オーストラリアのアウトバックで過ごすバンライフの日々

オーストラリアのアウトバックで過ごすバンライフの日々

It’s sticky. Really sticky. All mangled up there at that next intersection. It doesn’t give me much hope. Good morning, guys. We are in Lightning Ridge. We stayed here in the caravan park last night to charge up cuz our batteries were a bit low because the weather’s been pretty gray. Maryann’s also with us, and we’re going to jump in her van cuz she’s got four-wheel drive, and we’re going to do a car door tour, which is like a self-drive tour. We’re hoping to get down maybe an opal mine. Mhm. And Frankie is going to be with us all day today, aren’t you, bud? Hey, you’re going to be hunting for opals with us. Hey, he’s turned a nice shade of brown from all the brown dirt here. He’s a red healer now, aren’t you, bud? Hey, hey, hey. What’s going on here? What is going on on the kitchen bench? What’s going on? Poor little fella. Poor fella. He’s on He’s fine. It’s like being on the hospital table. Why are you cutting knots off? He’s like, what are you doing? All righty. There we go. Off you go. Okay. All right, bud. [Music] [Music] Just for you to see it. Yeah. You got cash or cash? I got cash. like this. What? They still travel with their mom. Jeez. There you go, bud. Lightning Ridge Courthouse looks like a play play school. Looks like a daycare. Oh, there’s sure to be some treasure here, guys. Get bumped in this car. Bit different being a couple of passengers for a change. [Music] What’s going on, buddy? Hey, what’s going on? Look, there’s a water here. Look, there’s a puddle right there. Hey, puddle. Not puddle water. Puddle water. He’ll be all right. Just picked him up. He knows that’s just water bottles. This is why he’s not white anymore. Look how grubby your underside is. How do you get so grubby up under there? We could use those cash only market is going to buy a ring and a gray and white stripe. Yeah, we have to go and find an ATM in town somewhere. [Music] All righty. Well, I couldn’t film in there cuz that was uh someone’s shot. Maryanne got herself some goodies. So, what is it? Crystal opal. So, it’s a fun nice So, now we’re going to head off and do which one? The red car door tour. Whichever one we have to have a look at the map cuz there’s four different car doors. One of them is a bit wet. Blue. The blue one. Are we doing the blue one? We’re going to do that. Was the one you liked last night? Yep. Turn right onto Gravel Road and make your way up Bald Hill. There should be a blue car somewhere. Is that the one we’re going to stop? Uh, it is along the way. Yeah. Turn right onto Gravel Road and make your way up Bald Hill. I’m going to get I’ll go a bit fast so I can’t stop. This is where so wet. Do we have stop? Do we go left or right? Straight. Okay. Walk in mine. Okay. [Music] Some people ficking. So where where’s the parking? Just go over there. There we go. That’s a good spot. Oh, I’ve got them. What did you take? [Music] It’s a nice hard hat you got there. So, we’re going down a walk-in mine here. See what it’s really like underground. The names of the chickens. says, “Boof, by the way, mine says Sheila.” Sheila, I wonder if she picked him deliberately. Gorgeous. Maybe they didn’t always have those. Watch Watch your head on this one. We went in a um tunnel that connected South Korea to North Korea. Oh, yeah. That’s right. That it was way. It was like literally like this. Look, this log is holding this up. What would happen if it wasn’t there? And this one’s only holding a quarter of that beam. This is pretty wild. It’s pretty wild to to look up at these post supports and just think that they’re holding the holding the roof up. No actual portal frames or anything. Just chuck a stick under it and she’ll be right. This is like the biggest tunnel apart from the one in South Korea I’ve ever been in. It’s so spacious. From here on fairly dark through this tunnction [Music] here. Yeah. Howdy. Well, that was a bit different. My old man used to come out to Lightning Ridge with a friend and they’d tinker around digging up opals, I guess. Don’t know if he ever found any. Go to the fsick king pile, but it’s a open pile of dirt that you can rumage through. See if you can find any goodies. [Music] No way. You found one. Oh, what? Nah. Hang on. Are you sure? I don’t know. No way. Is it? Nah, that can’t be. Surely. Got to wash it. What? Well, it is, Sash. It is. It’s actually a bit of opal here. Weirdest time. I can’t believe you found it so quickly. Honestly, I didn’t think we’d find anything. I mean, to be fair, it’s incredibly tiny, but what do you reckon this one’s worth, Sash? 20 bucks. Probably nothing. [Music] These are the things. They use old cement mixes. They put all the I guess the diggings inside these things and chuck water in there and it rinses out all the clay and what you’re left with is the rocks. They sort through the rocks by hand to look for anything that’s for anything that looks like an opal and then they pick them out. Frank, what are you doing up there, buddy? What’s going on? This is nothing like Cooperi. This is so attractive and beautiful compared to that on that batch. I think they sneak lots of cactus out here. Oh, look at that little house. It’s so cute. All righty. So, we’re going to head into town, get some lunch cuz we’re all pretty hungry now. Mr. Frank is full of prickles cuz he went for a walk in the long grass. [Music] Great going somewhere. Righty. So, we finished lunch and we are going to head to the local IGA and we’re going to grab some groceries and then I think it might be Hey, excuse you. We just got in the van. And then I think it might be um hot springtime. Do our chores and then we can go marinade in some hot water for a bit. You going to guard the house? Open up a window for him. Although it’s very cool today, I will say. All right, mister. There you go. You have fun here. Oh, yummy. All right, quick. Let’s leave the vin. All right, then. [Music] He was just there a minute ago. Can’t believe he’s finished his treat already. Hey, mister. Have you finished your treat already? Treat munching machine. Excuse me. All right, got to fill up with some fuel and then we’re off to the hot springs. This is the trunk. Okay, we are ready. Ready to have a dip. Yep. Ready. [Music] [Music] Is it deep? Is it deep? All right. I can’t touch. Oh, yes. I can just There’s a hot spot right there. It’s hotter than anywhere. Is it um a hot one? It’s hot. It’s hot. It’s hot. It’s very hot. It’s very, very, very hot. Is it hot? It’s hot. Doesn’t take long. That is hot. So hot. Hot, hot, hot, hot. [Music] There he is. Look at him up on the bed. Did you have a sleep? Hey, I think it’s time for a sleep, buddy. You haven’t slept at all today. All righty. We’re going to head to um a free camp now near the town of Wal Walgot. Near the town of Wal Wal. Hopefully it’s all right. We’ve