How Mad is that!!

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DAY 457

Sunday brings with it a day of mourning, it is 12 months since Black Saturday when bushfires devastated parts of Victoria and many lives. There is a 1 minute silence at midday and Prime Minister Rudd declared a national day of mourning with flags to be flown at half mast all around the country.

We offer our thoughts on this matter and reflect on our own experiences of that day and remember the 47 degrees heat.

I was awake nice and early, and soon we are both sitting enjoying it being Sunday and having some breakfast.

It is our plan today to go to the Australian Mint, the weather is warm but a little bit cloudy but still around 25 degree’s.

Caroline’s wants to go for a swim, so we grab our togs and walk over to the pool, there is no one in there, bliss, we pace ourselves and do 30 lengths for the exercise we need and in about half an hour we are feeling happy that we have completed our task and climb out of the pool, as wrinkled as a prune, the water was much colder today, but by the time we got out the temperature was more than comfortable.

We dry our selves off and walk back up to the Wendy House and we can see that some one also with a camper trailer has pulled in to the next free space in front of our Wendy House and are busy setting up.

We say g’day as we walk past then I do a double take and say to the fella, “Hey mate weren’t you camping behind us in Broome?” Sure enough it was the couple John and Shaz who we met whilst camping in Broome when we were up there with the Truman Family.

Strangely enough the same place where we met Stuart and Yvonne the guy who showed me what to do with an empty gas bottle, turning it in to a “Heat Bead” basin of which we still use ours when we are out in the bush doing a good ol’ curry.

The blog day when we met Stuart and Yvonne was blog day 24th May 2009 and this was the same time that we met John and Shaz, they were from the Sunshine Coast, John was a builder and Shaz a hairdresser, on these Caravan Parks you can always find out if there is a hair dresser, which is always useful.

Well we were amazed bumping in to them again; I recognised the trailer, with the fishing gear and the bike on the front.

We started to chat with them and they were equally amazed that in a country as huge as Australia and so far away from Broome we actually bump in to them again especially as it is many months ago and we have both covered vast distances in different directions. Officially the distance between Broome and Canberra is 5200 kilometres and interestingly we think this is possibly the furthest away we have been from somewhere when we bump into someone. Now that’s just mad!

John asks “are you on holiday again?” “No, still at it!” but went on to explain that we maybe here for a while as Caroline is working. We chat and chat some more, and are fascinated as to what each other has been doing since we last met, nearly nine months ago.

John and Shaz explain that they have been on the road for 20 months and are heading home to the Sunshine Coast a little earlier as their tenants have given notice to move out, so they need to get back and will move back into their house and resume “normal life.” We have asked this question before, but “how do you resume normal life after a journey like this and what constitutes normality?”

They come over to the Wendy House with a “dare I admit it,” piece of cake and we have a cup of tea to compliment the cake Shaz made on the previous day.

We tell them about the cultural festival in Canberra and they are interested to see that, we need to go and gets some groceries and mention that I will do a curry for us all tomorrow night. So we head off again in different directions.

We get in to Woolworths for some grocery shopping and pick up most of what we need for the curry. Once we had done that we found we did not really have enough time to explore the Mint so that will have to wait for another weekend, so when we got back to the trailer we have a couple of hours, beetling about tidying up, reading, ironing and stuff like before we go out at 6.30pm to the cinema.

We have a very light tea as our lunch was quite late, just a tin of soup and some crackers is enough. We are also trying to deplete some of our canned food stocks that we had in the trailer while we were on the road and driving long distances, we think that we don’t need to keep quite so much at the moment and it will keep things tidy.

The evening feels quite warm, there are plenty of people around even though the cinema is not as busy as it has been lately, we park in the multi story car park and get in at about 6.50, we already have our tickets as we got them the day before so we are able to go straight through, we already have some water and we are not allowing ourselves any sweets or popcorn as we are trying to cut down on our junk food intake and get fit and healthy again.

The Film Law Abiding Citizen is fantastic with Gerard Butler, I obviously won’t tell you what happens as it would spoil it but it is definitely worth going to see.

We do some blog notes and are ready for bed, the blog is going pretty well for this month, it is above our target we set for it.

The Wallaby Wanderers are off to Tasmania tomorrow so we wish them a fantastic trip over there, I know they will just love it, we hope too that they have a nice smooth crossing as the Tasman Sea is not exactly a mill pond!

Don’t forget, as we are slowing down on our blog you may wish to keep up on the travels with the Wallaby Wanderers who we still hope to catch up with on their return from Tasmania and before they have to head back to Blighty.

On that note, some people have to work tomorrow so at 10.00 it is lights out!

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Photos

The Broome Kidds
John and Shaz (Shanna) Kidd from Palmwoods, who we met 5200 K's away in Broome

Comments

[Adriano]

hot and cold... this is the world
Hi I'am Adrian fron north west Italy, I seen by oeu network, that is very hot now in Australia. 47 degrees heat, is absolutly abnormal, but be happy anyway, You just have the opportunity to get fresh bath into the ocean. Nothing to do with our situation here, which is quite bad, due I'am leaving at the feet of Alps, nearly the big forest called "Cansiglio": last Saturday 25cm snow and less 12°C (-12°C), We been luky because just on the top of this big mountaing, (where nobody live!)was less22°C (-22°C) during daylight and less 40°C (-40°C maximum value) in the night. So everithing here is frozen. Best regards Adriano