With the caravan all sorted with a new home to go to we spent a couple of days cleaning up the Beast and listing it for sale on the net. We priced it to hopefully sell before leaving the country but had arranged somewhere to park it up should selling it be a problem. The day after it was listed we got a call from a guy who needed an eight seat vehicle for his rapidly expanding family and he was in a real hurry to sort something out. Long story short we spent a very hectic Thursday taking the Beast for a pre-purchase check, sorting out paperwork, money and a rental car and by 5pm the deal was done. It was all a bit quick but we no longer own any Aussie vehicles although we are staying in what was our caravan until the 22nd when the new owners Rob and Diane will take it away.
After the very busy day of selling the Beast we took ourselves off to Rob and Diane’s for dinner and to cover off some aspects of the van and sort ownership transfer paperwork. We had a most excellent meal and really enjoyed the evening. The sale of both van and Beast has been a lot quicker than we imagined and gone really smoothly. We will however not miss the underlying stress and worry (Ross especially) that we have been living with for the last few weeks.
Come Saturday morning we headed off bright and early to pick up Lisa from Brisbane airport. It had been 11 months since we had seen her so we were really glad she had made the effort to come down from Townsville to see us even if only for a few days. To accommodate her in the van we did a conversion on the seating to make another bed and after some refinement it worked really well. After picking her and her bump up we went into Brisbane for breakfast and then checked out some baby stuff at a few shops before heading back down to the Gold Coast. We had a lovely few days with Lisa shopping, lunching at the beach and just generally spending quality time with her and it was really sad to have to say goodbye when she flew back on Tuesday. The good news however is that She, D and Baby are planning to come to NZ for Christmas so we can have a nice get together with all our family.
With the van going on Thursday we spent the next couple of days cleaning and sorting all our stuff out and moving some of it down to Ian and Dianne’s where we plan to stay until our departure from the big island on the 28th. It is simply amazing how much stuff Carol had managed to accumulate over our travels. With excess baggage in mind our flight check in will once again be an interesting and probably expensive experience.
