 4 1/2 hour drive at about 9.30a.m., later than what we had planned, but thats normal for us.  We never stick to a schedule.

Of course, when I say 4 1/2 hour trip, I mean if you don't stop.  But whats the point of that.  We had THE TRAVELLING BEANIE AUSTRALIA  https://www.facebook.com/groups/235449026485461/with us, so that meant we had to have lots of stops to take photos.  (Well, it was a good excuse to stop anyway.)
First stop was Campbeltown http://www.campbelltowntasmania.com/attractions.html

Most people don't realise there is more than one convict built bridge in Tasmania.  Richmond Bridge seems to be the one most people know.  I guess thats because it is Australia's oldest bridge.  Personally I like the Ross one best, but they are all very similar, and they all have a lot of history.  Speaking of Ross, that was our next stop.  I love Ross,  in fact, I love all these old towns along the Midlands Highway. (Heritage Highway)  I love the old buildings and the stories you read on the plaques.

http://www.discovertasmania.com/launceston_tamar_and_north/towns_and_places/ross

 After spending a bit of time walking through the town, we decided that it was time to move on, so back in the car and on to our next destination which was Oatlands.  http://www.discovertasmania.com/hobart_and_surrounds/towns_and_places/oatlands
We stopped here, had lunch, took a walk around the town and took some more photos.

By this stage, it was getting late, so we decided to head straight for Southport.  It was still a couple of hours drive away, and we weren't too sure of the road down there.  It was a good road, and we got there in plenty of time, so we kept going.  We drove down to the beach, and had a lovely walk on the white sand, and watched kids playing in the water.  Then we headed back and checked into the Southport Hotel.

The caravan park at Southport Hotel

http://www.farsouthtasmania.com/

What a lovely place it turned out to be.  It was clean and the staff were very friendly.  We really enjoyed our night there.  

Sunday morning arrived and it was another beautiful day.  The sun was shining and we were keen to set of for what I like to call the end of the world Cockle Creek.  It's not really the end of the world but it is the end of the road, literally.  It is Australia's most southern road.  There is a walking track after that, but it doesn't go too much further.                                                                                                                               

The Ida Bay Railway

http://idabayrailway.com.au/

There is plenty of free camping at Cockle Creek.  There were plenty of people there when we were there.  There were even a couple of busses. Terry said he would feel comfortable taking our bus down there, and we have a 40 foot bus.  Pets are allowed in the camp grounds, but not in the National Park.

http://www.discovertasmania.com/hobart_and_surrounds/towns_and_places/cockle_creek

After spending some time at the very south of Australia, it was time to head north again.  Today we also planned on stopping in Richmond.  

The Oldest School in Australia

The oldest Church

ttp://www.richmondvillage.com.au/

The Oldest Bridge

Richmond is a historic town with plenty to offer tourists.  Its so easy to loose track of time here, and thats fine, because there are plenty of places to spend the night if you find yourself enchanted by its beauty.  Reluctantly, we left Richmond and headed further north heading east towards Swansea on the East Coast.  

http://www.discovertasmania.com/east_coast/towns_and_places/swans

We spent the night in a cabin at the Caravan park, listening to the waves and were woken by the birds singing in the huge trees in the park.  ( Not sure I liked that bit though, because it was only about 4.30 a.m.)    The view from the beach was lovely.  After breakfast it was time to head off again.  

Swansea

http://www.discovertasmania.com/east_coast/towns_and_places/bicheno

Bicheno

Bicheno

http://www.discovertasmania.com/east_coast/towns_and_places/st_helens

For the best fish, head to St Helens.  

