Survival week 1

Well, we survived our first week of caravan life and haven't been voted off the island (c/park) yet.

As first time caravaners we are constantly learning things our new home. Firstly, we learned (or should I say reconfirmed) that the NSW Government will take any opportunity to squeeze money from people. We bought our caravan second hand caravan through a dealer and were well aware that we would have to pay stamp duty to transfer the registration from the previous owner to us. What we didn't know was that the poor dealer is also hit for stamp duty they take over the registration of the caravan even though they are merely acting as a seller. However, I'm sure this gets passed onto the buyer so we would end up paying stamp duty twice. So not only did Morris and friends collect $800+ in stamp duty from us for this caravan they also collected $300+ from the dealer for the same caravan. I won't even go into how repetitious the rego transfer form was.

Secondly, we learned that the caravan is quite watertight even with the 4 seasons roof hatch open in rain mode position (this leaves the roof hatch open just a bit to let air flow through). Late yesterday, there was a torrential downpoor while we were out so we crossed our fingers and hoped that we wouldn't come back to puddles of water. The only soggy things we found when we got back were the 2 towels hanging over the back bumper bar.

And lastly, we moved the caravan to be in a more level position today. We would have done this last week however no sooner had we got here, than another couple came in straight after us and parked where we needed to move to. It didn't matter as they left today so we have the whole area to ourselves (at least for today). Stephen did a fantastic job of backing the van up hill and relocating us down into just the right spot. I must say a big "thank you" to the person or magazine, I can't remember which, who suggested to getting walkie talkies to help with directing someone who is backing a caravan. It made the job so much easier. It takes a bit of practice not only to do the backing, but to give clear directions (not really my strong suit) AND operate the w/t but we got there in the end.

Now we are happily balanced in our new spot and will put up our awning tomorrow. That'll be another learning exercise (the guy from the dealership spent more time showing us how to put up the awning than anything else on the caravan and there were about 100 instructions to remember). We'll tackle that tomorrow - today we'll just enjoy where we are.