Enema of the State, Cleansing the Territory

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DAY 249

13th July 2009

For some strange reason today I woke up with one thing on my mind, cleaning so after breakfast, while it was still cool I got started and completely emptied the tent to make sure the floor space was clear, I boiled some water and soon got down on the floor and scrubbed away.

The last time I, or we, did this was in Broome, we make an effort to do this every so often because it helps keep everything in good condition and it always makes you feel good when everything is clean and tidy, and of course there is no space for spiders to hide. You would be surprised at how grubby the floor gets, dirt travels easily inside and it seems to weld itself to the floor, which is mainly red dust from Cape Leveque, Windjana Gorge, the Bungle Bungles and everything else that the Australian ground has to offer. Some of this dirt sticks well and can cause discolouration.

Of course the day rapidly heats up and I am now melting, but a few glasses of water helps keep me going. I wash down the panel that blocks of the rear of the trailer, even though we don’t step on that section it has become rather grubby, however after a couple of hours effort a few bowls of water and some drying time in between the inner tent looks like new again with a lovely fresh fragrance.

I then spray the surface insect repellent hopefully to keep any intruders of the more than 2 legged varieties away, then gradually moved everything back inside, things were sorted into appropriate boxes and suitcase, laundry etc.

While I was busy on the cleaning Andy was busy tinkering with the truck and sorting out the equipment in there, we purchased some new plastic tubs from Bunnings to help with storage, some of the plastic tubs we purchased at the beginning of the trip have either broken or we have outgrown, so after some major sorting out we are back on track, the truck is tidy, our gear is tidy, everything has a place again. Andy and I of course feel much better for being tidy, clean and organised.

We are both shattered after this morning’s effort, so we sit down for lunch and relax in the cool shade. It is weird today weather wise, the sun is hot when it is out but it is also very cloudy today and even when the sun is not out, it is hot and very humid. There is no real escape from the heat today except when there is a nice cool breeze in the offing, lovely, of course you could go and stand in the loos where they have 2 rather large ceiling fans spinning round that is the only cool place around.

This afternoon while I type up the blog, do some emails, the crossword, Sudoko that kind of thing, Andy was busy sorting out the carpet at the back of the Patrol, we had purchased some new carpet to replace the one that is stained and using it as a template suddenly creates a masterpiece and the carpet is now replaced.

Andy is very pleased with his efforts, it is a perfect fit and what he is most happy about is the fact that Nissan wanted $900.00 dollars for replacement carpet, I do accept that amount was for the complete floor pan, as they don’t sell the small section we wanted for the cargo area, so we had gone into Bunnings armed with a sample of the carpet Andy had cut from the original cargo area, we go to the industrial carpets section and found a perfect match in colour and texture.

We purchased a meter and half and a hobby knife, we got back and Andy took the original carpet out the back of the Patrol used it as a template, drew around it and cut it out with the hobby knife and the medical scissors we had in one of the first aid kits we brought along on this trip.

The only difficult part of the operation was getting the sound deadening material off the back of the original carpet to transfer it over to put it back on the floor of the truck, but apparently he managed to get it off with the BBQ scraper that we had in the cleaning kit.

When it was all fitted back I had to agree that it did look spot on, so much better than what was there previously.

It was time for a cup of tea and as the afternoon was nearly gone, time that needed full use to prepare our evening meal. Andy said he would do a Chilli tonight, and set about carefully preparing, Red, Yellow and Green chillies to go in to his concoction, along with the mince, onion, garlic, Tabasco and the like.

It would have just been perfect to slowly cook it in the camp oven over the heat beads, but sometimes it just too much aggravation, so we made do with our gas stove tonight. With the rice prepared the dinner was served, another near perfect Chilli cooked, it was quite hot (spicy), the way we like it.

As dinner was over earlier than usual it gave us time to sit down and have a good card fest, it’s getting a little too competitive.

It has been a very busy and productive day, doing all those important things that just have to be done, so we are going to bed a little bit early, it is another warm night, the mozzies are biting as usual so we will bid you good night.

Until our next entry.

KJ.
PS: apologies to Blink 182 for nicking the name of one of their albums "Enema of the State", it just happened to come into my mind when we were thinking up a title for todays blog.

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Photos

Our Eski
Shirley, This is our large Eski, that we keep our cold drink in

Not very exciting
My handy work,not very exciting I know but I was still pleased with it all the same.