It was soon time to turn west and head away from the coast.  Unfortunately time didn't allow us to go further north.  The road to Scottsdale from Bicheno is long and windy, but there is some lovely scenery along the way.  There are several towns along the way.  The area is dotted with farms, mostly cattle and sheep  It's a total contrast to the blue ocean and white sand we just left behind.

http://www.discovertasmania.com/launceston_tamar_and_north/towns_and_places/scottsdale

If you have time, its well worth stopping and having a look around.  We continued our journey, heading north west and stopping in Bridport for the night.  We strolled along the beach before finding a place to stay for the night.  

http://www.discovertasmania.com/launceston_tamar_and_north/towns_and_places/bridport

Bridport

Low Head

By Tuesday morning the weather had changed and it was raining.  We were also tired and were looking forward to heading home again.  We set off from Bridport, and made our way to Low Head for a look around.    It was cold and windy, so we we didn't stay long.  We headed across the Batman bridge and made our way to Beaconsfield.  

Batman Bridge

Beaconsfield Mine

http://www.australiaforeveryone.com.au/icons_batmanbr.htm

http://www.discovertasmania.com/au/product_page?a=42224

By now, it was early afternoon, so after a look around, we decided that we were ready to head home again.
We had a busy 4 days, travelling just over 1200 kilometers in mostly perfect weather.  At every turn, there was something new to see, and we could have stayed so much longer.  Now we are back home, we are more determined than ever to finish the bus, and start travelling.  It will be so much easier if we don;t have deadlines, and don't have to pay for accommodation, and we will be so much more comfortable in the same bed every night.  We have decided that Tasmania is definitely the place we want to be.  We are still looking forward to our travels around Australia, but are looking forward to coming home again and spending time touring Tasmania at leisure.

                                                 

WE HAVE A DOOR

Well finally, after 10 months of working on number 3 every spare moment we had, we finally have a room. Yes followers, we have a bathroom, WITH A DOOR.  Wow, I can't believe it.  It doesn't seem that long ago that we didn't even have walls, and now well, shall I say it again, we have a door.  Mind you, we can't use the bathroom yet, Terry had to take everything out of it so we could get the lamipanel in, and we still have one sheet to go behind the shower, and there is no plumbing yet, so it's not even really a proper bathroom is it, but it has a door, and you can go in there, and close it and have total privacy.  It's dark in there, because there are no windows, but the lights work again, after that minor disaster we had a few weeks ago.

Door open

Door closed

Yes, the electrician came back and fixed the wire, and now the seats are in place, all welded and bolted down as they should be (we hope).  It's just a matter of getting the seat belts now and that part of the challenge will be over.  Except for the drivers seat, that is.  I think that will be one of the last things we do.  Everything is ready to go there, though, it's just a matter of putting it in.

The vanity unit

The shower area

The bathroom is so white, we are thinking of adding a coloured piece of lamipanel in the shower area.  What do you think.  We have purple behind the kitchen sink, the walls as you will all remember are green.  Any suggestions on a colour.  The other three colours we are using are blue, purple and red.  As you may remember, we have based our colours around a mug.

Once the electrician came back and fixed the wire that Terry had drilled through, it was pretty easy to get the seats back up at the table and bolted in.  Someone was meant to come and have a look at the set up and advise us how to best bolt the seat belts in, but as usual, they never turned up.  Really, how hard is to to actually do your job.  I mean, this man does this for a living, and he can't even be bothered not only turning up, but calling to say he couldn't make it.  They get away with this, because they are the only ones who do it.  Anyway, we will sort that out as we get closer to registration.  Speaking of registration, we found out last week we have to take Number 3 to Burnie to go over the pits and get registered.  That will be fun.  Burnie is about 50 kilometres away and much busier than Devonport.  We have no trouble driving there, but it will be a different story taking a bus through there.  You see, Terry has never driven Number 3.  In fact, the only time he has driven anything as big as it was the day he got his medium rigid licence.  That day, he met the instructor somewhere, I can't even remember where actually, and the instructor got him to get behind the wheel of the truck, and Terry drove to Stanley then turned around and drove back.  Highway most of the way, and very little traffic.  I know, he is going to have to get used to driving in traffic, but it would be so much easier if we could have the bus registered here in Devonport, at least we know the roads and where we would have to go here.  Might have to borrow a bus driver friend for that first trip I think.

