August 2014

Here I am again full of good intentions in getting this up to date.  It’s going to be all over the place because I’ll be typing as I remember stuff.

We’ve been to Darwin; we stayed at the bowls club in Humpty Doo.  I love saying Humpty Doo.

We had three weeks there at $100.00 per week with as much water as we needed but no power.  We met some lovely people, from all over Australia.  There were a few dogs and they were all well behaved.  A couple of them used to come over to us and eat Timmy’s breakfast because he doesn’t always bother with it.

We didn’t go looking for crocodiles, seen one, seen them all and we saw them at Lake Argyle.

We did go to the Military Museum and the Aviation Museum.  They were both really interesting.  On our way to where we are now we stopped at the Adelaide River War Memorial.  A beautifully kept place but so very sad.

We also went to the Mindil and Parap markets which are okay if you’re into the hippy clothing (Beth would probably love it) and hand made jewelry.  Very disappointing because they didn’t have any veggies for sale and the only fruit we saw were mangoes.

We got the solar panels at Kununurra and bought another battery at Darwin so we’re okay for power.  I can’t begin to tell you about the fuss with the original solar panels but this covers it.

Famous or infamous, you decide

We were in all the major papers nationwide.  Channels 9 and 10 wanted to speak to us but the Internet and phone reception was so bad that we couldn’t contact anyone to set something up.  I didn’t want to go on television and I would just like to say that I didn’t send the guy 6 emails, I sent 3 and if he’d answered the first one there wouldn’t have been a problem.

Because of our notoriety I’m loath to take on the dealer who we bought the caravan from.  (On Albany Highway,  Maddington, WA, opposite a primary school, next to Silver Chain). 

We have 2 TVs; one in the living area and one in the bedroom.  We couldn’t tune the one in the bedroom into the TV channels and after some diagnostic work it seems that although the wiring is there its not functioning, possibly because there’s a screw through it.  I sent a message to the dealer asking for help but got nothing in reply.  We’ve met a few people who bought from this mob and no one has anything positive to say about them.  One guy told us that a few years ago a guy sat outside the dealers display at the Perth caravan show with a huge sign saying ‘Do not buy from ****** ***’.  Wish we’d gone that year but I think it was when I couldn’t walk properly.

Anyway Steve fixed the TV lead by getting an adapter for the antenna and laying wire across the roof, then down the side and through the air vent and into the aerial.  That might not be 100% correct but its something like and we can now watch all the channels from the bed.

Had to contact the dealer yesterday because every time Steve tried to use the microwave it tripped out.  They forwarded my email to the supplier who contacted us today to say they’re sending a new one to replace the obvious faulty one.  Unfortunately it won’t be here for 7 to 10 days so we’ll be staying longer than we anticipated.

We’re parked up at Manbulloo Homestead which is about 8 kms south of Katherine.  I couldn’t stand being constantly wet at Darwin, this place is certainly a lot cooler.  I thought about finding a cardi’ yesterday because I shivered and Steve had his Cystic Fibrosis hoodie on this morning when he took Timmy for his walk.

When we were at Humpty Doo we spent a few days checking out the termites building a mound.  They were busy little things and they worked only in the shade.  They left little bits of grass sticking out at the sides presumably for when they added to it another day.  They got it up to about 15cms before an oldie from Victoria came in and drove over it and then stood on it to spread it all around.  I was so upset and Mary (she pronounced it Meerie, she’s Irish) came to tell me her husband had told her about it as soon as she got out of the hairdressers.  I mentioned it to the old guy but he wasn’t concerned.