Celebratory sausages ...

Nick works shift-work and it seems a long time since he's had a full weekend at home. He was rostered off from Thursday to Sunday and given Vaughan's pupil-free Friday, we had a celebratory dinner in the forest.

We planned to BBQ our dinner this trip, so came prepared with firelighters and matches.  Before leaving the van, I'd wrapped three large potatoes in foil.

I'd also made small parcels of carrots and beans (with knobs of butter).  I wasn't sure if they'd work but was quite pleased with the end result - and will make them again.

The potatoes were much larger than what I'd usually cook whole, so they rested in the coals for a fair while before Nick started cooking the meat and foil parcels.

Many little birds flitted about and it was very pleasant watching them and gazing up at the sky through the trees, while waiting for our dinner to cook.

As you can see, we had a feast, followed by hot beverages, more fire-gazing - and sparklers!

Soon after arrival, Vaughan had found a large grub in a curl of bark.  (There was discussion as to whether it was or wasn't a witchetty grub).  While Nick and I were sitting quietly, when Vaughan and Bandit were off exploring, a small bird pecked at the grub's bark house but decided it would rather eat something else!

Love outdoor dining!

I did have plans of hanging red crepe paper heart chains around the gazebo and dining at home but as the day wore on, my motivation for crafting lessened!

I cooked dinner in one of our thermal cookers - rice and lamb rogan josh. (Lamb was on special at the local IGA and I used a bottled sauce).

It was a last-minute decision to picnic in a nearby forest area.

Although I'd packed matches and mozzie coils, it wasn't my plan to have a fire. My fire-bugs had other ideas.  They scrounged some paper from Elmer and were very happy collecting wood.

Vaughan spent some time looking for critters.  He found a large yabby and a lovely frog.  Both were released after their photo sessions.


It was a love-ly evening.  We enjoyed our dinner and rather flash dessert choices. There was extended sitting around the fire, before extinguishing it and making our way home again via more forest roads, spotting for wildlife en route.

Using our noodles!

Our gazebo has had a lot of use.  You can see that the cover has wear marks in the pics at right.  Although it is not intended as a permanent structure, we have it set up most of the time due to limited living space in the van.  (The area beneath is laid with our camping mats and one gazebo wall offers some privacy between us and our neighbour).

Rain collects in the stretched areas at the corners of the cover, so the water needs to be tipped off regularly.  If too much water pools on the gazebo cover, the weight can break the gazebo frame.  That's how our very first gazebo was broken, within days of it's initial use.  Yep, we've learned the hard way!

(The manufacturer does not sell replacement frames, so we kept that one and use it to effect repairs on our other two gazebos).

I belong to several FaceBook caravan and camping groups.  There have been suggestions of using pool noodles to prevent water pooling on gazebos.  It wasn't till someone posted a photo that I understood how the noodle was to be used.  Hah!  Nick bought a pack of three from BigW and has rigged them to counter today's rain.  I'm not sure they'll stay in place all the time but they seemed to work this afternoon.

Watt bargains!

You know the old saying "nothing lasts forever"?  Well, my $1.00 hotplates are now retired.

The plates still worked but the plastic moulding which supported the legs had broken, so the unit was no longer stable.

Our local op-shop had a set of $5.00 hotplates the other day and I brought them home. It's hard to go wrong at that price - especially with a money-back guarantee!

There is no kitchen in the van.  I cook outside, using one of our folding tables as a bench.  It stays set up against the van as there is not a lot of room under our gazebo.  (Of course when it rains, I need a Plan B)!

I cook most of our meals using a large electric frypan.  It's quite versatile and I've made a variety of meals in it.  We don't have a microwave.  Rice is cooked in one of our thermal cookers (using the hotplates for the initial heating).  From time to time, I use one of our Cobb Cookers for BBQing or cake-baking - if I'm not in a hurry!

I was looking for an easier oven option though and had been researching turbo ovens.  The cheapest was the Kmart version - $45.00.  Nick and I were out yesterday.  We visited our favourite tip shop and spotted a great turbo oven - for $5.00!  How good was that?!  It didn't come with a money-back guarantee but had seen very little use.  Once home, it was washed and put into service!

I had a cake mix, so made that last night.  It was jazzed up a bit with some chunks of white chocolate.  The turbo oven did fine work and we all appreciated slices of warm cake as a late supper.  Yum!