The lounge, dining and kitchen area
bedroom in the background

The photo frames are finished and they look really good.  I can't wait to see them up on the walls, but what I am looking froward to more, is to see them filled with photos of our trip.  I think I may need to get a few more frames, and put some on Terry's computer desk.  I think the colours will also  look great up against the white. 

Some of the frames I have painted.

We still haven't slept in Number 3, but Grezette (our cat) is still using it as her own private bedroom.  She still loves to curl up on our bed and enjoy the warmth from the sun.  Horatio still follows us in there, but he follows us out again when we leave, but then again, he follows us everywhere, so thats nothing new. 

A minor disaster

The last few weekends have been busy, but productive.  We have cut out walls, painted them and put them up.  I don't think I have painted so much in my whole entire life, but number 3 is really starting to look good.  So this weekend was no different.  Out came the paint brushes, the jigsaw, drills, sander and everything else we needed for the work ahead.

Marking out the wall
A few weeks ago we found out we needed to weld some steel plates under the floor of the bus, so we could anchor the seats and seat belts.  So far, Terry has been doing all the welding himself but, because this has to be inspected and passed, we decided it was better to get a professional in to do it.  Luckily we have a friend who's partner is a welder, and he called in today to have a look, and is going to do it for us. Thank you so much Cherie and Andy, we appreciate it.  After they left, Terry decided to drill some holes in and bolt the seat to the rail, so if we want to sit down, at least we can without the seat falling to the floor.  So, here he was, drill in hand, when the power went off.  He came down to where I was painting (as usual) and said "I think I just blew up the drill".  After checking, we realised the drill was fine, so he checked the fuses, and one had tripped.  So he flicked it on and went back in the bus and went to start drilling again and a spark jumped to the drill bit from the metal, and the circuit breaker kicked in and switched off.  Turns out the electrician threaded the electrical cable through the channel we need to bolt the seat into. and Terry not realising drilled straight through it.  At least now we know the circuit breaker works.  We didn't really need this minor disaster, but it could have been a lot worse I suppose.  Tomorrow, we were going to go to the hardware store to buy the laminex to finish off the bathroom, but now we need to get the electrician in to repair the damage, and that will take the money we had saved up for the laminex, but the electrical work has to take priority, after all, we can't risk getting electrocuted now can we.  Oh well, never mind.

Well apart from that minor inconvenience, everything else is going well.  We ordered some purple laminex last week for the splash back and that arrived on Thursday.  It's going to look great against the green.  All of the walls are now cut and painted, and most have been put up.  I have bought about a dozen photo frames, and have painted them blue or purple, and they will look good up against the green walls too.

The green walls

I am looking forward to seeing it once it is finished.  At this stage, I can only imagine what it will look like.  People I have spoken to about it all agree it is going to look good, but I wonder if they are just saying this to be nice.  It's funny how we worry about what other people think, because at the end of the day, we are the ones who have to live with it, and we love it, so it really shouldn't matter what anyone else thinks.  So tonight I go to bed thankful I still have my husband, and reassured that if something goes wrong with the electrical side of the bus again, we will be safe.

Introducing Red

I've been busy painting recently and decided that I really didn't like the red paint that I had, it was more an orange colour and didn't really fit in with my plans, so I had to come up with another way of introducing red into the colour scheme.  After thinking about it for a while, I decided the best way to do this was to buy red accessories.  This I thought was a great idea, because it allowed me to do something I really love.  SHOP.  I was going to take my time with this, because I have no where to put things once I buy them.  I had started loading things into the bus, but then thought, well, I am going to have to take everything out again once it's all finished, because the bus needs to be weighed as close to empty as possible, so why make extra work for myself.  But I really can't help myself, and if I see something I like, I just have to have it, so I have justified myself by saying, well, it's only little and it wont take much to move it again.  Problem is, I now have about 50 "only little" things on the bus already, and I still have things throughout the house that need to go on there.  See, I told you, I just cant help myself.

