Travelling in a motorhome called “Blue Snoopy”

For the past five weeks, Blue Snoopy has been sitting idle in our driveway fully refuelled, water tanks filled, grey tank empty and the bed made but we have been unable to take advantage of the beaut weather that Sydney has experienced as “She” has been recovering from surgery.

On 18 August, “She” had surgery for a ladies complaint and we were told that recovery would take 6 weeks.  Since coming home from hospital, “She” has been taking things slowly and full recovery within the expected time frame now looks to be a reality.

Yesterday “She” successfully climbed into the motor home and was able to negotiate getting up from our bed which was expected to be a challenge.  Our planned trip on the NSW October long weekend now looks like it can happen.

One thing that we have been able to do during this idle period was to convert our toilet away from using harsh chemicals to a more environmental friendly solution (Bio-Magic).   Good news is that the chemical smell that was always around when you entered the motor home is gone and even the storage area where the chemicals were kept is now free of smell.  Fingers crossed that the new solution works.

Edit 6/10/09
Our “planned trip” on the October long weekend did not happen.  Blue Snoopy had been prepared for departure (tyre pressure checked, shore power connected and the fridge operational) however family issues caused us to cancel at the last moment.  We will now have to wait a couple more weeks before we can get away.  Damm shame having Blue Snoopy sitting in the driveway idle!

Edit 20/10/09
Refer post for trip to Blue Mountains on 17 October 2009.  Blue Snoopy is now back on the road.

It was raining when we awoke and the forecast was for isolated showers during the day.  At 9.45am we were at the Ballarat Gold Museum before going into Sovereign shortly thereafter.

Sovereign Hill is a wonderful replication of the early days in Ballarat when the city survived on gold.  The displays covers both alluvial mining and the latter deep mining of quartz to recover the gold.  We visited two mines, watched a majority of the displays, took several hundred photographs and generally had a good day. One of the displays involved the melting and then pouring of a gold ingot said to be worth $141,000.  A replica mine has been created on the site and this was the highlight of the visit.

Our friends had arrived from Melbourne when we returned to the caravan park and after a long happy hour, we had a BBQ, watched Underbelly and then headed to bed.  More showers are forecast for tomorrow.

This site is about the travels of a motorhome called “Blue Snoopy”, currently a Winnebago Leisure Seeker 2334SL Motorhome on an Iveco 50c18 truck body and chassis. The vehicle was constructed in March 2008 by Winnebago Industries in the outer Sydney (NSW Australia) suburb of Emu Plains and purchased new by us from The Sydney RV Centre at Narrabeen NSW in August 2008.  For those who do not know, Winnebago IS an Australian company with its roots dating back to 1965 when Bruce Binns and his wife Ruth introduced the first slide on camper to Australia.