Day 1 / 2014 - Leaving Home and Caravan Service

After months of planning moving belongings into storage and living in the caravan parked in the shed for the last week and a half the day has finally arrived we are heading off. Today's plan is to drive to Mandurah get the caravan serviced then head to Benger for the night and catch up with Steve, Jen and the kids.

Leaving was always going to be a teary affair and it didn't disappoint. Anne had a few tears in her eyes as we drove out waving goodbye to our much loved family. Heading for Mandurah we drove up the Forrest Highway. The traffic was fairly light so we made good time despite having left home later than planned.

We had chosen Peel Caravan Repairs for two reasons, One we couldn't get into the caravan Doctor in Busselton despite trying to book last December and two they are the Retreat service agent. We liked the Caravan Doctor in Busselton as they do excellent work but the waiting time to get in is far to long. I am not sure how caravan'ers traveling through would be able to book in at Busselton unless they planned well in advance I think the Public health queues are shorter. Peel Caravan Repairs gave us a warm welcome and listen to our concerns over some of the small maintenance issues we had. Feeling confident we had made the right choice of service agent we un-hitched and headed into the Mandurah shopping district for some local shopping and lunch.

About 3 hours later the service centre gave a call letting us know our van was ready to be picked up. No major problems the only one out of service issue was replacing the Anode on the HWS.

After re-hitching the Van we made our way to Benger for the night meeting up with Steve, Jen and the kids. We parked the van out front under the shade of a row of trees. They very kindly took us out for tea at the Wokey pub. We ended up sleeping in their house that evening as we couldn't find the caravan bed buried under all the stuff on top of it.