So Many Places... My (Aussie) Bucket List

Since picking up the bus in Mawson Lakes (ADL) in 2012, we have seen many places, and we still haven't seen 100th of Australia.

Nonetheless, I have a Bucket List for places I want to see in Australia. It includes:

• Pink lakes - any or all... there's one in WA, another in SA and another in I *think* Victoria. Or that could be NSW - it was dark and we'd been driving for hours when I spotted the sign.

• Any and all painted silos - we've seen a few of these and I'd really like to get to all the others. The one at Weethalle NSW was brilliant, as were Patchewollock and Brim Silos
  
  
  

• Fraser Island.

• I would LOVE to climb Uluru, but that won't happen. I'll settle for seeing the sun set over the Rock.

• The Sydney Opera House in the Festival of Lights.

• The Aurora Australis. Have to go back to Tassie for that: back to Cockle Creek!

• Ida Bay Railway. Went there as a child, it was in ruins; restored now.

• Puffing Billy again. Had a blast on my first trip.

•  Broome - Cable Beach. Pearls.

• Darwin.

• Kuranda Butterfly House. I loved the little one at Coffs Harbour.

• Mount Gambier again. Blue Lake (it really is that colour, no filters) and Umpherstone Sinkhole.

• Seal Rocks NSW. Beautiful; I'd love to go here again.

•  Murray River 3 or 5 day cruise on a paddle steamer. My Pop did one in the 80's and loved it.

• WA wildflowers.

• Coober Pedy.

• Melbourne again and again and again... Eating exclusively at Crossways (Krishna eatery).

• Great Ocean Road - again. Loved it the first time, even though we were sleeping on the seats of the bus with no AC in 40+ degrees.

• Werribee Estate - the gardens! The mansion!

• Exmouth WA - because I can.

• Mon Repos - baby turtles!

• A sugar cane burn - iconic Aussie experience.

• Ettamogah Pub - I will endure the Sunshine Coast for this.

• Kakadu because it is meant to be beautiful.

• Great Barrier Reef - another Aussie icon. 

• Tamworth - for Dad. 

This is a bit of a *cheat* post. I am writing it at 1 a.m. as I get ready to head out on a 2 week no-phone-no-internet muster. It is, nonetheless, my actual Bucket List, or at least, part thereof. And it gives me an excuse to look at my photos :) I'll schedule it to upload while I am away and get into a rhythm of proper posts once I am home again.

Welcome to the Mobile Madhouse Blog!

Hello there! So glad you stopped by.

I'm Rosie (Rosita) and I'm the only sane one in this place. Well, maybe sane isn't the right word - maybe 'least disturbed'...

This place is the Mobile Madhouse: me, hubs, a kelpie, a kelpie-dingo, a husky and a psychotic, sociopathic rainbow lorikeet. We have no set home, we travel and work. All the time, it's what we do.

Right now (November 2018) we are in the Maranoa region of Queensland, on 65,000 acres of red dust. It's a cattle station, and it is DRY! Well, sort of. We got 50mm of rain 5 days ago, and bits are starting to green, the dams are all at least half full and the livestock are happy; that's the story on the northern end of the place. To the south, even though it got 45mm, it looks much the same as it did before the rain, except the dams have more water in them; there is no green.

We (T and I) have been doing this since 2014; we sold up all our stuff and bought a bus in Adelaide in 2012. We drove back Melbourne along the Great Ocean Road, sleeping on the bus seats on the side of the road, seeing the sights and meeting some lovely people.

Back in Tasmania after a freezing trip back on the Spirit of Tasmania, sleeping in seats (never again), we parked up in our son's driveway, stripped out the seats and windows, put in a few cupboards, a table, a bed, lights and power points and hit the road. And then we made good our escape. We made sure to get a cabin on the Spirit when we did it - I meant it when I said never again! When we got to Melbourne, we flipped a coin and headed up the east coast to Queensland. I'll take you on that journey through photos at a later point.

Since then, we've rattled around bits of southern Qld, and spent 10 months in SA. We've been gifted another grandson (we already had one of those when we left Tassie), and two of our children have become engaged. The dogs and bird also came on board; the bird is a Queenslander, as is the kelpie. The kelpie-dingo is a Victorian (like T) and the husky is a South Aussie. In spite of our disparate backgrounds and vastly different personalities, we make it work.