just seen it on Wiki Camps. It’s about an hour’s drive from Lightning Ridge. So, not too far. Hopefully have a fire tonight because we didn’t get a lot of rain yesterday out here. A lot of the dirt roads are quite muddy. So, yeah, we’ll have to see what it’s like to get into this spot. Yeah, I am 500 m. This is pretty muddy. It’s quite grally, which is I think is helping. Yeah, it looks nice around here. Lots of little lagoons. Lots of little like bibongs. They look like bibongs to me. Like a bibong to me would be like a shady small water hole with some trees kind of growing in the edges of the the bank. Old gums that are all twisted and mangled. Bit swampy even to the left. There’s no more rain forecast either. So, that felt a bit dodgy. Uh, which way are we going? Left or right? Uh, maybe left if we can. Oh, we can’t go got to go through there. That way? Yeah, that looks way worse. Okay, so we’re having a a little look see. This looks pretty dodgy. The ground has definitely firmed up a bit, but someone’s come through here and torn it up quite a bit. It’s sticky. Really sticky. And it’s all mangled up there at that next intersection. Really mangled. Alternatively over here. If we were to come through here, go out wide around here, we might be okay. But this feels pretty good. Actually, this might be all right. I’m just going to walk walk a bit further. See if we can actually make it to a camp spot. This looks like it might be a camp spot here. This might be a bit of a problem getting through here as well. Once we’re through, maybe we can camp down there somewhere. From here on, it’s like four-wheel drive track, so that might that might be as far as we go. Unless we go off in the other direction. Well, the ground is a mixture of sand and really sticky, very fine dirt. It doesn’t give me much hope. So, we’ve got the Falcon Wild Peak tires. Previously, we had the BFG Goodrich KO2. They were a little bit more aggressive and they did definitely get more traction. These new ones are nice though. They’re much quieter on the freeway. Where do we go? How are we on the left there? We’re not falling down. Going the turning point soon. It’s all dry and grally. So, we’re going to head back to the main road. There’s another track we might try. Starting to think the snow chains might have to become part of our regular kit. I mean, I would have probably chucked them on and got and we would have got through. If we had snow change, we would have been sweet. Yeah. Yeah. They just give so much traction. We’ve just got to get a Nveco daily 4×4 van and fit that out and take that out there. Yeah. Easy. That’s I think that’s the solution. That’s the more sensible option. Let’s be, you know, being being honest with ourselves. this sensible solution. Yeah. Was it? I think it looks dry. Dandy, doesn’t it? Yeah. Maybe. Don’t. I’m just Okay, we’ve had a little look. Walked and had a little look. This bit’s I think it looks It looks okay. I think it might be surprising how sticky that is. And we’re going to go right. And then from there on, as far as we could see, it looked dry. So, you’re going to fang it. I think we’re going to fang it. Right. Ready? Yep. pretty a bit. Yeah, you can feel it. It is wet there. It is. Is it? Yeah. What if we try to get out there? That’s through there, though. No. Back back to where we came from. Back to that roundabout. Oh, yeah. Okay. And go that way. This one goes down to the river, but there’s a mud hole. Oh. [Music] Oh, this is my spot. Great spot. Riverfront. Yeah, that’s pretty nice. Seems dry out there. Is this the correct orientation? We think we might have the spot. Oh, thank goodness for all-wheel drive. Wow, that is soft. If we had have driven into this, we’d have been toast. Although, we could have we could could have kept driving out in that direction, but far out. Oh, well, we’re in. We’re in. All right. Well, that’s our this is our camp for the night. Come and take a look. This is beautiful. Yeah, this is quite special. So, we’re on a we’re on a bend in the river and it’s like uh it’s not a chocolate brown or coffee brown like all the rivers that we’re used to. It’s more of a kind of I don’t know what you’d call that like a pee and ham soup if that’s more appealing to you. I think it is to me. I wouldn’t swim in it. It looks pretty amazing. If we were further up north, I’d be staying well clear of that water cuz that looks like crocodile country. So, this will be our hangout for the night outside Walgget. Lucky for us, this tree’s already dropped all its big limbs. This one hasn’t, but we’re not parked under it, thankfully. This these are our tires just just fully clogged with that sticky muck. Not a lot of traction in those tires. Now, that was a good half an hour of us driving around these little tracks and sussing things out, making sure we weren’t going to bog ourselves. But yeah, nice spot. And we’ve got these very pretty purple sweet potatoes, which are one of my favorites to roast. So, I’m very excited. Far better than the orange ones in my opinion. All righty, they’re ready. Maybe we should put that one in a bit later. There are so many mozzies here and I get very badly attacked by mozzies. So, I’ve tried to cover everything except for a few things. Some fish out there. While we were waiting for that to happen, that purple sweet potato is amazing. It’s like eating a cake. That meat, too. Sometimes purple can be a bit starchy. All righty, guys. We are going to go to bed. We didn’t have dessert. No dessert tonight. Frankie has put himself to bed tonight. Normally Frankie sleeps in the bed with us. Demands it. In fact, well, I think he demands it. Every now and again, he’s a big strong man. Yeah. He wants to go out and be an independent independent boy and live on his own. Well, tonight he’s put himself to bed down the other end of the van. Here he is down here underneath the dinette table and he’s uh facing away from us, it seems. So, I don’t know what we’ve done wrong, but it seems like it’s cuz we didn’t give him any steak. Yeah, we didn’t share. We saved him some, but we’ve we’re saving it for tomorrow. Yeah, we put it in the fridge, but he doesn’t know that, I guess. Well, anyway, we’re going to go to bed as well uh by ourselves. just entered. I’m sure that at some point during the middle of the night, usually like around 2:00 a.m., we’ll hear him sort of scratching at the scratching at the bin door beside the bed. I’ll have to climb out of bed, lift up into bed, give a little cuddle, jump back into bed. 2 a.m. when the temperature drops. But anyway, um we’ll see you guys in the next video. I’m not sure what’s happening in the next video. I mean, I’m never we’re never sure what’s happening in the next video to be fair. Anyway, we’ll see you guys then. Thank you for watching. See you guys. See you in the next one. Bye.

