It’s time for our month 8 Expense Report. The last month has flown by. But we have truly felt like we were back on the road and not just living in our family’s driveway! For us, September was mainly about doing some exploring around NSW before we set up to work the harvest season.
At the end of last month we had spent a night at the free camp at Jugiong, a couple of nights at Coolac and a night at Oura Beach at Wagga.
HEADING WEST
We decided from Wagga that we would head west and do a loop around through Broken Hill. Our first stop was the small NSW town of Culcairn. We ended up staying there for two nights so as we could catch up with our friends Vicki and Glenn from Happy Campers Australia. This is the second time that we have met them in person and we had a great night sitting round the camp and sharing stories from our travels.
FREE-CAMPING
We enjoyed quite a few days of free camping during our trip west. Our first stop was behind the Bowling Club in Colleambally, then Sandy Point in Hay and then right on the Murray River in Wentworth. We love the Murray River and really enjoyed the peace and quiet there for a couple of days.
BROKEN HILL
If you don’t have Broken Hill on your list of places to go, get it on there. It’s an absolutely fantastic place to visit and there is so much to see and do. We took a day trip out to historic Silverton to check out the Mad Max II museum and have lunch at the pub. We checked out some of the mining history in Broken Hill and the Royal Flying Doctor Service. The highlight though was a nights stay at the Starview Campground. Could honestly have stayed there a week.
ACCOMMODATION AND KILOMETRES
We stayed in a whole range of different places this month.
- National Park x 1 night
- Free Camps x 8 nights
- Showground x 3 nights
- Caravan Park x 18 nights (4 whilst travelling rest as we have stopped for work again)
We travelled a total of 2585 kilometres.
INCOME AND EXPENSE REPORT
I (Mel) am still on long service leave and I also did 2 days training for our harvest jobs and Brenden has had a couple of days work each week since we have been here.
Total Income (all sources) $1,919.83
EXPENSES
Our total expenses for the month was $3,800.98. The breakdown of those expenses is as follows:-
- Groceries $966.90
- Alcohol $112.80
- Eating Out $201.83
- Fuel $602.32
- Car Maintenance (new battery) $255.00
- RACQ Roadside Assistance Renewal $262.70
- Car Insurance (ongoing) $109.21
- Car Cleaning $6.00
- Laundry $30.00
- Accommodation $586.00
- Health Insurance (ongoing) $252.85
- Tours $140.00
- Work Boots (Mel) $88.00
- Gifts $94.24
- Mobile Phones (ongoing) $63.00
- Caravan Maintenance $37.13
- National Park Entry $6.00
We did spend a little more on groceries this month than we usually would as we did a big shop to restock the van.
By the end of this month we will be well and truly in work mode as the grain season kicks in. If you are unsure about how to go about finding work on the road check out the blog post we wrote about how we do HERE.
You can check out our other expense posts plus some budgeting tips HERE.
Thanks for the info.
Can you please provide more details on the training you did for Harvest season?
Hi Les…it was on the job training.Most of the Grain Receival sites have their own in-house training and don’t recognise outside quals.