Friday, 28th, Saturday, 29th Sunday, 30th of August 2020
A mainly slack three days. Slack, slack, slack. Perfect.
Friday.
Nothing except pick up some beers for a visit to Leigh and Tess’s for a great roast meal and a pleasant evening. For those into detail, Tooheys Extra Dry stubbies. For drinking here not touring. Too heavy.
Saturday
In to town to tidy ends. Loose ends are insightly and annoying. Picked up clothes in for repair, to Fishing and Outdoor World to swap the gloves/hand protectors so I had one of each L & R, Delaney’s to check the hats etc,
Next Salvatores for a bloody good coffee and a ham and cheese toasted sandwich. You can argue if it’s the best in town but I haven’t found a better. It is the same owner and it is consistent.
Then onto National Flags to research and meet ‘Mr Flags’ Ronald Strachan, who knows anything and everything about flags worth knowing. Ordered a few, then back to the park to extend for another two weeks.
Ronald Strachan, a genius with flags and associated items. Here he holds his own flag, hence the pointing.
Great breakfast of light scrambled eggs on crumpets with smoked salmon and orange juice.
Clothes washing, laying around, talking to neighbours, planning a flag pole, movies including just the start of Bedazzled, A walk in the Woods and Back to the future. One neighbor has a flag and we compared notes. I have a cunning plan.
Did all but nothing. Not even tidied the back of the car after the battery minor fiasco.
Anne grabbed the camera to take a shot of this Plover capitalizing on the fact we are watering the lawn adjacent. In fact while it is from the Plover family, it is in fact a Masked Lapwing. Don’t ask me how I know that.
Past seagull and crow, I am pretty thin on birds names. Always wanted to be able to use the name, Yellow Bellied Sapsucker. So just for the hell of it I googled it and here it is …
What do you reckon? Bit of a let down? To start with, there’s no yellow belly, so the colour highlight is it’s red mask. The other feature is the apparent ease with which it can cling to a perpendicular tree trunk. I would have named it a ‘Red Masked Tree Clinger.’
Going to extend a week. Still got people to catch up with.
Put the car in for serious service at 8am. Leigh Biggs was good enough to come pick us up and it ended up a busy day.
Back to his place to test out the new coffee machine. Worked well. Good coffee AND he has a frothing machine so cappuccino’s !
A walk around town as the apartment is in the city.
The General store. No. Pith helmets do NOT suite me.
Lunch in the mall. a tasty yiros but with no salad, once you take the chips out, there isn’t much left.
Yes. See below. Chips IN the yiros!
The Stuart memorial in Knuckey street square.
Been a while since I’ve seen an F100.
That’s all the pics but not the day.
Bought a meat thermometer from Alfred’s. Fishing and outdoor is it? Bought a fishing shirt to wear generally in the sun. My supervisor thinks it’s a good idea. Also for the same reason a pair of pseudo gloves with no material on the palms and just for top of hand sun protection. They are very good but I will be returning. Two for left hand and none for right. Just cant make it work acceptably.
Got car back and home for a lay down and shower before our 6pm meeting with long lost friends Matt and Jude at The Trailer Boat Club. Good meal, great company, laughs, stories a few drinks. The only thing wrong was it wasn’t long enough.
Also ran into Roxley and Fred from the past in Darwin.
A little history in the making. Me, Leigh and Seb get together for lunch at ‘The Cav’. Recommendation from Leigh, get the steak sandwich on the specials board. $18 and it was a winner. Photo below, Leigh shows us newbees the spicy relish that makes the difference.
Only way to tackle them is to cut in half.
A good afternoon. No one driving so sneaked a few drinks on the way to the pick up point.
Bonus is I think the batteries and fridge are OK so final check tomorrow then repack the back properly.
Day of crap. discovered near midday, somehow the 12 volt lead that runs from the van to the car had pulled out. Significance of that is when the car is at rest and plugged into this lead, the solar panels charge the two van batteries and the two car batteries WHICH RUN THE CAR FRIDGE. So, by chance I happen to put something in the freezer and while still OK it is not 100% freezing cold. So check the fridge section and not working at all. So must have been reasonably recent if still frozed.
