A short post to maintain our ongoing record of Goldy trips, the last being our annual pilgrimage to Augusta over the Christmas and New Year break.
With both Jules and I having spent a rather tiring year in Canberra this year (2019), we weren’t that inclined to be doing too much on our trip and most days were spent relaxing, reading or swimming.
However, an obvious change for this trip was the ‘new things’ we had. Luckily for us, Santa had come early and for this trip we had:
- New, larger camping sites, across the road from our old site;
- Our new car, “Gwavin” our Ford Ranger; and
- Most exciting (and demanding) our new dog, “Harriet”, also known as “Harry” or “HazMat” with respect to Hazardous Materials and the many and large barkers eggs she lays.
Let’s start with the camping site. The girls have taken the step this year and booked their own site, a few sites down from us, but in October of this year we received a call from Flinders Caravan Park offering us the two, very large and conjoined sites across the way. Unfortunately, the resident and long-term occupant of the site, Don, passed away this year after suffering from illness for the last few years and obviously his family have decided to break with tradition and not return. Whilst truly sad circumstances, as Don was a quiet and nice bloke who will be missed by many, we jumped at the chance to get the biggest sites in the park and we hope to honour Don’s memory by enjoying every minute of our time on them.
Next, there’s Gwavin, so called because his number plate starts with 1GWA, and we have a perverse thing for taking the piss out of on purpose lisps (much like Monty Python did). Whilst Gary, our incumbent Prado is still doing fine, we had been considering a car refresh for a while, plus Georgia was keen to use Gary. So after doing the maths and selling a kidney, we ended up with Gwavin. He’s a proud brand new 2019 spec Ford Ranger XLT, fitted out with all the ARB fruit I could think of and whilst being a luxury, we’ve worked hard over the last few years and we figured we may as well enjoy things, rather than stressing about what might happen tomorrow. Gwavin has all the fruit and essentially drives himself, so we can’t wait to take him on our next major trip – stay tuned for our 2020 trip announcement in the next month or so.
Finally, Harriet, Harry, HazMat, Hazzy or Shithead… As our friends know, our beloved Billy passed late last year (maybe he’s with Don?) and left us heartbroken. He was coming up 15years old and had had a great and loving life, but his health started failing mid last year and everything came to a head in September, when we made the decision to put him to sleep. That’s the 2nd dog I’ve owned and had to put down and they’re the hardest and saddest things I’ve had to do. However, in both cases I firmly believe it was the right decision to make as we never want our animals to suffer.
So, whilst dealing with our emotions over Billy, we had started thinking about getting a new Spoodle pup in 2020 and Jules was in touch with a local breeder friend. In parallel, Jules and the girls were keeping an eye on the rescue sites, and although one-week Jules and I both said we weren’t keen on a rescue dog, as you don’t know their history or problems, or in getting a female dog, as we’ve always had male dogs – 1 week later we had Harry. She’s a beautiful mongrel from Halls Creek with questionable parentage. Rescued and brought to Perth with her mum by SAFE, Jules found her on an adoption page, we contacted her foster carers. That night we met her and two night after that she was ours. She stole our hearts from right under our noses.
Georgia has started an Instagram page to store and share our pics of her (as we’ve been scrambling to find pics of Billy’s life with us), which is not coincidentally called “my beautiful mongrel”. She’s already got way more Insta followers than any of us, so it just goes to show that everyone loves a puppy.
As a mongrel the only thing we are sure of is not knowing what her lineage is, but we think it, at least, includes Rhodesian Ridgeback, Dingo and possibly Whippet. Jules has requested a DNA test so we’ll see what that tells us in a couple of weeks.
So, all in all a great way to end 2019. Camping, as usual, with our great friends, whilst we enjoyed our new and shiny things. Can’t wait to see what 2020 brings.
P.S. we can’t have a post without any pics, so here’s a few of HazMat.
