Just call me Holly T-Bone Ten Shot Allen

There are rain clouds above, yet still no rain! Usually it'd be a bad thing, for it to rain while Dave is skating...but he's not, as of yet!

He sat us all down last night and told us he wouldn't be skating today, and that he would actually be having a day of elevation. (his foot). The whole team breathed a sigh of relief. None of us want an infected foot. It'd be BoardFree uk all over again. And no one likes a smelly infected foot, lets face it! Especially with us all living and sleeping within such close proximity of each other!

The title has evolved from one evening of devouring a T-Bone steak, when the chance at trying to join the boys in a 20kg steak eating competition was stolen from me...i still have the tee shirt, but never the less, i've aquired the nick name T-Bone or T-Bone Allen! The ten shot is a more recent nickname i picked up during a game of minigolf.
For Dave's birthday he took us all (including the lovely pilot from Nullarbor) to a place called The Beachouse. What a place. Everything you wanted when you were a kid but either wasn't allowed to do, or missed that birthday party because you had chicken pox...you know the deal! Arcades, water slides, water bumper boats, dodgems, ice cream, minigolf...the list is endless! We all god 38 credits and tried to win as many tickets as we could to win prizes. In the beginning of the golf game, i was doing well, i was getting holes in one, and two shots! Very good considering my hand/eye coordination! Then came the seventh hole.....i have a hockey swing so i'm told...i push the ball rather than 'tap' it! And i pushed the ball all the way back over to hole four! Oooops. Start again! Long story short, i didn't get the ball in and told Dave to put me down as having ten shots. Then it happened again and i lost my temper with the golf apparatus by kicking the ball and throwing my club on the ground stomping my feet and repeating, 'i don't like this game anymore'. Needless to say, i came last. My opinion is that i got the highest points so it's not all bad!

Hopefully setting off tomorrow, as i say, depending on Dave's foot. The team gutted the vans yesterday and layed all of our kit and rubbish on the lawn of the house belonging to the lovely Dierdre and Bob! My goodness, what a mess. It was horrific. SEeing how much stuff we had. Although now we've got a new roofrack on George so hopefully, less clutter in the vans! I cleaned George out top to bottom. First the rubbish, then the important stuff, then everybodies clothes boxes, then the bedding and finally matresses. I swept out the floor, then re loaded everything. I get great satisfaction from tidying! And now, george is so pretty!

We had a tough time in Adelaide at first. But i've grown to like it here. I'm sad that we're leaving but i want to get back on the road. I think we all do. Who knows, i might even come back here one day.

Forgive me for the neglecting of my blogs.

Holl

No title as of yet

It’s Wednesday 4th October at One o’Clock in the afternoon. We’ve finished for the day already after a 70 something KM day from Poochera to Wudinna.

Dave’s pushing himself. I’m not sure whether he’s pushing himself too hard but his spirits seem to be high still so we’ll carry on taking each day as it comes.

A great deal has happened since I last blogged and the reason for the lack of blogs as you will probably already know is because we’ve been on the Nullarbor.

As of last Friday we finished the Nullarbor, a week sooner than we’d expected too!
The weather at the moment is exceptionally hot. Yesterday it was 35 degrees celcius and today was heading that way until the clouds and wind came over us.
I can’t even begin to go through all that’s happened, partially because my arms wouldn’t be able to handle typing it all out!

I’m going through today’s photo’s and we’ve just been shown the Road to South Australia video for the web. I cried. It just summed it up, well and truly. Most of the team were pretty choked and I know that Dave was almost overwhelmed by it.
I haven’t seen the photographs that Dave’s been putting on the website yet so it’ll be interesting to see the website….it’ll be completely different from the last time we all saw it. When you look at it every day you don’t notice the little things that change!

All the boys shaved their beards/handlebar moustaches off at Ceduna and looked like a bunch of 15 year olds!

We met so many different people in Ceduna. After putting Dave in a parade and giving nearly 97% of people there leaflets we went fundraising around the Oyster Festival and managed to raise a fair bit of $’s.

As always, the kindness carries on in Southern Australia and tonight we’re staying at the Mobil Motel which has kindly been given to us for free by the owners who’ve ALSO offered us a free dinner each. Last night we stayed in actual Caravans at Poochera Caravan Park/Motel, and previous nights have been spent in the bush, parking spots, caravan parks or motels too.

I’m not feeling too great in terms of health. Last night was super hot and I woke up this morning with a sore throat, funny nose and a bit of a stuff head….typical, in the heat, I get a cold! Again nurse McKinlay had a poke of my neck and told me I had a ‘fat face’ from my glands being up. It made me giggle.

At a road house at some point on the Nullarbor or maybe even before it, Dimitri and I wrote some lyrics for a BoardFree song. A few weeks ago Bev used the words and came up with the melody for it and it’s absolutely breathtaking and so fitting!

We’ve got a new bike, which I tried out yesterday. I couldn’t go very far as it’s too small for me so fingers crossed we get a new wheel for the old racer. Everyone is having a great time exercising on the bike, especially Bev as she’s been pining for exercise since Perth!


In Ceduna at the Festival, there was a tug of war competition with a prize of $200.
Of course, us being the Pom’s that we are, we entered it, not realising our opposing teams could possibly be from the wrestling/sumo federations!
Girls first. Off we went, up to the rope to toss a coin. We clocked sight of the girls we were going to be tugging against. All of our faces dropped. Now, I’m not a particularly petite girl, but when I saw these girls I felt like Kylie Minogue!!!! These women were 6ft by 6ft! Needless to say we lost the first round. Then it was the next round. Time for us to pull against the other female team. And whaddya know, it was the security officers for the festival. I thought we nearly had them, everyone was cheering for us but eventually we lost. THEN, we saw the boys opposition. Now imagine the size of Dave’s calf. The first team looked like they’d eaten ten of Dave’s calf sized steaks EACH!….The boys lost and now Dan and Dave have got blisters on their hands where the rope. Worth a try eh and good for the camera!

Also at Ceduna we went swimming in the sea for the second time since we’ve been in Australia. It smelt of dogs so we didn’t spend too long!
On Sunday, Becki, Bev and I got dropped off at the drag racing with a view to fundraising and leafleting. We asked if we could and we got told there’d be a conflict of charities as the company that organised the racing has their own charities, so off we went and tried to give out leaflets but the crowd were only interested in one thing, the racing! We ended up getting chatting to a few of the blokes who bought us a few drinks and they donated too which is brilliant!

Right....in a bit of a rush....so i'll wrap it up by saying, keep looking at the vids and pics....i'll be back soon!

Holl