I must admit that I wasn’t originally planning to do any more “annual review” type posts past the original two already posted (The first 12 months and 2 years; and still on the road), but Reen convinced đłme that I should!! Here we go…
Reen’s overall summary of her year is that she’s generally started to actually feel well as she continues to recover/heal, and consequently has really begun to enjoy life on the road more than she had been.
For me, I think that my overall impression is that we’ve seemed to travel more this last year than in either of the first two. Reen noted as we were thinking about this review that all of the “trips” this last year had been centred around visiting family, and of course we still had quite some time in Sydney with our grand/kids đ
Year 3 highlights
- Not so much a “highlight” for the year, but certainly notable: Reen’s brother Brett passed away in May 2025, see her reflection Memories of My Baby Brother;
- Catching up with Geoff, Lois and Lyndell up around Port Macquarie as we had a week or so up that way;
- The Great Ocean Road, the Flinders Ranges and seeing water in Lake Eyre on a scenic flight; as a part of our overall 107 day loop around three states (so big that the trip record’s in two partsâPart 1, and Part 2);
- On that same trip, spending time with so many of my rellies that we’d not seen for yonks, including Karen, Phil and families, Gavin, Sarah and family, Uncle Ross and Chrissie, Uncle Malc and Auntie Raelene, Malvern and Lyn and family, Grantley and Dale and family, Anthony and Tabitha and familyâand probably more that I cannot bring to mind just now, my apologies…
- A weddingâReen’s niece Graceâin Newcastle in November.
Changes/improvements to our 5R
As we continue to adapt to living in our mobile luxury unit, we find little things to make life easier and more comfortable. This last year these additions include:
Diesel heater: after the trip along the Great Ocean Road in winter, we came back and decided to have a diesel heater installed (in summer!!) Haven’t used it “for real” yet, but we certainly will (I’m writing this at Stanthorpe, in June, and it’s rather chilly đ„¶).
Bedroom fan: as a counterpoint to the above, we’ve also added a 12v wall-mounted fan to the bedroom.
12v Kitchen Outlet: somewhere along the track we picked up a 12v sandwich press, so needed an Anderson Plug outlet in a convenient location in the kitchen for it. It works really well and is remarkably versatile; does a good job with sausages, for example.
UV water filter: reasonably early on Reen discovered that she wasn’t dealing very well with the changes in drinking water as we moved around. We did buy a distiller, which worked well and sorted the problem, but was a bit of an impost to use continually. We fell back to using bottled water, again solved the issue but the cost does add up and it does still add a layer of inconvenience. We’d looked at a filter setup including a UV steriliser at the Rosehill RV show in 2025 but hadn’t bought it; we took advantage of some “downtime” in Newcastle to go to the RV show there in January and buy it.
Starlink: we’ve had a standing offer from Joel to use his (old v2) Starlink dish on the table, but have always previously been concerned about the plan pricing. When we received an offer from SpaceX for a 50G per month (since upped to 100G) plan at half-price for two years, we decided to take it up. With assistance from Richard, we ran a network lead from the router to the kerb-side rear external hatch and installed a 240v GPO in there to run the power/connection brick. I added a careful notch to the bottom of the door for the cable and fixed rubber feet to the legs of the the dish. Putting it up/down each stop is a little painfulâideally I’d like to swap to a “mini” but Starlink have tied the discount plan to the old hardware đ. Even so, it works really well as is!
Perch for Xena: Xena, our younger TC, loves looking out of the 5R and seeing what’s going on around us. She would often sit on the back of Reen’s lounge, but if *anything* interesting was happening she could not stop swishing her tail, slapping Reen in the process đ€Ł. To give her another option, we installed a shelf above the towel rail across the end window of the slide-out. Added a carpet off-cut and she’s one happy little kitty đ±
Folding clothes drier: one of the perennial life-on-the-road problems is drying your washing. We have a portable fold-up line for outside, and a line we can put onto the awning arms, but sometimes stuff is best inside… Somewhere along the track (maybe a Bunnings magazine??) we found a folding airer. It fits perfectly in our shower and opens out to provide about 4m of rails for washing. It’s occasionally annoying to have to move stuff to shower in the morning, but a very small inconvenience overall compared to the added value.
Reviewing the points made over the last years
… with a little commentary against each one as appropriate.
- Driving in our truck is just like, well, riding in a truck: yep, hasn’t changed, but I think we’ve become much more accustomed to it. When we go back into a “normal” vehicle at any point we both generally notice how low it is!!
- This combo is big, really BIG! yeah, this one hasn’t changed either (did you really think it might??) but, as we said last year, we’re pretty well OK with it (and see #7, below also).
- Plan, plan, plan and plan some more; but expect change: yep, this is still a fact of (our) life. For example, partway into the big trip noted above we realised that we were rushing things too much and needed to slow down a bit (OK, this is covered in #6 below too!!). As such we re-jigged our itinerary and by-passed a whole section (Yorke Peninsula) that we’ll need to head back to some other time.
- Any cupboard door that can open will open: they still do occasionally, as catches stick, jam or break, but usually not quite so catastrophically as the first few times!
- Live small and live tidy: we continue to stand by this as a principle, and I think we are gradually becoming better at actually doing it. We find ourselves questioning “why” before we buy anything much more than we ever used to and are much more attuned to having less “stuff”.
- Live a little slower: we continue to learn this, maybe by the time we’re ready to give-up the road lifestyle we’ll have it nailed! We’ve worked out (see #3, above) that generally around a week is a pretty good stay-over in any new place we visit to allow up time to see whatever is around to see and still rest a little and do all of the housekeeping stuff that needs to be done wherever you happen to be living. If we’ve got people to see or specific things to do, then staying a bit longer is good; conversely if we’ve been there a time or three then maybe only a couple of nights is about right (I think I’ve said before that we really don’t like single-nighters!).
- Practice makes perfect: well, maybe not perfect just yet, but still a lot better than we were (and being tired from a hard day can take a notch out of that pretty quickly!) As noted in #2, above, we’re both getting reasonably comfortable with what needs to happen to manoeuvre the whole lot around to where it needs to be.
- All our stuff weighs A LOT! we’ve not re-weighed since that first time (maybe a *little* scared đ ), but as noted in #5, above, we’ve been working on not getting as much and have been actively disposing of some of the stuff we initially had (e.g. ripped and gave away a pile of LPs and are getting towards the end of scanning and binning our photos). I kinda feel that we’re currently OK for weight, but can’t really quantify that at the moment.
Final thoughts on our third year
I was planning to write quite a bit more but this is pretty long already , so we’ll close off with some final thoughts summarising how we feel.
Reen’s summary…
This year I’m really enjoying:
- not needing to move the coffee machine on travel daysâDean put some hooks onto the wall and we just fasten it in place with a small strap;
- my (our) electronic photo frame up on the wall in front of my loungeâthere’s currently about 150 pictures and space for plenty more, so it never gets boring;
- the travel and finding/exploring new places, seeing more and more of our wonderful country;
- finally feeling wellâwe’ve both lost about 10kg since Christmas and, along with my overall recovery, that seems to have helped.
Dean’s summary…
For me, this yearâespecially our long tripâre-affirmed that I love life on the road. No lawns to mow (unless I’m helping out somewhere), no house (as such) to maintain/extend1, and a constantly changing environment to see and explore and enjoyâincluding my absolute favourite, small country towns đ€©