Stopped for a While | Blue and Jenny’s Practice Run for Tassie

Welcome to Stopped for a While. You’ve had a long drive, and you’ve landed at the Peaceful Place on the Fraser Coast, just north of Hervey Bay. Once the tent’s up, the caravan’s level, and you’ve got a cold one in your hand, the stories wander down the road. Laughter’s never far off, and the facts sometimes take a detour.

That’s just the way we like it around here. This is the podcast about the folks who roll into the Peaceful Place and the stories they spin. Did it all happen just like this, or is it another one that just got away? That’s half of the fun, isn’t it?

Blue: They don’t read the area where they’ve camped, and we all got on the swill that night and thought it was a good spot there. And it was a great camp spot, but then it rained that night and we woke up to water. I was nearly floating.

Barry: All right. Try to keep up. Now, there are more Peters around here than socks with holes in them. There’s Peter from last time. Don’t worry, he’ll be back with Marian very soon. Then there’s Peter over yonder, and another Peter over there who goes by the name of Blue, along with his lovely Mrs, Jenny. Blue and Jenny, Rockhampton locals, pulled up for a bit just to warm up before they go on their big adventure next year. Stick around, I’ll spill the beans on where they’re off to.

End of January, we had a family roll through doing the classic trip of shipping their eldest off to uni and then taking a holiday for themselves. They were from England. Big milestone for them, but get this, they couldn’t care less about cricket. Go figure.

Then a few weeks ago, Ruth rocked up with her mob. Same deal, but the uni drop-off had already been sorted. Now they were just cruising and killing time before they got to their flight out of Sydney.

Now, have I told you about this character? Let’s call him Mr 18 Foot. He rocks up in his average van, 18 feet long, hence the name. If you don’t mind, he’s an hour and a half early for check-in. That’s 30 minutes before the poor bugger on the site before him was meant to check out. Lucky, though, the site was empty. Rob wasn’t around, and we weren’t either. Mr 18 Foot messages him: “I can’t park my van.” Rob messages back: “Hang tight. I’ll be there in 15.” Mr 18 Foot fires back: “I can’t wait that long.” Rob is still keen, so he says, “Don’t panic. I’ll be there in 15 to sort you out, mate.” But nope, the bloke wanted a refund instead. I reckon you can guess how that turned out.

Blue and Jenny came to the Peaceful Place to practise in their new van. Tell me about being a novice.

Jenny: Well, we started with a camper trailer.

Barry: Oh yeah, we’ve done that.

Jenny: And we’d go away when we could. That was a tighter ship, sort of thing. But now we’ve just bought this thing.

Barry: A bit more comfort.

Jenny: Of course. And that was only three months ago. So we’ve only done a couple of 10-day trips.

Blue: Just a warning: if you buy a caravan and you want to go off-grid, you probably should buy a caravan that’s built for off-grid, power-wise. Looking at it now and going through it all, I probably should’ve spent the extra money and got it done as a unit. Buy something that’s offering more as far as that goes, and spend the extra coin, because now I’m going down the road to upgrade everything, and you’re spending $5,000 here and probably another $5,000 there to get it to where you need it to be. But all in all, it’ll work out fine.

Barry: That’s right. And you’ll be able to decide at what point. ‘Cause when we got ours, they said, “If you want to put some more panels on, you’ve got to put them the same value as the other panels,” and all this. And you’re going, “Hang on a minute. Hold on.” That’s why we set ourselves up under a tree. Then we don’t have to worry about it.

Jenny: The more he talks, the more stressed I get. Like, oh my God. ‘Cause I’ve been thinking about this. How much is it going to cost? And getting stuck off-grid, and you run out of everything.

Blue: You run out of power.

Jenny: That’s happened a couple of times.

Barry: And water.

Jenny: That’s happened to us twice now. And we haven’t gone a long way, sort of thing.

Blue: You have a fridge full of tucker, and that’s really your only main concern. You’ve got to keep that. The other night it just dropped completely out, and we had nothing that afternoon, nothing all night, nothing till about 12 o’clock, when we got here.

Barry: That’s a bit better then. Plugged you in and everything.

Blue: It gets charged up. And then you keep looking at it and spending time looking at it, trying to think, “Well, what do we do? What do we do?” And you get on some of these forums, and they’re good and they’re bad in their way. But there are a lot of handy hints there.

Barry: That’s right. It’s what you can glean.

Blue: ‘Cause there are people with opinions.

Barry: Absolutely. And who have done a lot of camping. So let’s go back to your camper days. Where have you been travelling?

Jenny: Fraser Island.

Blue: Fraser Island a couple of times. And that was great. Anything that was close. So it’d be Fraser Island and Carnarvon Gorge, and just areas around where we are. In Rocky, you’ve got Byfield, which is a great little spot.

Barry: You’re from Rocky?

Blue: Yeah, from Rockhampton. Great little spots there. There’s an area where you can go up to the beach called Five Rocks.