I check the fridge/freezer readout and it is saying Err-Err and is not running. So I check the batteries and that spells it out. 10.7volts, both of them.
looking at the battery you will notice on top …
12.7v = full
12.5v = 80%
12.2v = 50%
10.5v = FLAT
So the batteries are all but stone flat.
Lead plugged in and very little improvement. Finally get enough charge, about 11.4v to start the fridge. A run into town as the car Is a good charge and all but nothing improved.
So my lovely neat car storage area (called the tub) has to be pulled apart so that I can plug the fridge into 240v so the batteries have no drain trying to run the fridge while charging.
12v lead in from the van to charge the batteries but they are so flat I start and run the car several times over a couple of hours to try and boost them.
Finally the batteries get to 12.2v which is half and the fridge gets to …
fridge gets to 8 degrees C (should be 3)
freezer gets to minus 12 C (should be minus 16 C)
We get to bed with Freezer at -14, fridge at 4 and batteries at 12.2v and 12.3v. Enough to allow sleep.
I’m sure all will be fine in the morning. (?) N.B. You are not supposed to let deep cycle batteries get flat as it ‘kills’ them.
My nice neat tub now looks like a bomb hit it. Everything had it’s place.
Such is life on the road. You have to be reminded that your free camping set up requires maintenance and you must be continually aware.
It reminds me a little of a comment from an aeronautical chap who said something like, ‘A helicopter has either just been fixed or is about to be fixed.’
Fingers crossed for the morrow. You probably didn’t need to know all that but now you know something you may not have known before. Whether you wanted to know it is an entirely different issue.
It will take at least an hour or two to get the tub re-established back to normal, IF the batteries and fridge are OK tomorrow. IF?
Sunday near lunch time. Rapid Creek Market. We buy a ‘tester’ sumosa, two Mango slushies, some basil then back to the Indian stall where the sumosa proved to be good so two more and an Indian meal for tonight.
At right ‘slushie in hand.
A flower amongst the others.
Then to Bunnings for a wall clock and a hook to hang it on, then the sausage sandwich. I ordered two. One with onion on top and one with onion on bottom. The uninformed server said yes but her supervisor said no. I voiced my opinion (as always) that I have dropped as much onion from the bottom as the top but, blind, ignorant bureaucracy will always win out over common sense and intelligent deduction.
Matt had heard of the tongue twister but not in it’s entirety so sent to him and posted here as a back up.
So the clock now hangs in the van in what appears an awkward or at least non symmetrical position. It is there because I don’t trust sticky hooks so by resting the clock on the small edge underneath and secured with a little blue tack, there is negligible weight/pressure on the hook.
Nothing much is going to happen until we hit the road and some decisions will have to be made soon.
Lazy Saturday. Almost nothing happened. Anne did washing and went for a swim in the pool. I spent most of the day sorting up drives for the computer.
Only left the van to go to the toilet block and once to get a bottle of wine from the car. Damn near a perfect day for a lazy bugger.
I attach something to make it worth opening the blog.
First serious …
Checked it out. It’s true. See link to FBI report … https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_6_murder_race_and_sex_of_vicitm_by_race_and_sex_of_offender_2013.xls
A busy day when we finally tracked down Jude and Matt who we knew from way back 20 years ago in Darwin, bought a freezer pack worn as a ruck sack for keeping things (beer and wine) cold, bought some soft drinks (for mixing with hard ones) visited Tyre Power for wheel info, had a healthy roll from Subway, coffee from Salvadores (best coffee in Darwin) then managed to get home and shower for ‘the big event.’
We must be at Stokes Hill Wharf no later than 5pm. More importantly, get there early enough so I DON”T HAVE TO RUN because my face doesn’t want to go through that again.
Cath and Dion are the organisers. Cath is in ‘Catering. Cath can put a feast together in the time it would take me to pull the items out the fridge.
The smallgoods/meat plate.
The cheese, more small goods, sundried tomatoes and spread plate.
Choice of bickies and/or bread sticks.
