Our Interstate Camp Begins! Horse Spraying Video At The Border, Cooking Dinner, Setting Up, Check Out Our Day!

What an amazing day we've had. I'm sitting in a relaxing camping chair as our dinner digests with the cool afternoon breeze licking my skin. I see paddocks, stables and our horses in the distance. Later we'll be getting into the mini-bar we've got setup in our float and firing up a movie perhaps. Let's look at the day in pictures!

For some context, we've been looking forward to taking an extended camping trip with our two horses and our cat for what seems as long as I can remember. Yesterday we did all the prep work and I blogged about it here. Well this morning we locked up the house and rolled out the gate. The float was heavy. With the two horses and all of our camping gear, it's the most weight we've towed but the equipment did exceptionally well.

The first stop was a compulsory tick spray at the border between Queensland and New South Wales. There are 4 types of ticks in Australia, three of them we see on the East coast here and only one of them is apparently of concern. There are big penalties (up to $11,000 AUD) for not spraying livestock that crosses the border and in fact the camping grounds don't even allow you to unload horses if you don't have paperwork from the spray booth.

The chap at the spray booth was an old hand and very professional. Neither of our horses have experienced a spray like this so it's always a bit of unknown and the nerves are present as you just don't want them to do something that brings them to harm. It's a confined space in there and I wasn't sure how loud the spraying would be.

They both blew away our expectations. We're so proud of them and, to be frank, it's a credit to our training. The spray dude said that he's seen horses rear up and get tangled in the gates and kick and buck and all sorts of uncontrolled behaviour. Ours were alert but controlled and happy to go and experience something new with us present. Makes me feel very happy.

Here's some video of the two getting sprayed. As you can see it takes only a minute or so to spray each horse. Our young gray mare looks so inquisitive, even sticking her nose inside the holding pen to check out what she's standing in. How cute!

Then we headed on our way to the camping ground and started setting up. We setup two tarpaulins; one out each side of the float for rain and sun protection. We setup our pedestal fan and relaxed.

Even the cat is very happy. We've brought her rug and a few familiar items with her scent on them from home so she'll feel comfortable, but we both would carry her scent anyway and she's such a super relaxed traveler you wouldn't believe it. She drove with us from Perth to Brisbane, a trip of over 4000km taking many days and she couldn't have been happier sitting in the front in the air conditioning. Here she is grabbing a snack before relaxing in the shade under the float, going for a little explore and then laying claim to my chair!

Our bedding is built into the float and it'll be the first night we spend on them. We've good doonas, sheets and the works so it should be comfortble. The windows have fly-screens so we can keep them open for the summer breeze during the night. Notice that one of the first priorities was to setup our Christmas stockings!

Then it was time to make dinner. For that we used our brilliant little rocket stove and a few sticks we foraged for. First we boiled up a bunch of water for the thermos and a cup of coffee, the remaining water went to make mashed potatoes. Then went on the snags. Delicious!

So once the washing up was done and the horses fed, it was time to make something from the little bar that I'd setup at the front of the float and then sit down to write this post. Here's the Northern facing "annex" where I'm sitting now writing.

So a really successful day and looking forward to a relaxing sleep with the ocean just over the tree line. Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more!