Barry: I’ve seen that on the map.

Blue: You’d probably pull a camper trailer up it.

Jenny: We always used to go camping with the kids and take the kids up. But we just tented back in those days. So it’s just about starting off and getting to this point, I suppose.

Barry: And getting out there and having a little look. Dipping your toe in the water.

Jenny: Yeah. But Blue has another year before he’s fully retired, and then we do have a big trip planned at the beginning of ’28.

Barry: So you’re going to do a lap?

Jenny: No, we want to do Tassie. We want to take a few weeks to get down, then have at least three months on Tassie, hopefully, and then take our time to get home.

Barry: Okay, that’s a different one. Most people say, “I want to do a lap,” or “I’m going to go all the way up to the Cape and then down the middle.” But Tassie’s a great idea.

Blue: I was born in Tassie. Born in a little place called Burnie.

Barry: Oh, I know Burnie. Not been there, but I worked for the radio station in Burnie.

Blue: We moved when I was six years old. ’66, I think. We moved to the Gold Coast with Dad’s brother and stayed there for about 15 years. Then I went to Rocky and was going to go further, and then I met the love of my life. That’s as far as we got.

Barry: Where are you from, Jenny?

Jenny: Rocky.

Barry: You’re a pure Rocky girl.

Jenny: Pretty much. True girl.

Barry: What part of Rocky? North side or south side?

Jenny: You know Pink Lily, Alton Downs? It’s west, on the way out to the airport.

Blue: Near the Fitzroy River there.

Barry: My boy lived there for six, eight months, out on the Mount Archer side, ’cause it was close to the school where my grandson went. The only time I’ve driven is a couple of times through, on the way to Mackay and beyond. It seems a town of two sides.

Blue: Pretty well. It’s a division, isn’t it? The river divides everyone. And they’re in the process of putting another bridge through there.

Barry: And while we’ve got you: 2032. What do you reckon? Are they going to put the boat thing down the river or not?

Blue: No, I reckon they’d be mad to. A mate’s daughter is heavily involved in rowing, in the sculls. They’ve been state champions a couple of times. And he reckons it’s a great idea. And I said, “You need to have a think about what you’re saying here, because there really is no spectator area either side of the river. It’s just scrub and the river.” Surely there are other places out there that are more user-friendly.

Jenny: And there are better options to bring the Games to Rocky than the rowing.

Blue: ‘Cause let’s face it, at the Commonwealth Games they had the big rowing strip on the Gold Coast.

Barry: Use that. Play swapsies. Don’t get me started.

Blue: Everyone says it’s a good option, but I don’t think it is.

Barry: I’m beginning to wonder whether the whole Games is a bad option or a good option in the long run. But there you go.

Blue: Well, you always question that, don’t you? Nearly every time it comes around, you think, “Is this good or is it bad? Do we need to spend that sort of coin?” But, hey.

Barry: And then you bring it all the way back down to a tiny little place like we are now. How much Rob has spent on this place, and hours and hours of his time. It’s come back many times over, because people just keep coming back because of where we are.

Blue: That’s right. It is interesting. No, it’s a great spot.

Barry: You going fishing later?

Blue: Yeah. Been fishing every afternoon.

Barry: Good man.

Blue: I even caught something the first day, which is good.

Barry: Have you caught something since?

Blue: Not yesterday. They were small. Maybe today. Caught a doggie mackerel out there. He was breakfast, so he’s good.

Barry: There you go. So what work do you do?

Blue: I’m a builder in Rockhampton. Just my own business. My son’s been with me since he was 16, so when I pull out, he’ll take it over and run it the way he wants to run it.

Barry: You can only guide them, can’t you? And then away you go.

Blue: What more could you ask for? He’s pretty keen.

Jenny: He is keen.

Barry: That’s good. And what do you do, Jenny?

Jenny: I’m a propagator. I work at a plant nursery, Fitzroy Nurseries. It’s actually my family’s business. I’ve worked there since I was 15, just making thousands of little plants.

Barry: Little babies.

Jenny: Little baby plants. In charge of the babies.

Barry: Oh, there you go. How lovely is that? So the van. You’ve got a Snowy. A Snowy of how long?

Blue: 20 foot. One of those multi-terrain things. It’s good. It travels well.

Barry: Travels well behind that thing.

Blue: That’s a 2001 LandCruiser. Had that since new.

Barry: Since new? Lovely.

Blue: I bought it for work. When it’s not pulling the caravan, it’s pulling a tandem trailer. Probably about the same weight.

Barry: No problems at all with it?

Blue: No. Well, I’ve had to spend a bit of coin on it, tricking it up…

Jenny: How much is that going to cost you?

Blue: …so it’ll fly down the highway, but anyway.

Jenny: As long as we get to balance it out. Wink, wink.

Barry: Everything’s got to balance, hasn’t it? And if you can take a van like that down the highway to Tassie and it doesn’t give you any issues, away you go.

