Rain Stops Play

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DAY 300


We both awoke with a start at around 6.00 this morning, something unusual was happening outside and it was quite noisy, yes we awoke to the sound of torrential rain. We are not hugely familiar with this strange phenomenon right now, the last bout of this tropical type rain we had was a very brief spell while in Broome and right now I cannot remember exactly when we were in Broome, I will need to check back the blog’s to figure that one out.

The one thing that we both agree on is that we are very thankful not to be sleeping in the trailer this morning, although we know that the tent and trailer copes well with this rain, it is not really ideal for camping. The last time that we were really subjected to torrential and continual rain was way back in our trip, Cape Otway, while we were doing the Great Ocean Road. The rain was so bad I was tempted not to pitch up but to find a nice cosy motel room or bed and breakfast, we didn’t we stuck it out and moved on to find better weather, which we eventually did at Warnambool.

By 6.30 it was still pouring, I chose to stay in bed, but Andy got up, he disappeared for a while then decided to come back to bed, I was struggling to wake up, but the humidity was fairly high, so I don’t think that helped very much.

We had already discussed changing the plans for the day, our plan was to walk from Copperlode Dam to Crystal Cascades, we would not normally let the rain stop us from doing something, however it is a walk that is graded as difficult and with the torrential rain it would not help conditions for that particular walk, especially with my track record, so we decided to postpone it for another day, possibly Sunday.

Finally at 8.00 I got out of bed, Andy had well and truly gone back to sleep so I pottered around, had a shower, made us both a cup of tea, I left Andy’s by the bed for him, but when he eventually appeared he asked why I had made him a cold cup of tea. Why indeed?

I am not going to bore you with detail but the day passed without any real excitement, I tidied up the kitchen whisked round with the vacuum cleaner and made sure we were nice and tidy in the house and then we drove down to Gordonvale on a bit of a reccy mission, but nothing doing on that one.

So the afternoon passed with more reading and relaxation, I also managed to watch an Australian soap (got to make sure this does not become habitual!!), did some brain training and that was about it really.

We did our walk up to the top of the road, we could see smoke on the mountain to the left, but we were not sure what was actually on fire, the smoke was billowing across where we were but did not deter us from our walk.

Andy cooked dinner and the evening was spent doing leisurely things like reading, Sudoku, crosswords etc. I don’t think I have ever done so many puzzles or reading in one go before, my mind should be as sharp as a knife now!

So today our non exciting day actually marks 300 days since we left Blighty, that seems really strange, I cannot believe we have been travelling for that long, yet in many respects it seems like only yesterday and I wonder what we have done with all of that time. Have our lives benefited from what we have done? The answer to that one is easy, yes of course we have both benefited, we have learnt new skills, met some incredible people, made new friends, seen some terrific sights and we have done some wonderful things. With plenty more to come I am sure.

In theory we are only 65 days away from the end of our trip, or in other words officially the 1 year off work that we planned but who knows right now if we will stop before or after then, I guess time and perhaps fate will tell on that one. We hope by then to have achieved 500,000 words on the blog and maybe 30,000 hits on the blog, photographs, well I have an archive of 13,000 so who knows how many more we will take?

As for the blog, we noted that nobody picked up on the solar toaster, tee hee, sorry just a little joke to see if you were all reading and paying attention, as if! Our friends at Power Traveller thought it was a great joke to play, although we may jest, but perhaps they are not too far away from such a thing already.

For the 300th time on this trip it was time for bed.

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Photos

The house at the top
This is the house at the top of th hill that we think is lovely, it has a huge swimming pool in the centre

DSC05798
This is a long drawn out out climb, but a fantastic neighbourhood