Dyanne Murphy has travelled both the east and west coast of Australia in a RV with only her dog for company, and could not recommend her lifestyle enough.
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“It’s not isolating at all,” she said.
“I went to Alice Springs, then Darwin, down to Katherine then I came across to Broome.
“The trip between Katherine and Broome, 1700 kms, was extremely long.
“Travelling on my own, I had to set myself a routine of getting up early to drive then finding a free camp.”
Music and the stunning outback scenery fills the time for Mrs Murphy, who has travelled for seven years.
She recently found a companion in her young puppy Cassy – whose name is the initials of her five grandchildren – and she has just one piece of advice for anyone looking to hit the open road.
“Do it,” she said.
“Don’t procrastinate, just do it, bite the bullet and do it.”
Meeting up with other travellers and taking some time to relax at a site are the highlights of the Stone the Crows Festival for Ms Murphy.
Stone the Crows hits Wagga for its sixth annual festival and more than 1100 people have registered for the week-long event.
Grant Luhrs, one of the organisers, said the increasingly popular event has sold out.
“There’s around 550 vehicles, mostly caravans and motorhomes” he said.
“They’ve come for six days of fun.”
One of the organisers of the event, Chrissy Eustace, said the name was a result of a flyaway comment in a conversation.
“When Jim Haynes and I were talking about doing a festival, he suggested we do it in Wagga,” she said.
“A colleague of ours, Grant Luhrs lives in Wagga so I said to him what does Wagga Wagga mean?
“He said home of many crows to which I said ‘well stone the crows’, and that’s how it came about.”
One of the events is run by Rod Hennifey, a road transporter and road safety advocate.
“I’ll be doing a talk on rest areas, so I’m putting out a video on sharing rest areas because that’s a problem we have, we don’t have enough,” he said.
“A lot of the vanners drive what is a bigger vehicle than normal but they don’t understand the trucks as well as we’d like.
“So we educate them about sharing the road with trucks, sharing the rest areas and about having a little understanding of our job so everyone is safer on the roads.”
An open day will also run on Monday, April 2 where anyone curious about life on the open road can learn about the grey nomad lifestyle.
The day will start with the bush poet’s breakfast and go through until the Stoning the Crows, with market stalls to browse.
For more information go to: http://www.stonethecrows.com.au/index.html