If “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”, then surely a trip of some Forty odd thousand kilometres starts with a similarly ambitious trip of 4.5km, to the nearest campsite to our home in Mona Vale, the very pleasant Lakeside Caravan Park in Narrabeen.

Remembering, but paying little attention to our 80% packing rule, we loaded the van with seemingly as much stuff as we could find, threw the rest that we found into, or on top of the car, and headed off on Monday 19^th January 2015 (somehow having the full date in here makes it somewhat more official).

Oh what a feeling!

Denver and April and the official naming ceremony

Detouring to my old work at FUJIFILM in Brookvale we did our best pied piper impersonation, dragging everyone we met upstairs to the back dock (where I had strategically already turned around to allow us to drive straight out)..

Strategically positioned for an easy getaway!

Numerous tours (both inside and out thanks to Denver’s “you’ve seen the inside, but have you seen the outside! tour guiding) , good wishes and last minute pieces of advice later, we were off – for our first live reversing “opportunity” since the day we spent on the skid pan at the driver training centre in St Ives with my new reversing mate Paul (pictured here).

Paul the Tow-ed trainer and me at the end of the day!

With Denver adding pressure by telling the campers next door “my Dad’s an excellent reverser” I managed to get in in somewhat straight and level to the satisfaction of the onlooking crowd (not because we are famous or anything – more like they wanted to see if the guy in the shiny new car with the shiny new van actually knew what he was doing!). Parked, unhitched and well on our way to making our first new friends – job done I say!

Narrabeen has been a great way for us to test (and return some of the surplus 20%!) as well as have those final goodbyes to all the friends and family we will be missing along the way. After a wet start (a common theme amongst our holidays!) we got to enjoy the water park and some of the local attractions.

Water park at the campground

If your reading this blog our doors are always open (figuratively speaking!) and we would love to have you share some of our journey along the way. We will post regular updates so you can keep up to speed, but also plan where to intersect our journey – all are welcome at anytime!

Next stop Culburra, 10km from Nowra (34.9333° S, 150.7667° E for the more technical of you!)…