Trip 55, part 1 – Opportunity

“a time or set of circumstances that makes it possible to do or achieve something”

That’s the Oxford Dictionary definition of “opportunity” and is the reason for this trip, which is gunna be a long one (fingers-crossed and touching wood). So buckle up and settle in for a new multi-part Trip 55 blog.

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Preface…

To catch everyone up, here’s the list of circumstances that enabled this opportunity:

• My job was made redundant in Oct 2025, so I was out of work. However, I also received a nice redundancy payout which meant if we were careful with cash, I didn’t actually need to work for about 6 months. Additionally, Jules wasn’t working either.
• Both Mads and Georgia are very settled, with great long-term partners and good jobs. And, both Mads and Georgia are actively looking for their own houses at present, which means we’ll lose our dog & house sitter when they both move out. And we expect that they’ll both start replicating and creating mini-humans, aka grandkids, in the near-ish future. But, until this happens, we have a dog & house sitter and no grandkid related things to tie us to home.
• And most importantly, neither of us is getting any younger. Luckily, we’ve both got our health and fitness, however, increasingly we’re learning of friends and family who are of similar age, but who are getting ill or in some cases have recently passed.

So, in summary… You only get one attempt at this life and we’d rather say “we did that and had a bloody great time doing it” versus going back to work until retirement age, some 5 to 8 yrs away still and then hoping that we’ve still got the above circumstances acting in our favour.

Here endeth the preface.

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Intro…

So, with some money and lotsa time on our hands, Jules and I decided to invest in another life adventure together, this time heading off to Tasmania for a couple of months. Following this, we’ll reassess our circumstances and if everything is holding even keel, we’re hoping to extend the trip by another month or three, doing ‘the lap’ around the top end of Australia to get back home.

As usual, we’ll post a record of our trip, sharing our highlights, challenges, stories and pics here. We love that people actually read and enjoy our blog and we look forward to your comments and feedback.

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Blog post…

Opportunity, part 1 – getting to the start.

Leaving home on Friday the 27^th of Feb 2026, we opted for an easy-ish, 3-day drive across the Nullarbor. Each of the first three day’s drive was about 600kms and we bush camped along the way, stopping the 1^st night just out of Higginsville, about 70kms north of Norseman. Night 2 at one of our favourite spots, atop the Madura Pass which sits 90 metres above the Roe Plain with endless views to the south, and night 3 at a new location, the old Cohen School Site, just east of Penong in South Australia.

Not much to say about the first couple of days, other than whilst they were spent mostly in the car, we still enjoyed the ever-changing scenery en route, we partook in the roadhouse specials of sausage rolls or egg’n’bacon toasties, we recrossed the 90mile / 140km straight road again, and we enjoyed chilling in the evening with a beverage whilst watching the sun set and the stars shine.

Day 4 was the start of the ‘slow’, and after a sleep-in and brekkie, we diverted down to Lake MacDonnell, just south of Penong, to view the Pink Lake. Unfortunately, the lake was very low in water and the weather conditions overcast, so it wasn’t as spectacular as it could have been. But, I managed to get the drone up for some pics.

From Penong, we then passed through Ceduna, completing the obligatory quaratine station inspection for fruit & veg, then restocked water, fuel and food in Ceduna before heading out to our chill destination for the next couple of days at Point Brown Observation.

Unfortunately for us, some might say “it sucks to be you guys”, upon turning onto the road to Point Brown, we saw a bloody big sign stating that it was ‘closed’… Further googling confirmed said closure as apparently the public road leads through private land, which the landholder has closed public access to, back in Jan 2025, due to people not respecting the beautiful location it is. Shit, bugger, poo – what to do.

Some re-googling and inspecting of various camping apps – noting that the WikiCamps app is now shite – we opted to instead head out to Chipenunda Common, a bush setting situated approx. 20kms inland from Smoky Bay. Apart from some boggy conditions at the turnoff, this was a nice and very quiet spot to crash for the night, well away from the noise of passing roadtrains on the highway of the last few nights.

That’s it for the first post of this trip. Things will start to slow down, with less driving and more sightseeing now, so we’ll see you in the next post. But before we leave, I wanted to share the following cartoon I randomly came across on Instagram the other day. It resonated with me and I thought it share worthy..