Hi all

Rick here,

I'm just saying hello and introducing myself.

I'm about to joing the Nomad lifestyle around the end of the year. My wife want's to work for a few more years so initially I will be a solo Nomad and then eventually we will be Nomading together.

My travel will be in two different ways. My first method will be with a well set up 4WD and an off road camper trailer. I love old ruins and ghost towns and Australia has a great many of both. I also love the stillness and quiet of the outback and a warm campfire under a starry sky. Although I have a well equiped camper I often forsake it for a swag and camp stretcher.

My other way is by sail boat. I am not new to this and over the years have come to acknowledge that there are many nomads cruising our coastal waters and enjoying all that this diferent lifestyle has to offer. To this end I am looking for a smallish boat in the 32 foot range that is suitable for some extended coastal cruising. A cat would be great but the cost will probably rule it out. There are some good keelboats on the market and it is usually a buyers market.

I look forward to joining in the forums and hopefully saying hello in person to some of you at one time or another.

Cheers,   Rick.

Welcome to the forum.

Hope you enjoy your travels however it may be. 

My wife and I recently did a cruise trip around the Kimberley, fantastic scenery from both land/sea/air and something that many people will never get to see, some truley magnificent sights. 
Sometimes we have to take alternative modes of transport to see the real deal, I believe.

Good luck and travel safely.

Mark

welcome aboard rick make sure you make time

to smell the roses

      suenray

Welcome!

Hi, Welcome to the playground. Enjoy.

it seems that every has welcomed you to the forum but i want to ask you why is the wife not going with you 

you dont say your age and i understand about the wife wanting to work but how long are you going for 

can the wife not take a little time off or cant you go for short trips together or does she just want to travel?

still each to there own as life is to short one has to do what one has to do even if it does means traveling on your own its just a shame that you both wont be able to smell the roses at the same time so to speak

Hi everybody, thank you for the warm welcome. 

I am not actually a nomad at the moment, although I do travel quite a bit when I get the chance. I will be retiring in the next  6 to 12 months and start travelling soon after.

Fran and I have travelled extensively in the east and north of Australia for many years so we will probably concentrate on the south and west of Aus in our earlier travels.

I rode a motorcycle over to WA in 2010 for a Ulysses motor cycle club AGM in Albany and my only disappointment was that I wasn't in a 4WD to take advantage of the many tracks and trips that I wasn't able to do on a cruiser motorcycle. I had been to the west many times on business but not once taken the time (or should I say HAD the time) to enjoy a bit of sight seeing.

As I said in my original post, my wife wont be joining me in my original travels but will of course join me for a few weeks at a time a couple of times a year. She has a great Govt job that she loves and like some people, she never thinks we have enough money. I am sure that it wont be long before she decides to join me full time.

As for travelling on my own ? Well I'm fortunate enough to be able to be content with my own company when necessary. The only time I will REALLY be on my own is when I'm sailing as when I am travelling by road it's only a matter of saying "Hello" to get a conversation started.  I have done several trips of a couple of thousand miles by yacht on my own and with a few books and modern communication equipment you are only as lonely as you want to be.

My only reservation is that I don't like the cold (comes from living in the tropics) so I will have to either learn to live with the cold or pick the time I travel south. I worked in Europe for a number of years and had to put up with winters there so I guess I can do it in Aus.

Thanks again for all your welcoming comments.

Cheers, Rick.

Franrick, welcome, and good luck with your plans for the future.  If you want a good "ghost town" you cant go past Cracow, near Eidsvold in Qld, or Farina in South Australia, in fact if you love ruins, you can't bypass South Australia..

One ruin not all that obvious in SA was Saltia, in between Pt Augusta and Quorn where the Pitchi Richi railway line crosses the road to Quorn.

Before the railway, it was a stop for the bullock teams who watered their bullocks in Saltia Creek there and over time a small town sprung up there to service the teamsters and local farmers. 

All that is left there now is a sign where the road crosses the rail line and Saltia Creek, and the paddock on the south west corner near the road and rail line still has kerb and gutters that can still be seen today where the pub once stood, although the paddock is privately owned by a farmer and fenced off. 

