After our single night stop at Coffs, we headed off with the intention of stopping off at Woolgolga just 30 kms up the road. It is supposedly the site of the first Sikh temple in Australia and with a large Indian poulation, famous for its Indian restaurants. Now I am not saying the brochure lied but:
The original temple has seen better days
and we saw more Italian and Chinese restaurants than Indian
well actually there was only one Indian restaurant so it wasn't that much of a stretch.
To be fair the new temple looked ok. But glad we didn't stick to the original plan of stopping here to get an Indian meal
The next part of the plan for today was to stay at Wooli, on the recommendation of the farmer family who recommended Urunga. One out of two ain't bad! Wooli turned out to be the Loch Sport of NSW (refer Blog for step 1 - Sale). I would describe it as a one horse town, but we didn't see the horse.
Anyway it didn't take long for us to work out "Wooli or Won'tI stay?" We WoolNOT
So we continued on to MacLean, "The Scottish Town in Australia. Which turned out be having a Scottish weather in Australia day. It was bucketing down with rain. We managed to get some supplies at the supermarket but pretty much everything else in town was closed or closing. Well that's not surprising you say, everyone knows that NSW country towns close for the weekend at 12:00pm on Saturday afternoon. Didn't you know that Steve? Well actually yes I did, what I hadn't remembered was that today was Saturday (slipping in to the Nomad life, no need for knowing what day it is - well except in country NSW towns obviously).
While eating our hand made, by Di, Ham & Cheese rolls for lunch it occurred to us that the next destination we were heading for, Iluka, was also a recommendation from the increasingly unreliable farmers. Quick change of plan, next destination will be Yamba just across the river from Iluka and a Vicki & Herb recommendation. A much more reliable pair of guides (most of the time).
Checked in for 2 nights, into the park right in town, as it was still precipitating quite steadily (and raining) . Bravely venturing out we wandered into town and checked the place out. Ten minutes later, tour completed. I tell a lie it was actually quite a reasonable sized seaside town with quite a few shops and eateries. But given the weather, I decided to catch up on the new Harry Potter movie that was showing at the salubrious Yamba Roxy. I was so surprised at the $7 (all sessions) ticket price that I lashed out on a $2.50 Choc Top. Di meanwhile, retired to the van to continue some reading and a (she tells me) quite acceptable self made Harvey Wallbanger. She also tells me it was only one, but I have my doubts.
To finish off another pleasant day on the road, we lashed out on Pizza for tea. Again no match for our regular haunts but washed down with a bottle of red - not too shabby.
Sunday 12th December
A lazy day today (mm that's becoming a bit common). Bit drizzly in the morning but bright and sunny in the afternoon. Started the day with a walk together along the riverfront before a good old fashion fry-up for brekkie.
After brekkie walked out to the surf beach and up to the lighthouse.
That should have walked off breakfast so we stopped off at the cafe for an iced coffee each and a shared cheesecake. It is now decided that we will leave the trailer and bike in Chinderah, because Mighty Merc is not going to be able to drag all the extra weight the way we are going.
The lesson for today: Do not just get up and go for a walk, leaving your newspaper on the table as if you were at home. The difference is, the table here is outside. So if the wind gets up, and it did, the newspaper blows away. Luckily only as far as the annexe of the caravan across the way. Even luckier the guy in that van is not the violent type and he just bought it back (albeit all screwed up).
Given we survived that, checked in here for an extra night.
Monday 13th
Lesson for today, I am STILL not a handy man and there is a reason I have worked with software not hardware. Well to be fair, the story has a happy ending, but it didn't start well.
We have had a suspicion for some time that the grey water tank has not been emptying properly.
(fear not non-caravanning types - grey water is just the run off from the sink. Now black water - we don't want to talk about here). So anyway, I crawled underneath MM and quickly worked out that the tap was not opening properly and so the water was not draining at all. In a fit of (it turns out misplaced) confidence I got a bucket under the van and unscrewed the tap completely, the water flowed out and when the bucket was nearly full I replaced the tap and emptied the bucket. No drama.
I repeated the process and all went well again. Now at this point I realised that there could be upwards of 30 buckets of water in the tank and decided to modify the process. I grabbed a funnel from the trailer and connected one end to the sullage hose and positioned the big end of the funnel under the tank and removed the tap again
Now honestly that didn't seem like a bad idea and quite possibly with better execution it would have worked. On the other hand what actually happened was:
I unscrewed the tap again
The water spurted out (that's a technical meaning "came out quite quickly")
I
The top of the funnel filled up (quickly) and the "water" started pouring out all over the ground under the van
I calmly(?) called for Di while I tried to find the tap
at this stage I didn't know it was in the top of the funnel,
which I was still vainly hoping was going to actually collect some of the water
and redirect it down the hose
Did I mention the water was a little smelly.
Anyway eventually, with some of the water going down the hose as planned, the tank emptied. Had it not been raining for two days the water would probably have soaked into the ground quite quickly but in this case it kind of pooled a little bit, well quite a lot actually. But as Di reminded me, when I flooded our flat in Camberwell (over 26 years ago I might add, but she still remembers) my solution was to leave it overnight and let it soak away. (I think it actually got soaked up by the carpet in the flat, but the insurance covered it so that story had a happy ending too). Anyway, after a quick redistribution of the water with a broom - we went out for the day.
One of the plans all along was to catch the local ferry across the river to Iluka, to check out what we had missed out on by ignoring the farmers advice. The ferry ride is a pleasant 35 minute meandering trip across the Clarence River taking in the sights, and avoiding running aground on the sandbars and the wall inexplicably built down the middle of the channel
Now Iluka was a lovely town but let's just say we will be abandoning any further suggestions from the farmers on places to stay. One highlight though was the good old fashioned, giant sized, ham salad sandwiches we had for lunch and the exceptional iced coffees.
Back at MM the water had all soaked away and the smell had disappeared so I loosened up the tap so it worked and refitted it to the tank. Another job done.
But life on the road always throws up little maintenance tasks so it was then that I noticed that the wire from the trailer to MM had worn through (probably explains why the trailer lights weren't working). Now I'm not sure why they don't make the wire strong enough to resist abrasion when being dragged along the highway at 100kmh. But they don't. So it was off to the shop to pick up some wire joiners to splice the wire. Now the short story is "it's all fixed now". The slightly longer story is "that was after undoing the first attempt, a second trip to the shops for different connectors and redoing the whole job". But let's be glass half full here people - I fixed it. AND the job involved using tools - to whit - wire cutters, a blade ( and I didn't cut myself) and a pair of pliers, as well as finishing off with waterproof tape.
A relaxing night in MM tonight - watching NCIS. I may have failed to mention in previous blogs that I now have Di addicted to it as well, so much so that we ended up watching two episodes tonight. El - you must be so proud, OK, maybe not, but us old people are enjoying it
No comments:
Post a Comment