I think its going to look good though.  I have bought red silicone oven mitts, egg poachers, tongs, spatulas, and other bits and pieces.  I have even seen red and white bowls and plates at K Mart which Terry and I both like, so I think I will get those too.  I think this will work better, because really we only have limited wall we can hang things on.  Speaking of wall, Terry is plodding along nicely with cutting the walls.  He has been following a book, which he bought online, but I came across a blog by someone else who was converting a bus, and showed him.  He was impressed and decided he would try it their way, and it has turned out to be easier.  He even contacted this couple and thanked them for the information.  

Terry working on the wall

I can't wait till the walls are up, it will make it look more like home.  Once the first walls are up, we can bring in the vanity and toilet, then the rest of the bathroom walls can go up.  I have started making the curtains, and I will be able to put them up soon, and measure them properly, before I cut the length and then a friend is going to sew them for me.  I just cut and tack, I have no idea how to use a sewing machine.  Then we should be able to start sleeping in there.  To start of, we will just spend week ends in there.  Just to get used to it.  Then, once the plumbing is finished, we will start to drive it away for the week end.  I really can't wait to do that.  It will mean we are one step closer to leaving.  Hopefully, by Christmas we will be living in Number 3 full time.

A close up of Terry measuring up the wall

I bought a new (second hand) kids sofa bed the other week end for Horatio, and at first he hated it, but yesterday he used it for the first time.  I'm really pleased because the one he has is really old and I really didn't want to take it with us.  I'm still not sure where it will go on the bus, but thats ok, he needs his bed and we will find somewhere for it.  I also bought him one of those pet toilets for times when we have to leave him all day.  He hasn't used it yet, however I do put it out for him when ever we go away and I leave him locked in the house.  He is pretty good and never really leaves a mess for us to clean up, but as he gets older, he might not be able to hold on as long.  He is quite happy to sit in it, so hopefully he will not have a problem using it if he has to.

Horatio on his toilet

Horatio is adapting well to being on the bus with us.  He joins us most of the time when we go in there to work.  At first he was struggling with the floating floor, it was so funny watching him trying to jump on the bed then he figured out how to get up there using the side bit at the head of the bed, where the back seat used to be.  Now he just runs up the bus and jumps.  Once the walls are up, it could be a different story though.  We will see what happens.

 Our cat Grezette spends most of the day curled up sleeping on the bed.  It's nice and warm in there and she hangs around near the door in the morning waiting for one of us to unlock it.  As soon as its unlocked, she runs in there and we don't usually see her again for hours.  We are going to miss Grezette when we leave.  We have entrusted her care to my sister, and I think she will be much happier here than travelling in a bus with us.

Horatio on his bed

But for now, number 3 will be a warm safe haven for Grezette, and when we move into it later this year, she will no doubt, share the bed with us like she does in the house.  It will seem strange not having her with us when we leave, but we have decided its for the best if she stays behind.  

As work continues

It's funny I think that as the work continues on number 3, I start to think back to the beginning.  In a way, number 3 looks exactly how I pictured it in my minds eye before we even bought it, but at the same time it looks nothing like it either.  Let me explain.  Before we bought number 3, we made cardboard cutouts, as close to scale as we could, of everything, the floor plan, bed, vanity, shower, toilet, lounge, kitchen dining and everything else we wanted to put in it.   We would sit there like children doing a jig saw puzzle, placing things where we thought we wanted them, moving them around because they didn't fit, or this would be better here or whatever.  To this day, the floor plan had pretty much stayed the way it was, apart from some final adjustments once the furniture was put in there.  So in that sense, it's exactly how I pictured it, but what makes it so different is the colour scheme.  For some reason, I never pictured the finished bus in colour, or if I did, I can't remember.  I really believe that when we first started, we had no idea of what colours we were going to use, and in all honesty, I believe the colour scheme has only just fallen into place in the last couple of weeks.  We started out painting it with paint we had left over from when we painted our unit last year.  We thought we would save money and use what we already had.  Well that really didn't save us anything, because we didn't have anywhere near enough paint, and ended up buying more, heaps more.  We could have just bought a new colour and it wouldn't have made any difference.  Then we decided the green we were using on the walls, needed brightening up, so we bought the brighter green. We needed something that "popped"  adding the brighter green really worked, I loved the lift that the second colour gave it.
Then I got thinking about the bed head.  I decided I wanted to make my own, and had some nice sheer material I wanted to use, so I got some black material to put underneath it, and the sheer one over it.  It's going to look great.