One of my grandfathers was born there as were his sisters and brothers.  This link shows a couple of photos of how it was then, see;

 http://trove.nla.gov.au/result?q=Saltia&l-format=Photograph

See also this reference to Saltia from Quorn history;

• The school at Saltia was one of the first to open in the Quorn-Kanyaka district (1864).
• An average of 20 children attended the school daily in its first year.
• Most of the children would have been from families of teamsters whose homes were at Saltia.

Hi Dunmowin,

I know what you mean about South Aus. I have been down that way a few times and just look at the old ruins along the way and my mind just tries to conjure up what it was like to live in that era.

In my early days of roaming around Aus I just used to look and learn but these days I use a metal detector and learn a lot more.

I recently traversed the old coach road from Laura to Maytown in Queensland. The road (track now) was made in the  1870's to supply and access the Palmer region gold rush. It's so easy sitting in an air conditioned 4WD thats loaded with modern technology and crossing a track in four or five hours that used to take the old bullock wagons two weeks or more to traverse. In the four wheel drive you just climb for the first couple of hours and when you look at the track and the terrain you just marvel at the old pioneers and what they managed to accomplish. How easy we have it today by comparison.

In the gold rush days the prospectors used to walk in, many pushing wheelbarrows loaded with supplies and mining tools. Some were unfortunate and never completed the trip for a variety of reasons. Others made their way and made a fortune and others wished they hadn't bothered but each and every one of them helped open up the north. 

The cattle industry in the north of Queensland, as in many other parts of Australia was originally started to supply hungry miners with fresh beef. The Palmer River region at it's peek in the 1880's had over twenty thousand prospectors and others living in the region and they all needed food.

When you travel in this area today you are hard pressed to find any sign of their existence without old mining records and maps. Of course today the .net etc makes research a lot easier. There are still many old mine sites and old towns etc that haven't seen people in many decades. The old mining town of Maytown had curbed and guttered streets over 100 years ago and that's about all that remains of the old town today.

Thanks for your welcome,

Kind regards,    Rick.

Pleased to help Rick.  My Great Grandfather, Scottish born Hugh Kilpatrick, married Mary Perry from Kapunda (another interesting town, beaut little caravan park up on the hill behind the oval, but don't park under the pine trees if you don't want pine nuts falling on your RV/tent) and they raised their children at Saltia.

I found this newspaper article on Saltia dated June 1865;

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/39133133?searchTerm=Saltia&searchLimits=

A visit to Quorn visitor centre/historical society is well worth a visit, I had the privilege of meeting local Historian and Author Maureen McColl at her home there, not sure if she is still alive.  She has written several books on the area, see;

http://trove.nla.gov.au/result?q=Maureen%20McColl 

Here is some info on Quorn of past and more recent history;

http://www.postcards-sa.com.au/features/quorn_keith.html  

Hi Duh,

Thank's for that. It just goes to show how much our country has grown and changed. Thats another place I'll have to try and have a look at when I'm down that way. 

There are so many places to look. We have literally hundreds, and probably thousands of small settlements that no longer exist other than in the records of those that chose to write about them at the time.

The link you posted was great, not just because it showed clearly that Saltia was an important transport link at the time but the site itself is a host of information.

When I was in my late teens and early twenties I was growing up in western Queensland. One place we liked to visit was the "Wee McGregor" mines which was a deserted old mining area. When we visited the place we used to detour a few miles to go for a swim at a permanent waterhole. It wasn't until over 40 years later when researching the old mines in the area that I learned that the waterhole was called Fountain Springs and was indeed an old Afghan camp used to supply the area before roads and rail were used in the area. It was the only area for many miles that had year round water (it was spring fed) and so it became a crossroads for the many tracks servicing many (now deserted) mines in the area. To add to the story. I now work with an old bushie who's great grandfather was an Afghan camel train owner. It's a small world.

Thanks for your very interesting message.

Cheers, Rick.