Then there was Tulula

The next morning after the sailing trip we picked up the campervan. The directions led us to some remote parking lot out of town to pick it up where we filled in all the necessary paperwork in a 1970’s trailer that still rocked the orange shag carpet and brown and burnt orange plaid upholstery. Very dodgy but all legit it seems.

We have named our new travel companion Tulula and are relying solely on this chunk of metal to take us down to Sydney safely. She’s got a bed, a fridge, microwave, stove, plenty of dishes and cutlery and she is almost tall enough for Paddy to stand up inside. We like her a lot.

The first day of driving was a long one (at least we thought so at that point in time). Paddy unfortunately has to do all the driving, as my driving licence has expired (a recurring theme with government documents for me at the moment). There was not much to see on the road other than miles and miles of bush land (it was dead grass and trees as far as the eye could see), remains of bush fires and a lot of road kill. I was beginning to think that no animals or vegetation could possibly survive in Australia.

We drove for about 5.5 hours to a small place called Clairview. The campervan site was recommended to us by a taxi driver in Airlie beach so we thought we would give it a go. Little did we know that the town of Clairview consisted of just the campervan park. There was no other shop, bar, or restaurant other than what was provided by the campsite and all the town “locals” appeared to permanently live in the campervans.

Nonetheless, it had a great location, right on the beach with loads of wild parrots, and we were sick of driving for the day. We ended up mingling with a few of our neighbours as we couldn’t get Tulula’s back door open. She was being a bit stubborn. Without opening the back door though, we couldn’t make the bed. So, after an hour or so and a group effort from the neighbouring men, we finally got the door open. Let me clarify that, three men (including a mechanic) tried for about 60 minutes to get this door open, with lots of various tools being used. Then, after the men gave up and agreed that it would have to go to a Toyota dealer to be repaired, Paddy simply turned the van key to unlock all the doors and the back door opened. Go figure. We made dinner in the campervan that night, hot dogs, green beans and baked beans, and then planned the next leg of our trip while regretting the decision to have so many beans…...

"Town" decor in Clairview

Oh they really did try their best!

The campervan park beach.