Memories:
Dartmoor rodeo - the kids still pretend they're riding bulls.
Beerenburg strawberry farm - 2 kilos of luscious hand picked strawberries.
Emilia progressing rapidly in her bike riding skills (after getting a big girl bike without training wheels at Anglesea). It has been great to see how proud she has been of herself and how confident she now is.
Seafood - blue swimmer crabs, squid, salmon, whiting - YUM
Port Vincent beach- lovely swimming on a sheltered beach.
Conversations on Elbow Hill (a tiny cafe near Arno Bay) had coffee to rival some of the best baristas in Melbourne. Cakes were also amazing, as was the service, real country charm. We stayed for a few hours. While the toy box entertained the kids we indulged in several coffees and cake. We also went back for iced coffee and 1kg of their lovely local SA coffee beans. We may be roughing it but we both class good coffee as an essential!
Wildlife- we have seen (up close), emus, kangaroos, pelicans, seals, goannas, an array of colourful and boisterous birds including lorikeets, galahs, rosellas & black cockatoos. It has been wonderful to watch the kids joyous expressions on seeing these creatures up so close in the wild.
Best friends- watching the kids interact with each other and involve each other in imaginative play has been great. They are so thoughtful of each other (most of the time) and have really become best mates.
Playgrounds - SA has some amazing playgrounds (many thanks to Rudd's economic stimulus package), they have proved very useful and entertaining on the long drives and bad weather days (so Labor is good for something!).
Misfortunes:
Gastro - not the most pleasant way to start the trip.
Terrible two year old tantrums - these are hard enough to deal with without an audience of other campers!
Cuts, scrapes, splinters and insect bites- our arms, legs and feet definitely attest to the fact we've been living mainly outdoors for a month.
Bugs - the mozzies haven't been too bad but I managed to get bitten on my butt doing a bush wee then both Milly and I had to do a bit of a dance when we started weeing on a bull ant nest and they got very upset. We've managed to keep the van bug free though so that's been great.
Squatting- Daniel is still learning the art of squatting (not for himself!) and he has had a bit of trouble taking Emilia in the dark, which has resulted in a middle of the night pyjama change.
Where are the families???- we are yet to meet another family with young children, instead we are always surrounded by Grey Nomads and their big rigs at every caravan park and documented campground. As lovely, chatty and helpful as all the oldies have been we would love some families with kids to hang out with.
No fires - unfortunately SA seems to have a blanket ban against fires from Nov until April. We have been cooking on gas for a month and it is killing Daniel (though he h as indulged in a few sneaky fires). We have had a few cooler nights and it is just not the same without a campfire to sit around.
Most used item of the month: baby wipes; who needs a shower when you have Huggins extra thick baby wipes on hand? I actually got worried we would run out and bought an extra large packet when we already had about 1000 stashed away in the car.
Why did I bring these?: all light coloured clothing! Tenielle did warn me and now any item not black, grey or dark blue is an attractive dirt brown colour.
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