A Day in the Life of Sacha on the Road

This is an entry written for myself. This is my journal, afterall. Please call back for the next entry, which will be back to normal, I promise!

I made a comment on Facebook last night about being exhausted and that I was only now finding the time to read any books. Mum and Dad told me that my friends might take offence to that, having been at work all day, then having to deal with children and cooking and washing AFTER work. I read their message out to Dunc who looked up at me, with grotty clothes and messy hair and utterly exhausted eyes and said “But this IS hard work!!”

And it is. Admittedly all by choice, and we can sleep in as long as we want to, and we don’t HAVE to do anything, I guess. But we are still completely wrecked at the end of every single day.

My day starts at 6.45am pretty much. I can hear Angus wake up and then I don’t get back to sleep. This morning I was worrying about the awning, which we had left out and I could hear the wind was pretty strong. So then I’m awake. Angus comes in for cuddles, and I try desperately to stop the kid from talking and waking up Duncan. Eventually sometime after 7am I get up and Angus and I have our quiet morning time out in the ‘living room’ of Bertha. I make a cup of tea and he plays on his ipad, watches TV if we have the magic two ingredients (power AND reception) or writes in his journal. I write this blog at those times.

Eventually Lexie and Dunc join us and we have breakfast. We often need to be somewhere by 10am for a tour or on the road by 10 if we are moving, so it’s a quick load of dishes after breakfast and we are off. If we are staying put, I like the kids to do their schoolwork in the mornings. Dunc has a leisurely breakfast and the all-important coffee and its just easiest to wait until he’s done to start school, so we often start at 10am. I had visions of saying “turn to page 6 and do that” and having the kids work independently… Lexie does that, but Angus not so much. Not at all really. I have to be there nagging and/or helping him. Though he has improved recently, I am still required to be there for the whole time. I tend to do the morning dishes, or sort some washing, or scrub the cooktop, or tidy the tourist leaflets that accumulate in the corner of the couch. I seem to have become some sort of unwilling domestic goddess… Anyway. I do something that can be interrupted a million times while the kids work.

Our days are busy when we are not moving Bertha. We tend to be out and about a LOT. We have been to 6 different museums in the last few weeks alone. Sometimes we eat lunch out as a treat, often we will pop into an IGA, Woolies or Coles for a $4.20 bag of bacon and cheese rolls, and if we are in Bertha we will have a ‘nibblers’ lunch of tomatoes, cucumber, cheese, salami, crackers, dried fruit, etc. Sometimes the kids will make those lunches.

Then its some baking, because we are eating sooooo much better than previously. I rarely buy sweet biscuits anymore, as we don’t snack. Its just morning tea and afternoon tea and meals, so I do a fair bit of baking (which results in more loads of dishes).

Then its time for dinner, which I cook about half the time, even though I really hate that sort of cooking (I’m a baker, not a cook). Driving Bertha takes a lot of concentration, and parking her is often awkward so I like to give Dunc a night off cooking if he’s been driving. We tend to eat at about 7.30ish, which kind of sucks. If we eat earlier, I can get the kids to do the dishes. Most of the time, by the time we finish, its 8pm or later and the tired children have to go to bed to read. Which means at 8.30pm I start the last load of dishes. After which, I tend to sort through photos on the laptops and compress them for the blog. I upload posts at night and tend to go to bed at 9.30pm. I read through Facebook on my phone, as I am part of 2 different groups for families who are travelling Australia. It takes a while to catch up, so by then I am falling asleep and haven’t even picked up my book!!

Dunc has a very different day to me. He wakes at 8.30 or at 9am when I send Angus in to give him a cuddle. He either drives Bertha or has some part of Bertha that he is working on. In the last little while, he has installed a washing line, replaced the inverter, added a vent to the toilet, replaced the seal on the toilet, removed all of the batteries, made some groovy little locks for the top hatch and connected a new air hose fitting. He is constantly busy and whatever he does tends to require crawling around under the bus resulting in more washing!

We seem to have gravitated to very 1950s gender roles, though he DOES help with the kid’s schooling, the washing and dishes. And cooks a lot. But really, he’s responsible for outside, and I am responsible for inside.

Because he sleeps later in the mornings, he is not ready to sleep when I am, so he tends to stay up late watching telly (if we have it) or playing on Facebook or on the iPad. And because he was up so late in the night, he sleeps late in the mornings… and so on and so on!

