Starting Out as a Grey Nomad

Having retired from the workforce, this week Christina and I head off to Geelong in Victoria to pick up our new Blue Sky Caravan on 14 Sep 12.

It will look similar to that shown in the photo at left and promises to be an interesting experience. Neither of us has had much to do with caravans. We have a lot to learn about life on the road with our fellow "Grey Nomads" of whom there are apparently almost 70,000. That is, at any one time, 70,000 people are travelling here and there in caravans. Fortunately Australia is a large country with plenty of room and roads.

The caravan weighs just over 2,000 kg and is within the 3,000 kg towing capacity of our Toyota Prado turbo-diesel 4 wheel drive. We have to learn the art of carrying only what we need and not what we think we need so that we don't overload the caravan or the car. We have a collection of plastic and melamine plates, cups and wine glasses etc. Now I have to learn all about gross vehicle mass, ball weight and how to drive safely pulling a caravan. Given that so many other people can do it and they can't all be professional truck drivers, I'm sure I'll get there.

Reversing into caravan parks and maintaining the caravan are also skills that we will both need to learn. And then of course, we have to learn to live together 24/7 in such a small place. A tad smaller than our house!

Our first touring stint will be around the southern parts of New South Wales and in Victoria as we check out all the equipment, fittings etc of the van. We want to remain close to Geelong just in case we have to return to have warranty matters repaired. It's a long way to Geelong from Alice Springs.

We plan to return home in mid-November and take off for Western Australia in May next year.

I will be posting updates on where we are and what we are doing and hopefully some interesting commentary about parts of Victoria and neighbour state New South Wales. Keep your eye on our blog if you are interested in learning about our travels.

Robin

Now I've Retired ... er Refocused

On Friday, 29 June 2012 I walked out of the front gate of the Alice Springs Correctional Centre for the last time. Well, I hope it will have been the last time. 

After three years and exactly one month working as Head Lecturer Prisoner Education, I've retired or refocused or commenced transition to retirement. I'm not really sure which. It's not the first time I've retired. When I returned to Australia in July 2008 after a wonderful three years at Al Ain in the United Arab Emirates, I didn't have a job and decided I really didn't want one.

Unfortunately, I wasn't mentally or physically geared up to do nothing after having worked fairly hard for so long. By June 2009 I had become bored and as I couldn't find a part time job that would pay me anything worthwhile ... one firm offered me $10 per hour for 20 hours per week, I applied for the advertised position of Head Lecturer Prisoner Education and the rest is now history.

Working at the Correctional Centre was often frustrating, but any sense of frustration was compensated for by the wonderful people I worked with and the salary was excellent too.

With the experience of my last retirement behind me, now I have a totally different outlook on retirement which I prefer to call refocusing. I plan to continue a small amount of work through my Desert Wave Enterprises business mainly to keep my brain going and to maintain links with people. I also have an associated blog, Working Smarter to update Wednesdays and Saturdays. Each day has a compulsory exercise component built in; Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays it's nine holes of golf at the beautiful Alice Springs Golf Club. Non-golf days are bicycling days ... anaerobic and aerobic exercise should be well covered in all of that.

Then of course, there is the housework, house maintenance, gardening, reading, chilling out with grandson Tory and sipping coffee at the Todd Mall.  I really don't know how I had time to go to work.

My wife Christina is still working 0.6 equivalent full time hours as a midwife but plans to revert to casual employment status in August, just before we travel to Geelong in Victoria to pick up our new Blue Sky caravan. It's all happening for us in the Henry family.

Robin

PS: If you know anyone who needs proofreading, copywriting or other business communication services, send them to me ... I have plenty of time.

Days and Nights in Bali

We've been at Bali now for six days and as we settle in tonight, we look forward to a day of complete silence and relative inactivity tomorrow, as it is Nyepi Day. I'd never heard of it before, even during my 45 year long study of religious mythology, but it's a Hindu day of silence during which Hindus meditate and focus on their deities etc.

While everyone keeps quiet, it is hoped that the evil spirits will think nobody is home and therefore avoid doing bad things. It's obviously an important festival for Hindus who get dressed up in their traditional finest and arrange processions etc.

All over Bali are Hindu temples included temples built and used by groups of people in an area eg, family temples. An example is at left all done up for Nyepi Day.

Bali fortunately, is a non-muslim part of Indonesia, which is predominately muslim. The muslim warriors invaded hundreds of years ago and took over. Those who survived the murderous onslaught didn't want to live under the sword of Islam, so they moved to Bali and surrounding islands which have a population of about 3.7 million.

As seems to be the way with Islam, the violence continues and during the first couple of days we were here, the Indonesian Police had a shoot out with three orthodox muslims who had been planning to kill Western tourists. Thankfully, the police won this round, but as the evidence from all over the planet suggests, it's far from the end of civilisation's war against Islam.

Everything here is inexpensive by Australian standards, with the sole exception of wines and spirits. No doubt this is a key reason why so many Australians visit. That and the short, inexpensive air travel required to get here. We thought we were probably the only Australians who hadn't visited, so that was the main reason we are here now ... didn't want to be left behind.

The locals are nice, friendly people who are obviously accustomed to high numbers of tourists coming and going. The population seems very young which means that in 40-60 years the Indonesian Government will have a huge challenge providing old-age, medical and palliative facilities for the aged population. I wonder whether they are planning for that at present.

Those working in the up-market shops are immaculately dressed and I saw more than a few stunningly beautiful young ladies, a couple of whom sold us some goods eg, a bottle of men's after shave that I probably didn't really need. Those in the shops lining local streets are not as impressively dressed, but clean and tidy and there are so many little businesses, I don't know how everyone manages to make a living, but they obviously survive.

The traffic in Bali, as in many other countries is legendary. Need I say there are billions of scooters and motorbikes, some of which move up to five people and weave in and out of the traffic. I'm only guessing, but I imagine the traffic incident injury and death rate is probably pretty high.

It's rained a great deal since we arrived, but we managed to do a full day tour of a volcano, coffee plantation, silver shop, and batik industry business, all of which were hard-sell operations (of course!). Having lived in the Middle East, we know all about pressure selling, dodgy deals and have learnt the art of ignoring people despite our inate propensity to do otherwise.

We move to Candi Dasa on Saturday for our last week and I'll post another blog about that towards the end of the week.

Robin