New Years at the Wicked Wombat

Resigning from work in December suddenly freed up our New Year period allowing us to join friends for a few days of camping and mountain biking near Jindabyne. Only just before Christmas, we realised that we had the capacity to only take my bike. This was going to be an issue for several reasons namely Ella was getting a bike for Christmas but also the other children were all taking their bikes.

So it felt a bit like de ju vu casting my mind back to Easter twenty10 when we were heavily involved in organising and realised that we couldn't fit all the camping gear in plus the mountain of stuff needed for 2 little girls so we ended up with roof rack and a pod. Must say though we have never looked back at getting the pod.

At various points during 2014, we had (kind of) discussed the potential bike carrying issue but it always ended up in the too hard basket. Anyway now the problem seemed to be coming to a head, so reluctantly (according to Andy) we researched into various systems and decided on a hitch mounted 4 bike carrier.

Just a simple process of going to the roof rack shop right? Wrong! Tow bars are specific to the car and ours needed to be ordered in which would take 5 days thus due to arrive on christmas eve. Ok well we weren't leaving until the 29th so plenty of time right? Wrong! Add in the public hols and a weekend leaves us at the day we planned to depart! Fingers crossed it could be fitted in the morning and on our way.

Unfortunately that was not to be the case - the tow bar hadn't even arrived in the shop. Luckily Andy had a plan B involving borrowing a friends roof mounted bike racks so all bikes were on the roof. This was at the expense of losing the pod however it wasn't too bad in the end thanks to some clever and careful packing.

A leisurely drive saw us arrive at Bungarra Alpine Centre on the outskirts of Jindabyne by mid afternoon. Al, Rob and family had already secured a fantastic campsite adjacent to a few snow gums providing some shade and overlooking the skills track, First to be unpacked were the kids bikes and they were off!! It was nice to watch them explore the skills track from a distance and when things got too hard, they got off their bikes and continued on foot!

A short time later we were joined by Emily, Thomas and family. Once camp was set up there was even time for some mountain biking first with the big kids (Ella and Max) and then the littler ones (Katy and Mira).