This is what the bed head will look like

Working from there, I thought I wanted to keep going with the black and have the bedding black and silver.  So I spent hours on the internet looking for some doona covers I liked, and couldn't really find anything.  All of a sudden, one day I discovered the colour wheel again, and bang, out of the blue, all these ideas started coming to me.  So now I have a colour scheme in mind.  And I think I like it.  I found a cushion in K mart I really liked, it had all the colours in it that I wanted to use, except it didn't have the green that we already had.  Never mind, I bought the cushion and got my needle and thread out, and started sewing some green around the leaves and put green beads up the stems of the flowers.  

Now I have all the colours in one item.  Green, purple and red.  Perfect.  Terry was still trying to get used to these colours I think, and bang, all of a sudden I add another colour into the design.  A few weeks ago I fell in love with some coffee mugs in Woolworths, (yes I know, sounds silly doesn' it) so while I was shopping the other day, I gave in and I bought two.  They are white mugs, with green, red purple and blue spots on them.

The mug

 So really, I'm only adding blue to the whole thing.  This morning I went shopping for paint.  I took my trusty mug with me, and colour matched the blue and purple.  Terry asked me what I had in mind and I said, I have no idea yet, but something will happen.  The girl at the paint shop got a bit of a surprise when I gave her the mug and ask her for a cup of coffee.  Good thing she had a sense of humour.  I told her what we were doing and she said, sounds great, a bus with personality.  I never really thought of it like that.
A few years ago I bought a small mirror for a couple of dollars because the frame was falling apart.  It really only needed gluing together, so I took it home and fixed it.  It's a sun on a square back ground,   The sun was yellow and the background was a dull purple colour.  I never really liked the colour much, but I liked the mirror, so I just hung it in the hall way. Now the background is green, that nice bright green, and the sun is going to be purple, and it will hang in the lounge room in number 3.  Well, when I say lounge room, I mean on the side wall of the pantry, which the couch is up against.  I had 3 frames which I was going to sell, one was green, one was blue and the other was orange, so I have undercoated the orange one, and that will be painted purple too.  Terry decided he wanted his computer desk painted blue.  I was going to start on that today, but then decided it was too big.  I only bought sample pots, because I didn't want that much colour.  I thought it would be overkill.  So I asked him how he would feel if I painted the desk in gloss white, to match the kitchen cupboards, and added some interest by adding the blue somewhere, somehow.  He liked the idea, so now I have to decide what I am going to do.  I guess inspiration will come to me.  All of a sudden, number 3 is starting to take shape, and the more I think about it, the more I do agree with the girl at the paint shop.  Number 3 IS going to have  personality.
Now I'm thinking doona cover again.  I'm so glad I didn't go with black and silver.  I'm now thinking purple, or even red, but I think I'll wait a while.  Terry is still working on the walls, so theres no point putting the bedroom together yet, everything will be covered in saw dust.  I know, because I have made the bed and it has a black Faux fur blanket on it, which is covered in saw dust and tools, good thing it wasn't a new one, and it's easy to wash.  My mind is in overdrive with ideas, and I can't wait to see what the finished product will really look like.  All of a sudden my vision has gone from black and white, to full colour, and yes I think I like it.