2002/11 Australia trip - Ballina |
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Friday October 4th
After a 14 hour flight from LA to Sydney, immigration and customs was simple, but transferring to a domestic flight from Sydney north to Ballina was not. They have some new domestic terminals in Sydney and this required a bus, lots of walking, and three times through security. As I was carrying a computer and three cameras, lenses, flash, and umpteen rolls of film, the security clearance was a slow process. Even so, I had enough time to try out the cash machines, and found that our cards worked in Westpac Bank machines, so I didn’t really need all that US cash after all. The flight from Sydney to Ballina was late, but nobody from Qantas seemed to know what was going on. The staff worked in pairs so they always had somebody other than customers to talk to. The flight was good though, in a comfortable little jet, with some great views of the countryside north of Sydney.
Sandie met me at Ballina with her rented Hyundai. Our first stop was the Commonwealth Bank, for us to identity ourselves, and to get a large cashier’s cheque to pay for the campervan. As we’d been warned, our cash cards were still in Melbourne, but we’d be able to pick those up in a few weeks. Then we were off to see Clayton at Ballina Campervans. His Dad, Charlie, took us down to the registrar to license the campervan, using Sandie’s “rent” receipt to establish our residence in New South Wales. Much to our surprise, this all went smoothly. I guess Ballina’s small enough that all the business people know each other.
Clayton then gave us a quick tour of the camper, far more than we could absorb, but we hoped we’d be able to work it all out later. In his office, he had a couple of folding chairs that we liked the look of, and we ended 
up buying those too. We took the rental car back to Avis and then camped at Flat Rock in East Ballina, a run-down city campsite in a beautiful setting, right on the beach. We had a busy couple of hours organizing the shopping and suitcases into the camper. We knew we were sacrificing space for agility by choosing the Landcruiser, and now we were learning to cope with the restricted space. We were doing OK until I tried to move part of the bed that was still lashed down, and managed to pull a muscle in my back!
Saturday October 5th
Believe me. Moving around in a small campervan with a bad back is not fun! I also still had a painful shoulder from my horse-riding accident, and I had an infected black toenail on each foot from the previous weekend’s Marathon. This was a long night! It took me almost as long to slide out of bed and get vertical.
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As soon as we opened the doors, we had brush turkeys and ibis (big birds with curved 
beaks) rummaging 
around us looking for food. We fought them off and headed for the beach. It was nothing special as Australian beaches go, but it felt pretty good to us. Actually, the walk on the beach was painful, but it was great to be out in the sun and surf, especially as we’d be spending most of this vacation in the Outback.
Everything else packed together fine, but we had trouble getting the roof to seal neatly on the campervan, so we went back to Clayton, who explained that it doesn’t need to seal as the roof canvas is waterproof anyway. We’d planned to pick up a bunch of spare Toyota parts like belts and hoses, but the dealer’s parts desk was closed so we’d have to postpone that. The local 4-wheel drive shop was open, so we picked up a tree strap for the winch. The campervan has a power winch mounted on the roo bars, with the objective of pulling us out of sand or mud. Something we hope we don’t have to use!