Exploring a quirky opal mining town and taking on some muddy tracks in search of a river camp. 🚐✨🌿

In this video, we spend the day in outback New South Wales wandering through Lightning Ridge — a one-of-a-kind town famous for its opal mines, eccentric locals, and unique character. After soaking up the atmosphere, we hit the road again and find ourselves navigating some very muddy outback tracks, all in the hope of reaching an off-grid campsite by the river.

The kind of adventure that makes vanlife in Australia so unforgettable.

👇 Watch this if you love:
— Australian outback towns
— Off-grid vanlife
— Muddy track adventures
— River camping in Australia
— Real vanlife experiences

Subscribe to follow along as we explore more of Australia — from the snow-capped mountains to the dusty outback.

⏳Timestamps:

00:00 Welcome Back
00:54 Exploring the town
03:32 Car door tour
05:13 Going underground
08:17 Heading back to town
11:29 Finding Camp
17:02 Our Camp for the Night

Welcome to our YouTube channel! We’re Sasha, Freddie and Frankie, and for the past three years, we’ve been living in our self-converted van, all while running our handmade jewellery business on the road.

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Follow our journey on Instagram or TikTok: @brinkandforbes
Check out our handmade jewelry: [www.brinkandforbes.com](http://www.brinkandforbes.com/)

Business Enquiries: [brinkandforbes@gmail.com](mailto:brinkandforbes@gmail.com)