These pages and the blog will be mainly about my 4WD trip around Australia. I am planning the trip over 4-5 years, and will spend about 3 months a year in Australia. The first part of the trip was done in 2018 between mid-May and mid-August, and took me from Melbourne to Darwin via Perth.
The trip is dedicated to my parents, John (Jack) and Margaret Harper. Dad instilled in me a love of the bush, and introduced the Harper boys to camping and bushwalking; I think our first bushwalk was in Wilson’s Promontory when I was 10 and Rob 8. My Mum wielded her home making skills in camp, and probably endured rather than enjoyed camping. Happy days, and a wonderful start to my life, and that of my brothers.
I am going to use the site to keep a journal of the trip, although I will keep individual posts short, and hopefully informative and at times amusing. I plan to post on: people met, places visited, routes and maps, thoughts on gear used, tips on 4WD (4-wheel driving), and observations on life, the universe and everything. I will throw in the occasional video, and make no apologies for any political incorrectness, profanity, etc. My site (group), my fucking rules!
Initially, I used a Facebook Group for recording my adventures, but this proved hard for people to follow, as comments changed the chronological order of posts. Therefore, I have decided to develop a bespoke website to record the trip(s), and indeed to display my photographs. I have moved much of the content from FB to here (or will in time) although sadly only a few of your (the readers’) valued comments. I will leave the FB group in place, and add posts there when something major changes here. My plan is to have a single blog post per day, which I will update “on the fly” (time permitting).
Each annual trip will have its own page describing the trip in broad outline, and showing the trip on a Google Map. Posts for all trips will simply accumulate in chronological order.