A particularly ugly ship coming into port. Dion and Cath inform us it is a cattle transport. It is empty because apparently it is a one way trip. No return tickets. We are also told any and every cattle ship, irrespective of design, are all UGLY. It is a requirement apparently. This one qualifies.
This one is … GALLOWAY EXPRESS (IMO: 9621194) is a Livestock Carrier that was built in 2013 (7 years ago) and is sailing under the flag of Singapore. It’s carrying capacity is 5488 t DWT and her current draught is reported to be 5.5 meters. Her length overall (LOA) is 134.8 meters and her width is 19.6 meters.
Ugly.
The ladies lapping up the ambience.
We are at the back of the lugger and sharing with five other fine folk.
A big, mobile business card.
A handsome group of dynamic people.
A selfie of the same.
This is an over two hour cruise, where we note the coast line from the wet side. The turn around is about sunset. Fab cruise.
The most interesting part of the tour was to see the extent of the harbor that has been leased to the Chinese Government, by Chief Minister Giles. I am trying to imagine what went through his and his ‘accomplices’ minds who leased the most strategic part of Australia to a foreign power. A 99 year lease for just $500,000,000!! By the end of the least that is going to be the equivalent of $50.
Is he still working? He shouldn’t be doing anything too complicated.
Back in the harbor.
This fine young Irish chap had a new adventure.
We had to remove our footwear and put them in a box. After the cruise his thongs had disappeared. In an embarrassed gesture the skipper gave Paddy (don’t know his name but a good lad) his own thongs. Paddy was well pleased. He explained, firstly they fitted and secondly his were cheapies worth $5 and the skippers were at least $20. Don’t know what the skipper wore home. Maybe some one piggybacked him to his car?
A wharf just isn’t complete without live entertainment.
Now … I have completely forgot Anne’s pics so here they are in one giant post.
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While still in Dili, probably about 6 years before we left, utilizing dominant memories of our time there, I started a book of our lives in Dili, from the original departure date from Darwin. That was 14th November 2000. The flight was postponed and the final departure was the day after being the 15th of course. I did about 60 pages and with all due modesty, I think it’s not half bad.
Other calls on my time put it on the back burner. Then, when we first returned from East Timor 25th November 2018, I committed to do a blog of our travels. So when we finally hit the road from Adelaide on 8th October 2019 I did just that. It was a chore because the limited preparation I did with others help, specifically Dan C, I had left for about a year and promptly forgot, so I had to re-learn for myself. Never the less, it took off and I filled it with pretty well anything and everything.
However, the book I started all those years ago kept blinking into mind from time to time, until the other night when we were invited to Mana Rosa’s place for dinner, one of the other guests announced he was writing or had written a book. I thought, ‘good on him’ as he had followed through on his plan. Then I got the guilt’s regarding my book and how I had basically dropped the ball.
Anne is very ‘nice’ but I know she thinks I spend far too much time on the blog. So I know I cannot finish the book and do the blog with the same intensity I have done. That is, if there is nothing to say, I’ll fill it with trivial dribble and try and make it as interesting as possible.
I have cut myself a little slack due to one characteristic I have. I once heard the definition of ‘Character’ and it is not the high and mighty accolade you may expect. It is simply the following. ‘Character is the ability to follow through on a commitment long after the excitement of the moment has passed.’ That is a strength I have and it is also a handicap. I have over the years continued down a path long after I should have turned off and re-routed. But that’s another subject.
So I am not going to stop the blog and do the book instead because I have committed to the blog and even when I was a month or two behind, I caught it up, which was no easy feat. So after having been through all that, I am not going to drop it. However, I am going to reduce the blog to mainly pertinent items and supported by photographs. Hopefully this will cut it down to between 30 minutes and an hour, or less.
Having said all that, yesterday was yet another catch up day. We didn’t leave the park, I packed the booze away I had bought the day before, re-installed the privacy screen to our awning because I short circuited the installation hence having a re-do exercise.
I also threw out my two year old black volleys and here is the supporting photo as proposed. Worth the wait? N.B. I have been carrying new ones since we left Adelaide in October last year. The old white ones to be retired and I have new whites also.