The cake mix had been on special at our local IGA for 69c, only slightly dearer than a generic brand.  I prefer to bake from scratch but my limited "kitchen" facilities make that a bit tricky at the moment, so I'm allowed to cheat!  The IGA has a small range of baked goods but the prices are around $7.00 for quite basic offerings - yep the oven has already paid for itself!

500 finds!

We chalked up another milestone today - our 500th geocache find!

It's been around 18 months since our 400th find.  (On checking geocaching stats, our longest slump was from April to September last year, when obviously all our efforts were spent on culling/packing)!

Vaughan recently commented that we never meet any other cachers when out. Very soon after that, Nick and I were chatting to guy who spoke of geocaching and recommended a cache in a forest local(ish) to us.

Given the special nature of the cache, we decided to save it for our 500th find.

At that stage our tally was 450, so over the past couple of weeks we've exerted ourselves to find the extra 50.  It's been good school holiday entertainment and involved several fairly energetic 3-plus kilometre bushwalks.

Term 1 starts tomorrow, so our holiday finale was today.  It was a fantastic adventure - driving along skinny, steep forest tracks before scrambling downhill (on foot) to explore an abandoned gold mine and log our 500th find!

Lacing the window ...

I removed our Christmas decals on Friday.  (The solar lights were taken down just before moving the van for a week-long house-sit over Christmas).

The caravan looks very bare without it's decorations, even though we still have our fairy lights inside - cos we all enjoy how pretty they are!

Without it's stickers, the door window is clear and offers little privacy.  I've been pondering how to remedy that.

At the time of hanging the caravan curtains, I spoke about making a blind for the door.  I completed that project a few days later but the sticking point was how to attach it over the door.  The van is old and we were hesitant to put too much pressure on the wood paneling around the door, so the blind remains packed under our Princess bed.

There's a box of fabric under the bed (a selection from my infamous "stash") and while rummaging in there I found a small lace curtain - which matches the tiny one used for our kitchen window.  I unpicked the lace find this evening, gave it a quick wash and later ironed out the hemming creases.  It was the right size to replace the very daggy flyscreen mesh of the inner door window - as Nick had done for our bathroom window when we were still living at Hamby Home(in)stead.

Nick is on night-shift and I wasn't able to remove the screen to work on a horizontal surface, so I installed the lace with the screen in it's usual position.  The process was fairly easy.  The tricky part was starting off, so Erin helped me tape the lace along it's top edge to hold it steady while I worked the tubing back into it's channel.

I trimmed the edges when I'd finished securing the lace in place.  I'm pleased with the end result.  It's definitely a vast improvement on the worn-out flyscreen!

1000th Post!

Given the anniversary theme of my most recent writings, it seemed appropriate to mark another important milestone - yep, this is the 1000th Happy Hamby Campers post!  Wow!

When I started this blog (my first) just over five years ago, I was new to blogging and wanted a broad theme that allowed plenty of scope for writing.  There was a lot going on in those days and heading into the nearby forest for day-trips or longer stays was our stress-relief. We all enjoyed the outings - and they were cheap therapy!

We already referred to ourselves as the Happy Hamby Campers, so naming the blog was easy - and I had plenty of starting material as we'd had a number of trips.  I decided to document them all, even though there was a bit of catching up to do.  (I later learned how to back-date them to their correct order, even though it pre-dated the blog's inception of November 2010).

Why blogging?  For a few years before starting the blog I'd included an annual newsletter with our Christmas cards.  I had a private webpage and would upload a colour version of the newsletter there.  I couldn't publish both pages though and there was no archival function - ie each year's newsletter replaced the previous one.

The best solution seemed to be a blog.  Even so I had hesitations regarding our privacy and initially the blog was only accessible to our extended family and friends.  Over time it became public and grew to include the various pages you now see. We even have a YouTube channel (in need of more "footage")!

We are not expert campers but have racked up a reasonable amount of experience and hopefully that knowledge helps others.  My main motivation for writing though is to record our adventures, so we can appreciate how far we've been - in spite of life's challenges and interruptions.  As the song goes, accentuate the positive!

Until we lived at Hamby Home(in)stead, all our rental homes had been on normal suburban blocks.  We lived in pleasant areas but definitely enjoyed venturing into the great outdoors with more space around us.  These days we are living in our van in a caravan park, so have an even keener desire to explore further afield!