Well we finally left!

Day 1 - in the beginning….

we thought this day was never going to happen - so much work getting to this point!
here is Keira posing in front of our home away from home just before our big journey….we got as far as Narrabeen on day one.  Paul was well meaning in doing a few more touch ups the morning we were to leave. Unfortunately, the colour of the paint WET matched the walls, the colour of the paint DRY, was about 3 shades darker.  So our lucky tenants now have 2 freshly painted bedrooms that weren't part of the plan that morning.  We got away early afternoon, put air in the tyres and off we went.  Narrabeen here we come!  For those of you who don't know the area, Narrabeen is about 10 minutes down the road from our house.  
Oh well, these things happen right?  Well day 2 saw us getting all the way to…..Penrith. Woohoo, living the dream!  We had a bolt in a tyre and thought best to sort it out before we continued on, so Penrith for 2 hours it was.  You will be happy to know that we made it as far as Hill End that day.  Hill End is an old mining town about 100km out of Bathurst  (for those of you who are V8 fans - we did a lap of glory at Mount Panorama in the caravan--as you do).  Hill End is very quaint and we stayed a few days to catch up on school work.  School work - the thorn in our side as Gary warned us.  I feel as if I am going to be constantly playing catch up with the school work.  If you have done a long term trip and had to home school, you will understand and most likely sympathise.  

So, we were off.  Feeling pretty good about myself that I managed to catch up on some school work and had a little rest.  Next stop Dubbo--back to civilisation. We spent a day at the Western Plains Zoo which the kids loved.   Again we stayed a few days. Partly to do more adjustments to car and van and partly to catch up on school work - aaarrrrggggg!!
Left Dubbo and headed towards Broken Hill where we are at the moment.  I quite like it here. We visited Silverton and went to some cool art galleries and the Mad Max museum. We are now about a week behind at least in school work - can you see a pattern here? Going to try and bribe the kids to do some today and the caravan is booked to go to rv mechanic tomorrow morn to check out some strange squeaking noises - see another pattern here?
From here, we are off to Lake Menindi for 2 or 3 days and then on to Adelaide by the end of the week.  We have all enjoyed our inland/outback journey and are equally excited to get back to the coast.  

 pic 1. mad max museum

 pic 4 kids first time swinging on a hills hoist

Love to you all,  
signing off for now,
the barnes' xo