National Park Odyssey

So many good things have been coming together lately around National Park Odyssey that I thought it might interest readers to hear a little bit about the background story.

Our passion is for wildlife, bushwalking and national parks. Being a firm believer in the concept that what you think about is what you will end up with we started actively pursuing our goal with the expectation that we would be able to do more extended travel from 2016. 

We felt that it would be good to record our travels this time because we have traveled extensively around the world in the past and it is largely just a blur with some great memories and appalling photos. We wanted to be able to keep in contact with family and friends and show people what we actually see and do at the places we go. Blogging seemed to be a perfect fit. I signed up for a 2 hr workshop on blogging at the local library and discovered that I had no idea what they were talking about. I had been enjoying reading the blog Wild BNE by Christian Perrin for some time so I decided that I would ask him a couple of questions as he has a friendly and approachable style on his blog. Christian was very helpful and supportive and before long I had the blog up and running. One of the nice things I discovered about blogging is just how friendly the blogging community is. The blogging journey has been a very satisfying ride and if you are thinking of starting a blog then just start and if you need help you should probably ask someone other than me how to go about it.

The Dieng Plateau, Central Java, Indonesia. Just one of the many places we have traveled to overseas.

Christian messaged me that he was looking forward to seeing the National Park Odyssey Facebook page, well that threw the spanner in the works, I hadn’t even contemplated a Facebook page. This may seem strange in this day and age but none of my family are on Facebook, (except our two sons and they don’t want me as their Facebook friend!). To this day, I struggle a bit with what to put on the Facebook page because it seems very repetitive to put photos from the blog on the Facebook page but I’ve recently come to realise that hardly any of our Facebook followers actually read the blogs! As I write this the Facebook page sits at 99 “likers” and I’m anxiously waiting for someone to put me out of my misery and become my 100^th "liker". Apparently once you have the magic number of 100 it is possible to get more information about your page and I need all the help I can get. (Note: When I took a screenshot of our Facebook page for this blog we had 101 "Likers", we're in the big time now!)

101 "Likers"

Blogging has been a bit of a catalyst for expanding our social media platform. We now have an Instagram Account of about 700 followers and a Google Plus account which has had over 200,000 views! Christian really should have warned me!

Our most popular photo so far in 2016 on Instagram: Crossing at Little Yabba Creek at Charlie Moreland Campground

You might notice that in my list of our passions I didn’t mention photography. Neither of us are photographers and it is such a shame because we have done and seen some interesting things in our lives and it would be nice to have a better photographic record to refer to. Our solution was to buy better camera gear and start practicing in the hope that by the time we started the actual Odyssey we would be a bit more competent. After all, blogs are a bit boring without photos and we really wanted to photograph our National Park Odyssey. So far this strategy seems to be working fairly well because one of the great surprises about starting the blog is how many complements we get about the photos.

Some time ago we were approached by Gillian Duncan who wanted to use some of our photos in an upcoming bushwalking book. “Family Bushwalks in South East Queensland” by Mark Roberts and Gillian Duncan has now been published and we can proudly look at our photos in the book. If you had told us one year ago that we would have photos in a book we would have laughed.

Some of our photos in "Family Bushwalks in South East Queensland" by Mark Roberts and Gillian Duncan

We have purchased our dream rig of a BT-50 and Kimberley Karavan and completed a few shakedown trips in preparation for our new adventures. We still have some work and family commitments this year so we will be returning to the Sunshine Coast between roadtrips but we will be able to extend our trips as time goes on. Due to the very nature of our intended destinations we will often be out of internet reception but we can't wait to share our National Park Odyssey with you!