Water is Precious

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DAY 155

Andy was wide awake early this morning, I think because he had gone to bed so early last night. I was comfy and keeping warm, it was hard to get moving this morning. I felt pleased that we had asked if the possibility was there for another night if we needed and I felt as if we needed that, we had not done half of what we wanted to do in preparation for the next part of our trip.

It seems that after a few days the journey has a habit of catching up with us or is it just psychological in terms of knowing that we have to catch up on recharging batteries for cameras, doing the washing, topping up with drinking water etc.

Andy brought me tea in bed, it is the first time I have had tea in bed for a while. I was sat in bed drinking when Andy said Tasnim is calling on Skype, he answered it as I hurriedly dressed. Tas is a friend of mine from England and I have not spoken to her since leaving England. It was just before midnight over there, Andy had a brief conversation however by the time I got there, the call had dropped and we could not reconnect.

Still, it got me out of bed and on with the day. Andy had already hung the washing out for me so that was drying nicely on the line, but I still had one more load to do so I raced over to the laundry and found a vacant machine, in it went and while that was doing we wandered over to the camp kitchen for a breakfast of toast and marmite.

I still needed to go to the office to confirm that we would stay another night, so once I had picked up my wet washing, I wandered over to the office. Someone else was sat in there, so explained the conversation that I had with the other chap the night before. He went off and checked with the Lady who checked us in yesterday.

I would say they were not particularly accommodating, their attitude seem to change. She told me that we could move to another site. Although I was not being awkward, I did say that if we had to move sites then we may just as well pack up and move on, then her attitude changed again, she asked if we were using much power i.e. kettle, heater, air conditioning etc. I laughed and said, “No, we only have a camper trailer so just batteries and a laptop”.

She then said it would be alright as she was really only concerned about the power being overloaded on the socket down there. They had squeezed three on this site before and I am sure that they really just want the money at the end of the day. Lets not forget we are on an overflow site, which is not marked and does not have a tap or easy access to the power.

I had thought that perhaps because they had two vans booked on and the fact that they offered me another site meant that they would move one of the vans.

We popped into town, well Ceduna we found was a lively town, I guess being that the shops were shut yesterday and we all needed stocking up in the supermarket. Not many other shops were open.

We stocked up on food for the fridge, not too many fruit and veg at the moment, as we will be crossing a quarantine line in a couple of days to get into Western Australia.

We then popped into Tourist Information to see if we could find anything else that we needed to know on the Nullarbor, about 10 minutes later we left with a bundle of brochures and leaflets in hand.

Andy hates all these leaflets and little tourist maps that I pick up, but they are a necessary evil. I hang on to them until we have used them or we have moved on from that area, but sometimes Andy wants to throw them away as soon as we have read them, he says they make the truck untidy, however when I am navigating and sorting through relevant places to stop on the way, I need them to hand.

Back at base camp we have some lunch, the washing is drying nicely in this heat. Andy was concerned that his pants had been out in the sun for so long that they would get heat stroke.

This afternoon we were going to get ourselves prepared for leaving tomorrow so that all we had to do in the morning would be to have breakfast, shower and pack up the trailer (of course it is always that easy!!)

I finished up the blog for yesterday, we drank tea and lounged around for a bit then Andy tidied up the truck and filled the water tank. We will have about 45-50 litres of water to take with us, which should be more than enough; there are places that we can top up on route if necessary. However there is a word to the wise with water on the Nullarbor.

Water is precious; at the western end of the Eyre Peninsula drinking water is in fact very scarce. The reasons for this are, the average rainfall is 350mm or less, there are no flowing rivers or creeks and there are no aquifers that can supply drinkable groundwater. People here are reliant on the water they catch or reticulated supplies.

We are on a campsite that has their water piped up from Port Lincoln, some 400 kilometres away. This is reticulated water and although perfectly safe to drink, most people still prefer rainwater or bottled water. As we travel further West across the Nullarbor then if we need more water we may have to pay for it.

Chores are nearly done in between drinking copious amounts of tea. Then a rather large caravan turns up and reviews the site pondering how to get in, he has a friend travelling with him who has a caravan the same size. It seems that the caravan park have kept both caravans on the same site, it really does tell me that they were just keen to take the extra money and the site they said we could have probably went to someone else thus squeezing in as many as they could.

The second caravan had to squeeze in between two trees and one of them has an exceptionally low branch, which could also scratch the top of his van. I don’t think the fact that we are still there is really an issue, I think the site itself is not suitable for large caravans.

Eventually it is all worked out and I sit down to Skype Mum as it is her birthday today. Success, Mum and Dad are online and we manage to speak. I did say that I tried to send a birthday present however the kangaroo kept jumping out of the box, so I failed miserably on that one.

After that Andy cooked chilli in taco shells, delicious. We wandered over to the camp kitchen to wash up, as it is easier, unfortunately it is crowded with children as it is the school holidays, they have no problem getting under your feet while you are trying to wash up.

We chat to a couple from Perth, they are on their way over Hervey Bay where they have yacht moored, they will spend the dry winter months on the yacht and then in the wet season when it begins at the end of October they will return to Perth. They have a lovely dog, Buddy, however he is supposed to be a Golden Retriever but he is huge, I didn’t think Retrievers were that big.

We finish chatting and head back to camp, we make a cup of tea and we are now sitting in the games room, we will upload the blog and then play cards until bed time. Rock and Roll eh!

We will see what tomorrow brings, but we are ready to head out of here and drive the Nullarbor, we may see a few people that we have met on the way, most people seem to be heading in the right direction.

Until tomorrow, not an exciting day today, forgive us but sometimes we have to concentrate on preparation.

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