Two Front Teeth

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DAY 197


It is 6.15 and I switch of the alarm on my mobile phone before it goes off at 6.30, I am up early as I need to Skype my girlfriends who are having one of their usual get togethers it is Friday night in England and we have arranged a call for midnight, their time. The trouble is that they will have downed a few bottles of wine and I will be on my first cup of tea for the day.

I jump out of bed, get dressed and quickly wash, clean my teeth and brush my hair, I cannot do much with my hair I think I look like the “wild woman of Borneo” it is out of control and really needs a cut, my only wish would be to find a decent hairdresser, but that comes at a decent cost too, so while I am not working a trim will have to do.

I put the kettle on and make us both a cup of tea, Andy is just about up anyway and the Trumans have also put in an appearance. I grab the car keys and make sure the Patrol is unhooked from the trailer, I am going to drive a little way back down the dirt track for two reasons, one to ensure that I get at least 2 bars on the network and the second so that I don’t disturb the other campers.

As I start the truck and pull off our site I see that I am being watched, there are 4 campers outside of their trailer sitting in a row and facing our direction, perhaps we are the floorshow this morning.

When the network is showing 2 bars, I find a nice place to pull in off the track. However when I log in I find a message saying that there may be a problem with Skyping as Barbara’s laptop is being fixed, she has a loan laptop, I am logged in and they are not on line I check a few emails while I wait for them to appear online, but after 10 minutes it looks like it is not happening. In the meantime another friend calls me, Eva-Maria, we met her in Tasmania and sat for a while on the boardwalk talking, she tells me that she is now in Costa Rica. While I am speaking to Eva-Maria I keep an eye out for my friend to come online.

I am disappointed; it is 7.30 so it looks like it is not going to happen, but these things happen. I should have thought about it and did a Skype out call (Skype to Landline) at least we could have spoken even if I could not see them. We will hopefully be able to set up another session soon.

A short while later I arrive back in camp to find everyone relaxing in the morning sun, drinking tea and eatig breakfast, Josh proudly displays a tooth that came out in the night, this is the second one he has lost on this trip. I ask if the tooth fairy will visit, but he says not, Ken says that the tooth fairy will not know where to find him so she may visit when they get back home in 7 weeks time.

We have breakfast and I have a shower in the open roof shower block, it feels refreshing showering in the sunshine a bit different to showering in between two tarps that we had set up for our bush shower in Cape Leschanault.

The day is heating up very quickly; we have to pack up camp this morning as we are heading the short way into Broome.

Andy and I have a dilemma today as the Travelin Trueys are heading to Palm Grove and Andrew and Kirsty are already camping in Cable Beach Caravan Park, they both booked a while ago before any of us met each other, we need to decide which one to go to, and struggle as we don’t want to offend either of them, but we have to base our decision on what we feel is the best site for us.

Andy starts the mileage game again, so over the UHF we agree terms and I record everyone’s guesses. The game is on again. Andy regularly updates the Travelin Trueys with the mileage reading. We see a marker that says Broome is 100k’s but we have already done 35k’s so I think that I have bust my guess.

We finally arrive at the turn off for Broome and we start to head in, we are going to follow the Travelin Trueys to their site, where the official mileage will be recorded for the end of the game.

Soon we arrive at Palm Grove the official mileage recorded on the Odometer is 130.5 K’s and I have guessed 132.5 so I guess that makes me the winner of today’s mileage game, an ice-cream sundae is going to be my prize, but personally I would rather have a thing of fries.

We pop into the reception at Palm Grove and check their availability have a quick glance at the site, then drive to Cable Beach to do the same. In the end we chose Palm Grove as the people at Cable Beach seem a little disorganised, Palm Grove is marginally cheaper and is a much smaller site.

We make a booking for 5 days, so at least we can kick back a bit and do some ongoing maintenance, like getting the red dust out of everything (and I mean everything) if possible.

We are pitched opposite the Travelin Trueys, we have a lovely shady site and after a cup of tea, we all decide to go and have a swim, the afternoon sun is baking, and must be in the mid 30’s at least, we give it the best part of nearly an hour, bobbing around in the pool. The water is actually quite cold, it takes me the usual 5 minutes or so to gradually get myself in before I take the final plunge into its icy waters, ok well not quite so icy but it sure is a bit of a shock when you are baking in temperatures of 30 degrees.

It is agreed by all that we will go to Maccy D’s so Kahlia and Caroline can receive their ice cream sundae, for winning the mileage games, but we are pleased to make sure everyone is a winner and we all have one (actually, being a potato fiend Caroline has fries).

Again we are busy we need to get groceries in so Caroline and myself drive to Woolworth’s, and push a trolley around and it soon fills up. The Truman’s are big Marshi fans (Toasted Marshmallows) so we make sure we get some in, and Caroline wants to get a bottle of wine in, you can not buy Alcohol directly from the supermarket, but it is available from the supermarket bottle shop that is attached.

Sadly, we have been warned that aborigines hang around outside the bottle shops, often drunk, and can be quite threatening, however as we park the truck and walk over we see one fella just collapse in a heap on the floor. So far a lot of people have told us about the problems with the “Black Fella’s and the grog” it seems to be their demon.
I see the look on Caroline’s face as this bloke goes down just to the side of us, and was sure Caroline was in two minds whether to carry on, but we do.

Inside its like a plague of locusts loads of Aborigines are trying to get their hands on as much grog as they can carry and a girl in front of us has the foil off a bottle of wine before she leaves the shop, the guy behind the counter even makes a joke about it.

Back in the trailer, we are skyping our friends and family back home when our next door neighbour (Stuart) in the caravan park pops his head in and aks us if we have eaten as he has cooked too much dinner and is offering us the rest of it, “Yes please!” we exclaim, and he duly leaves it with us. It was fantastic, Chicken, noodles, pak choi, and mushrooms delicious. We both feel happy to be camping on this pitch it turned out to be a good choice.

However, Stuart has already told us that this may not be a good site, he is happy to be moving on next week, they have already been here for 2 months (tough life eh!) and they have had problems with back packers drinking and coming back to the campsite and partying on into the night, the security guard here and the owner seem to have been powerless or just not interested in doing anything about it, but it all came to a bit of a head and the day before we arrive a load of backpackers were turfed off the site.

While we are catching up on our blog work, we are several days behind as we have been busy socialising and being out of network range, Josh and Kahlia come over and ask us if we would like to watch a movie, so after we have done a bit of blog catching up, we wander over the road to the Trumans site and spend the rest of the evening watching Jarhead, Caroline and Jodie enjoy a glass of Clean Skin Shiraz.

About 20 minutes before the end of the movie we feel raindrops, and we are suddenly getting wet there is a sudden downpour and Caroline runs across to shut the inner flaps on the tent to make sure our bedding stays dry. It is raining quite hard, so we have to put the movie on pause rearrange the seating so that we are all under the awning, and restart the movie once more.

We retire to bed soon after shattered again once more from a busy day, by now it has stopped raining, it is a warm night, so we sleep on top of the sleeping bags.

Hopefully we will have a peaceful night, after what we have been told, we hope that we did not pick the wrong site.

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Photos

Morning Relaxation
Before the rush of packing up in the heat.

Raring to go
A pair of T's and a pair of Patrols

Road Train Coming
Lined up with the Travelin Trueys

Long and Straight
The Road to Broome