Executed in Sydney

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DAY 446


I was awake at 4.30 am this morning as I suppose I had my interview on my mind, so I rolled around the bed trying to settle my busy mind, but to no avail, so the day slowly rose.

The benefit of being up so early is that you can at least be prepared for the forthcoming interview without any excuses of “I haven’t had time” to prepare.

I had had my morning tea quite early but I didn’t want too much more as I would constantly need the loo whilst in the interview and that would not help my concentration. I had plenty of time and sat and typed some of our blog’s and punched some words out.

Jan and Ted were ready for their day and after Caroline had had some toast and tea, and after thanking Ted and Jan for a fantastic stay at their home we set off into Silverwater ready for my 10.00am Interview.

The roads are busy but we arrive in plenty of time so parked the truck and waited for twenty minutes with that feeling like you are just about to be executed, still, this is what we have to do.

I left Caroline and walked down the road to my interview and went in and signed the visitors book and the receptionist said that the person I was due to see has been inadvertently held up and would not be interviewing me, but instead someone else would be interviewing me.

While I am in my interview Caroline has popped down the road to do some shopping, she wants to get some bits and pieces for work tomorrow so that she can take some sandwiches for lunch.

The interview was good, well it felt like it was and I was in there for about 50 minutes, my interviewer said that the original person who was going to see me, would contact me next week and I would possibly have to go back to Sydney for another interview.

When I left, I walked out into the sunshine and heat of the day, Caroline was just rumbling down the road, so I stood on the side of the road and waited for Caroline to stop and picked me up.

We swapped drivers and Caroline got in the passenger seat as she was going to navigate us out of Sydney, and set off back for Canberra.

We stopped on the way out of Sydney, as I needed to get out of my suit and get back into my holiday suit of shorts, tee shirt and thongs and after a quick change and a cup of coffee we were off on our return journey.

They have toll points along the main motorways and we paid $2.75 in cash at the pay booth on the M4 as we head out, but we drop down onto the M7 but of course that is Etoll only and the money that we just paid does not cover the M7, so Caroline telephoned Roam who control the toll charges, they tell her that the registration that she made at the end of December had just run out, Mondays journey was already covered on the previous registration, but today is not so she would have to register again, but it is also cheaper to do online and we have until Friday to re register.

Our journey back was uneventful, we stopped at lunchtime, as we have some groceries in our fridge we make ourselves a sandwich and have a short rest before heading back out on the road again.

On the final leg of the journey, Caroline said to me “Did you hear that? The fridge seems to just have stopped”, it let out a squeak and just went very silent, I said “we are only 40 minutes from Canberra and I would have a look at it then.” When we did get back I took the control case off the fridge and found the internal fan had failed and the compressor had over heated.

We eventually got back at about 3.00pm a little earlier than we expected, but it was nice as we could relax a little after our journey.

Later in the afternoon, we had to pop into Canberra as Caroline needed to pick up her jacket from the Tailors, the sleeves needed some alteration, she bought a new suit for work last week but the sleeves were too long, Caroline also picked up a few groceries for dinner tonight, Susan had come back with an sauce for an Indian curry and we did not have any chicken.

Caroline tells me that she is feeling a little nervous but just wants to get the first day over and done with. I think that is the worst bit, surprisingly though for having so much time off work she is not feeling as bad as I thought she might.

When we had time to deal with the fridge, we phoned Camping Country in Buderim, Queensland and explained what has happened, Jarrod is his usual professional self and said that he will speak to Evakool and get it sorted, the only thing is we are over a 1000 Kilometers from where Evakool are so taking it back is not an option.

We have given our Evakool fridge quite a lot of blog space in the past as it has been an issue virtually all the way around Australia, it all started at the beginning of our trip when we had to have a replacement fridge within 3 weeks of purchase, as fridge number 1 packed up, and Evakool (via) Camping Country replaced it with fridge number 2.

Whilst coming down from Cape York, we had another issue when all the refrigerant gas leaked out and we had to mess about having the fridge serviced whilst we were on the way down to New South Wales in early November and at the time Evakool’s service was not that good or perhaps I should say attitude too!

So with the fan packing up this is the last straw really, I am a big believer of giving credit where credit is due, but equally I only have a certain threshold when things go wrong, and I know we are at that point now.

Anyway the issues have been left with Camping Country and I know things will get sorted so we will await the outcome.

I got the case off the roof rack and bring it inside, we will be on the move again on Saturday morning so we need to start getting all our stuff together.

Susan came home from work, it was nice to catch up with her, we sat and chatted and got an evening meal on and that was it really for the evening, we just sat and watched some TV.

Unfortunately I went and dropped the laptop damaging the “Telstra dongle” this is bad its our connection to the outside world, with the Blog, Skype and e-mail, I am so cross at myself for being so stupid, and I know dealing with Telstra will be a nightmare as it always was a nightmare dealing with British Telecom.

I think the blog is going to be disrupted here so I just need you to bear with us until we can get it sorted.

Well it was soon time to retire to bed, its Caroline’s first day at work tomorrow which I know will be busy, so we need to be prepared.

KJ.

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