Friends and Fun Times in Freo

Fremantle is a gorgeous town. There are sculptures all over the place and a wonderful quayside area. We were awaiting delivery of a part which, thanks to a train derailment was taking rather a TOLL. (ha ha ha.. see what I did there??!)

We had the WORST parking experience ever. We did the usual checks over the phone (“Can you fit a 40ft coach with a 6m trailer – we are 19m in total?”) and Dunc even did his usual walk through before we even drove into the joint. But there was one little teeny tiny retaining wall that made life hell. After a good 45 minutes of reversing and forwarding, MANY swear words from Dunc and lots of helpful good thoughts from the neighbor, the maintenance man was called to remove one paltry little brick. He wasn’t too keen on the idea, and got Dunc and Bertha to dance back and forth a few more times. He very quickly realised it wasn’t going to work and happily kicked the brick loose. Yet again we had maintenance men swearing at the office staff for putting us in an unsuitable site. We really should ask to speak to the maintenance men in future…

Not long after we were finally settled, the children had their day made when a caravan pulled up next door with the family from Margaret River on board! And about an hour later, the OTHER family from Margaret River (the ones we had only just seen in Karrinyup) arrived as well! They were all going to Rottnest Island together, and it meant the kids could all play for a few days – yippee! The weather was very second-rate and I didn’t want to spend a fortune going to Rottnest Island in the rain, but in the end their day was mostly okay. We probably should have gone afterall – doh!

We spent our time wandering Freo and eating out at Little Creatures (yummy) and Cicerellos (very disappointing – the children’s fish and chips had NZ fish!? Really?! In a town renowned for fishing?) and checking out the sights. We went to:

The Docks where they have a lovely sculpture to celebrate the original fishermen

The Fremantle Prison, which was operational until 1991. VERY interesting!

The Shipwreck Gallery, where we learnt all about the Batavia

The Maritime Musuem, where we saw the Australia II and had a tour in a submarine

Our new inverter arrived only one day later than we thought, though Dunc DID have to drive to the other side of Perth to collect it. He combined that with a catch-up lunch with Jerry on his way to the airport, so it all worked out rather perfectly in the end. I shall get Dunc to do a ‘guest post’ about the inverter, but safe-to-say he installed it in one day and has been a very happy chappy ever since.

A quick stop at Gin Gin

We checked out of Karrinyup on the Sunday, giving Mum and Dad the chance to participate in the loading of Baby Bertha, the unloading of the black water tank, to “have a ride in the bus” and to watch us pump $1500 worth of diesel into her tanks! We found a fantastically cheap petrol station and filled her to the click for the first time ever. We are hoping that might get us somewhere near Broome??

Mum had arranged for us all to catch up with Rene and Christobel before he jetted off to the Architecture Biennale in Venice. Rene is like my cousin, for want of an easy way to describe our relationship. We met for lunch at their beautiful house in Gin Gin, giving us the chance to admire the architecture, the amazing property and to eat their delicious cooking! Dunc managed to squeeze Bertha into a spot near the house and we ended up staying overnight, even though Rene and Christobel went home to Fremantle after lunch.

We had a wonderful afternoon, and Christobel made Angus’ day by taking him on the quad bike. Angus was rather jealous of Max’s quad bike, which he described as a “Big mini quad, Mum” “You mean a quad bike. Its just a normal quad, Angus.” “No! It’s bigger than our mini quad, but smaller than a quad. Maybe its a medium quad!” Sadly Max wasn’t at Gin Gin, and her quad battery wasn’t happy, so we were confined to the normal quad. Which, considering the rate these kids have been growing at, wasn’t an issue in the end!

We waved Rene and Christobel off, and then had a lovely quiet evening. The kids had a shower and Lexie was able to wash her hair (Neither Lexie nor I will wash our hair on Bertha. We are NOT going to contribute any hairs to her hairball issues!!) We raided Christobel’s veggie garden and had some yummy corgettes and aubergines, because the children don’t really like zucchini or eggplant, though the ratatouille seemed to go down quite well.

The next morning we swept the house out and prepared to say goodbye to Mum and Dad. I’m not quite sure how I ended up with a whole house to sweep - I rather like my 5-minute cleaning routine on Bertha! Thankfully I had some helpful assistants…

The kids took me on a quick spin around the boundary before we packed up, which was also heaps of fun. Our time in Gin Gin was a blissful break. We bid farewell to Mum and Dad who headed to Margaret River and then back to Melbourne, while we headed to Fremantle to await delivery of a new inverter Duncan had ordered to replace the original one in Bertha, which was driving him mad.