Community & Business
4 April, 2024
Clifton and District historic homes: Budgee Road
It’s debatable what requires the most courage, restoring a century old cottage in disrepair or travelling the world on a Suzuki V Strom 1000 motorbike, however, Budgee Road couple John and Alanna Skillington have done both.
When the travel bug bites it can bite very hard and that was the case for John (Skill) and Alanna (Lan).
Their preferred mode of transport was two up on a 1000cc touring bike which ultimately took them across Europe, Asia, North and South America and finally across Australia.
By now readers will have gathered that the Skillingtons are a couple with courage and determination.
These qualities were needed when, after travelling the world, they decided to give an old farm cottage on Budgee Road a new lease of life with a full restoration.
John grew up in Bundaberg and Gladstone before studying Chemistry at the Darling Downs Institute of Advanced Education and it was here he met a young Alanna who was studying Education.
Lan grew up in Cement Mills near Karara, west of Warwick, and took up her first teaching position at Milla Milla in Far North Queensland until the school was destroyed by Cyclone Winifred in 1986 the same year they were married.
They moved to Kingaroy where Skill was working at the Tarong Power Station as an Industrial Chemist and stayed twenty years.
A short stay in Brisbane before the urge to travel overseas began to dominate their thinking and so in 2006 their Suzuki 1000 VStrom was unloaded from a ship in Tilbury Docks England and so began Skill and Lan’s world motorcycle odyssey.
They soon had the European countries of UK, France, Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium and many more in the rear view mirror of the Suzuki before embarking on the more exotic and adventurous leg across Asia.
After riding across Turkey they entered Iran at a time when Iran’s relationship with the West was on a downhill slide which could have created a difficult situation.
Lan and Skill both agree that the Iranian people were able to separate the tensions between their governments from relationships with travellers and feel the Iranian people were some of the friendliest and most helpful they met on their travels.
Lan and Skill continued riding through Pakistan, India and Nepal but then were faced with a difficult decision as to what to do with the Suzuki as they planned to fly back to Australia.
The Suzuki had been a reliable mode of transport carrying them through some of the most remote places on earth but being Australian registered made it almost impossible to sell.
Skill weighed up the cost of getting the bike back to Australia against what he could get by selling individual pieces of the bike.
A fellow traveller put the problem into perspective with one emotional statement:
”You can’t shoot your horse.”
The Suzuki returned to Australia by boat.
After backpacking around Thailand Lan and Skill met their beloved “horse” in Perth and began the trip across the Nullarbor and on to Brisbane by the end of 2007.
The stay in Brisbane was brief as the travel bug had bitten again by 2012.
This time it was South America and so the ever faithful Suzuki was loaded onto a boat bound for Santiago in Chile.
They crossed the Andes in southern Chile, then caught a boat to Antarctica (without the Suzuki) for a two week stay on the icy cold continent.
Returning to Chile they again crossed the Andes Mountains, not once but numerous times as Skill enjoyed taking the Suzuki across some of the highest mountain passes over the Andes into Argentina and Bolivia.
Travelling north they ventured into Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and Columbia where they loaded the Suzuki onto an old lugger boat for the crossing to Panama.
The ever reliable Suzuki then took them through the countries of Central America before riding into the United States and finally flying home from
Los Angeles.
By this stage there was no question the Suzuki deserved to be shipped home ...... again.
Lan and Skill worked in Chinchilla for four years to restore their bank account before deciding to buy a “renovators dream“ farm house on sixty acres on Budgee Road in 2018.
On moving in they pondered whether to demolish the home but eventually decided on restoration.
Unfortunately the restoration coincided with the Covid pandemic when prices soared and building supplies were scarce.
Lan and Skill feel they were very lucky in choosing builder Paul Robinson of PAR Constructions with whom they cannot give enough praise.
Paul and his men worked around the scarcity of materials and the difficulties of working with a century old structure but Lan and Skill never wavered in restoring the old cottage to the vision they both shared.
The result today is a modern beautifully built home with many tasteful features and fittings to the point where it is almost unrecognisable internally from the old structure.
The exterior walls have been painted a dark colour Monument) giving it a stylish contemporary appearance.
The kitchen now is ultra modern but still retains a classic farmhouse appearance.
The lounge room feels warm and inviting with timber panelling and soft furnishings and of course framed travel pictures allow the couple to reminisce to a time when their Suzuki took them to some of the most exotic, remote and beautiful places on the planet.
Footnote: Today the Suzuki has 180,000 km on the clock and holds pride of place in John’s garage and although he rarely rides the bike he maintains it in immaculate mechanical order.