Blue: I think the only problem with Tassie is you have to nominate when you’re going to come back. I’d like to get the ferry. That’s not an issue, but what if you just want to tack another three or four weeks onto it and go longer? You’re committed, because you’ve told them when you’re coming back.

Barry: Is it a long time to book?

Jenny: Someone said a year ahead.

Blue: But I don’t think that’s the case.

Jenny: Well, we’ll discuss it by Christmas time and make decisions. But staying away any longer, for me in particular, is hard, because we’ve got little grandchildren, and you don’t want to miss that as well. You can’t be away too long. It’s special.

Barry: But long enough, because you’ve done everything for your kids. Now it’s your turn to do what you want to do.

Jenny: Oh, we’re keen. We’re very excited for the next step. Aren’t we?

Blue: Yep.

Barry: Chip down the corner, he did a trip around Tassie. He got down to Melbourne, and when he found out how much it was to take the van over, he costed it out. This is the story he tells me, and he doesn’t drink, so. He said it was cheaper for him to put his van in storage (I think he did four weeks or something, I’m not absolutely certain), go over on the ferry, and then hire a rig and drive around that way.

Jenny: Really?

Barry: Yeah. But then again, Chip came back and bought a boat and sailed up and down for years, so…

Blue: So it’s probably not an issue, is it?

Barry: It’s probably not. And he’s Welsh as well, so you can’t hold that against him. I’m still trying to get him to this table to talk about his life.

Jenny: That would be a good life.

Barry: There are lots of dirty stories, from what I understand.

Blue: So there’ll be a bit of bleeping going on.

Barry: Probably. Can’t tell you that story. I’ll cut that piece out. So, have you ever had any funny stuff happen?

Blue: Well, we’ve seen people camp in some funny places, where they don’t read the area where they’ve camped. We haven’t had that experience ourselves. Well, when I was younger we had that experience. We camped at a place called Killarney, on the way down. It’s close to the Queensland–New South Wales border.

Barry: This is you and mates?

Blue: Us and mates. We all got on the swill that night and thought it was a good spot, and it was a great camp spot, but then it rained that night and we woke up to water. I was nearly floating on the mattress. The whole campground was afloat with people and tents and God knows whatever else.

Barry: You’re not alone. I did it.

Blue: Did you? Well, there you go.

Barry: We put the door uphill. All the sides were up. And of course everything filled up and it couldn’t get out, because it was waterproof. When I was a wee pup, I spent the rest of our two-week holiday sleeping in the car.

Jenny: Oh, no.

Blue: That’s a hard lesson, that one.

Barry: And then that cost me money, because it blew the speakers in my car. My posh speakers. Back in the day they were paper cones, not the plastic they are now.

Blue: Like the resin or whatever. But no, we haven’t really had too many funny things happen. We’ve seen other things at campsites, where they’ve had their fly over something, and during the course of the day someone’s left the gas lighting on, and the whole campsite was alight. They were all right, but the whole campsite went up in flames.

Jenny: We’ve been to Blackdown Tableland when the kids were little. That’s a nice place to go. Not with a caravan.

Blue: That was a nice campsite. That’s just west of Rockhampton, just past Dingo.

Jenny: Bloody big goannas.

Blue: Big goannas. Oh yeah. They steal all your food. But we know they do that. And they get snarky too.

Jenny: But then you get people feeding them all the time. Raw eggs. Like, what are you doing?

Blue: Of course they’re going to come back. The signs are everywhere: “Don’t feed the animals. Don’t feed the birds.” And you still get these idiots who do it. Sorry.

Barry: No, no, no. Our owner here, Rob, he calls them knuckleheads. And they are.

Blue: No clue.

Barry: So you’re leaving us tomorrow. Where are you going?

Jenny: Home. Going straight home this time around. We’d come from Carnarvon Gorge. We’d only been away 10 days.

Barry: That’s enough. Enough of a bit of practice with your new van.

Blue: And we’d like to do more, but there are other commitments for the year, and me still being in the game, still putting the nail bag on and doing what we do. Then the son’s having another bub soon, end of August, early September. And then he’ll be gone for a while, so it’ll be fine for us again.

Barry: And then you can just go at the end of the year?

Blue: That’s it.

Barry: Been great to chat to you. Thanks a lot.

As the travellers move on, peace settles in, at least until the next character swings by, parks up and can’t resist sharing a tale or two from the road. You know, there’s always room for another yarn around here.

There are more Petes around here than socks with holes in them. That was Blue and Jenny. Pete and Marian return next time with their story together, which includes a lap of Australia.

Stopped for a While is brought to you by MacMouth Media. Music by Ben Clayton, and a tip of the hat to Rob Laffer, Serenity Caravan Park’s very own legend. If you’ve enjoyed spinning a few yarns with us, hit subscribe so you don’t miss the next one. You’ll find us at stoppedforawhile.com.au, plus Facebook and Instagram.

Now it’s time for another cool drink. Thanks for pulling up a chair at Stopped for a While.