Apparently This Is How We Move Interstate

Getting Shaun back from the dealership should probably have been the point where things settled down.

It wasn't.

Although, to be fair, nothing actually broke for a little while — which, as we would later learn, counts as a very successful period in our travels.

With Shaun updated and apparently no longer interested in displaying warning lights, we continued our very unconventional move from Victoria to Queensland.

Col was still working, which meant flying in and out depending on where he needed to be.

I was still living in Loki with Wal and Cheech.

And somehow, somewhere along the way, I'd become the person responsible for getting all of us from one place to another.

Including the caravan.

Just me, two dogs and a caravan

On one occasion, Col was away for work and needed to be picked up from Griffith Airport.

Now, the obvious solution would probably have been to leave Loki in Hay, drive to Griffith, collect Col and come back.

But we were moving on anyway.

So I packed everything up, hitched Loki to Shaun, loaded Wal and Cheech into the car and headed off to Griffith by myself.

This may not sound particularly remarkable to seasoned caravanners.

But at the time, hitching up a 15-foot caravan on my own, checking everything, loading two dogs and driving off to collect my husband from an airport felt like a fairly significant achievement.

There may have been a small amount of:

Look at me go.

😂

Col safely collected, we headed for Parkes, where we were going to spend some time visiting his dad.

And somewhere between Hay and Parkes, Loki decided it was time to contribute to the trip.

We opened the fridge.

Something wasn't right.

The fridge hadn't been running while we were driving.

We discovered this courtesy of the milk.

There are various sophisticated ways of diagnosing a caravan electrical problem.

Chunky milk is not one I'd recommend.

😂

This made absolutely no sense to us.

Only a few months earlier we'd had a whole new battery setup installed in Loki — lithium batteries, an inverter and Victron solar. As far as we knew, everything should have been working beautifully.

Except apparently the fridge hadn't received that memo.

We had no idea why it wasn't running from the car while we travelled, and neither of us had enough knowledge of caravan electrics at that stage to work out what was going on.

So we did what any sensible people would do.

We threw out the milk and kept going.

After spending some time in Parkes with Col's dad, we moved on to Dubbo, where we parked Loki in Col's brother's yard and stayed for about a week.

While we were there, we got an auto electrician to have a look at the fridge problem.

Surely he'd find it.

He didn't.

He couldn't work out why the fridge wasn't operating while we were driving either.

Everything looked like it should work.

It just... didn't.

So we carried on.

At this stage, the fridge worked when we were camped, the rest of Loki seemed fine, and we had places to be.

We didn't know it then, but chunky milk was our first little clue that Loki's electrical system had a story of its own coming.

And that story wasn't finished with us yet.

Apart from a fridge with commitment issues and the mysterious case of the chunky milk, things were remarkably calm.

No warning lights.

No tow trucks.

Nobody had broken anything important.

We probably should have known it couldn't last.

North we go

From Dubbo we continued north, stopping at Goondiwindi before eventually making our way to Willowbank, just outside Brisbane.

By this stage we'd travelled a fair distance with Loki and were getting pretty comfortable with the whole routine.

Pull in.

Find our spot.

Get level.

Unhitch.

Set up.

Easy.

Except Loki apparently felt we'd become a little too confident.

While we were taking the van off Shaun at Willowbank, Loki suddenly jumped sideways.

Not dramatically enough to disappear down the road.

Just dramatically enough to bend the brace holding our Gator jack.

Of course it did.

So off came the Gator jack.

Out came the old jockey wheel.

Problem solved.

Reasonably uneventful, really.

Our definition of “uneventful” was already beginning to change.

Next stop: Sherwood

After Willowbank, we had one more night before heading into Sherwood, where we'd arranged a six-week house sit.

This was going to be good.

A house.

Space.

A proper kitchen.

A yard for the dogs.

And, most importantly, six whole weeks where we weren't packing up a caravan every few days.

Getting Loki into the property was a little tight, but we managed it without destroying the van, the house or anything belonging to the neighbours.

At this point, that qualified as an excellent arrival.

We settled in.

Col worked.

Wal and Cheech made themselves at home.

And for a while, life became almost suspiciously normal.

Then one evening, Col and I went out for dinner with friends.

Wal and Cheech stayed home.

What could possibly go wrong?

Yes.

We really should have stopped asking that question.

Enter Cheech

When we arrived home, we discovered that Cheech had apparently decided the house needed some renovations.

Specifically...

the screen door.

He had chewed through it.

Not scratched it.

Not put a little hole in it.

Chewed through the bloody screen.

This was not our house.

We were house sitting.

There are few things that make your heart sink quite like coming home to discover your dog has modified somebody else's property without first seeking approval.

Cheech, naturally, appeared to have no concerns whatsoever.

I, on the other hand, had a screen door to fix.

And it was at this point that another member of our travelling party emerged.

Not Tara the former justice worker.

Not Tara the caravanner.

Not even Tara the woman who had recently hitched a caravan by herself and driven off with two dogs.

No.

This was...

Handywoman Tara.

😂

I worked out what we needed, replaced the damaged screen and got the door looking respectable again.

Crisis averted.

House still standing.

House-sitting privileges hopefully intact.

Cheech remained completely unrepentant.

And once again, we'd managed to turn what should have been a fairly straightforward part of our move north into another story.

But the truth was, despite the engine light, the tow truck, the mysterious fridge problem, the bent Gator brace and Cheech's brief career in home renovation, things were actually going pretty well.

We were in Brisbane.

Col was working.

We had somewhere comfortable to live.

And our house in Melbourne was under offer.

Finally, it felt like all the pieces were starting to fall into place.

The house would sell.

We'd buy in Brisbane.

Our furniture would come up from Melbourne.

And life would settle down again.

That was the plan.

You can probably guess how that went.