Our present trip plans include the Dunsborough Songfest Weekend, the Little Folk in the Forest Weekend and mooching around Albany in January, but we were finding it difficult to work out what we wanted to do for next year’s winter trip. We even felt a bit depressed and discouraged after our first couple of discussions about it. But today, with the release of the G&S Festival programme, we have been able to decide on a plan.

We will leave in mid April or earlier to travel to South Australia to do some exploring in the Flinders Ranges and go up to the Dig Tree, which is about 50 kms from Innamincka and 1000kms from Adelaide. It’s actually just over the border in Queensland, but easily accessible this way.

The G&S festival begins on the 10th May, finishing on the 21st May. It involves some cheap/free activities as well as three opera productions. We will register to be part of the Big Sing on the final night of the festival.

We will have to book our tickets, register for free events, and even book a caravan park for the G&S Festival, so this does involve a fair bit of money, but worth it for the opportunity to do something we haven’t done before. We both like Adelaide and we have friends there so it should make a good change to the first part of our trip of mostly off grid camping. I may even visit my favourite shoe shop!

After a few weeks in Perth to catch up with Matt we will go up to Karijini with the aim of roaming around in the Park, which we didn’t do last year when we were in the area due to not wanting to tackle so much gravel road driving. We will also do some other things, depending on the time we have left.

Whilst we are home in June we can join Eversley on a trip to Rottnest for a few days in the same cottage as this year, which is beautifully located near the centre, but within walking distance of a sunset lookout.

Stephen will have a chance to audition for the next G&S production and our travels north will be constrained in terms of getting back in time for the reheasals. He thinks he will likely get chosen for the chorus, which is less demanding than having a principal part, but just as much fun in terms of being involved. Of course, there might be a suitable principal part.

The beauty of this plan is that we will not be away for quite so long and if anything breaks on the first trip (which is almost inevitable) we will be able to have it fixed before the second. Importantly, it also means we get to spend time with Matt in the middle of our travels.