Dungog, oops Gloucester!?

---

This is the most eventful trip yet!

Dungog, what can I say. Phoned to book powered sites for 7-9/01/2011, no problem. Decided to leave home after a bit of work in the morning, pack The Ark, shower, lunch and off we go... so we thought! What a disaster, it had rained quite heavy for a week beforehand and The Ark had been left open so our kids could use it to sleep in over the Christmas/New Year period. About 11am we started to pack the van-water, water everywhere which now was a drop in the ocean after the floods in Queensland, but at the time sooo much water, my freshly covered lounge cushions and curtains-soaked, dripping wet. fortunately only one of the mattresses were wet, so at least we had a dry bed! So we decided to get the water off the floor, remove the cushions and curtains, finish packing the van and get to Dungog so we could open it up o dry out properly-including the annexe in the storage box. All packed, we started to lower the roof and discovered how everything had gotten wet, the roof is concaved towards the raiseable air vent and the water had gotten in under the lip as it had nowhere else to go. Unfortunatley the extra weight from the water on the roof caught us unaware and the roof came down too fast catching my arm and fingers-luckily no breaks but scrapes and bruises. Not only getting my minor injury but more water poured into The Ark-true to it's name it survived the "flood"! What a sight, I was soaked- I copped the majority of the water as I wasn't strong enough to hold it at the level The Moth could.

We left it at that point, went inside, patched myself up, had lunch and then went back to finish lowing the roof. Finally, after a shower-fortunatley (you will see why shortly) 2.30pm we hit the road. It was a hot humid day and really wasn't looking forward to unpacking and getting the Ark dry. We arrived after 5pm, setup The Ark and soon discovered water had seeped into the blankets through the plastic they were stored in! I told Tony to collect the key from the Servo as the Info Centre was closed and whilst he was gone I would get the wet stuff out and put out to dry as best I could. So I spread them over tables, chairs you name it anywhere they would hang, fortunately we had a sheltered picnic area so they came in handy, hopefully noone will come to use them!

Tony arrived back and I'm all set to have a shower as I was a lather of sweat in the humidity, what could and what did I say? The info centre had left the amenities key at the servo!!!! at least the toilet section was open 24/7, but not the showers. So much for getting the sweat off me, a wash will have to do-the joys of camping. After a quick dinner of sausage sandwiches we settled in for a DVD and a good nights sleep before Mick, Jenny, Shauna & Scotty arrived the next morning. I quickly fell asleep, couldn't get into the movie. Tony watched it to the end. About Midnight we have doof, doof, doof, nooooo it is the hang for the local youth! Being the only van in the park we didn't make a fuss with the noise, this went on till 4.30ish, you know mainly the girls yelling out to their friends, the boys were quiet outside the volume of their music. We awake with the sun so 2 and a bit hours sleep, lucky we can rest today. Alas what is the saying, no rest for the wickard? Well i'm apparently wickard! The others arrive about 9.30am and decide that they don't want to stay on a Saturday night as the same thing will probably happen, we all decide to go to Gloucester. So we pack up again, not everything is dry yet, so we just bundle it up and throw it all on the back seat of the car. I have no idea where anything is as it is just put in the van so we can leave. We head off about 10am and arrive at Gloucester to do it all over again.

The weather isn't the best and rains on and off all weekend, including when we leave, fortunately we got the annexe down before it got wet and the light rain we wiped off the canvas of The Ark. All in all we had a great night playing cards and chinese checkers, camping really is the life, quite relaxing if nothing goes wrong :-)

Our next weekend away we plan to visit Hawks Nest in February, hopefully it will be a crew of 5 or so couples.

So until our next weekend

Charmaine and The Moth

---