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Published: April 21st 2009
At Fight
These two huge ants fight for survival.Day 164
6.00 bang on and the Kookaburra’s started their dawn chorus, there was a lot of them so it was rather noisy. A short while later they stopped so be drifted back to sleep.
Waking at Noble Falls to a very warm morning, we were so snug in our joint sleeping bag that neither of us wanted to get out and put the tea on. This is so unusual for me (Andy) as I have always loved getting out of bed early to enjoy the morning, where Caroline is the opposite end of the scale and enjoys the evenings.
Eventually Caroline roused and I followed shortly, as we had moved the gas cooker for safety reasons, it needed reconnecting, which Caroline struggles with.
The morning was hot and very sunny so we sat under the shade at a picnic table, ate our breakfast cereal and looked over the maps to do some forward planning. A coach load of elderly ladies came in to the park site, there was an enormous queue for the toilets and when they got back on the coach and drove by they all waved enthusiastically, which was nice.
We eventually got
Struggle
We don't know who won. packed away, and hooked the camper trailer to the Patrol, as we were loading the final bits in to the back of the truck we watched two ants, both at least 30-35mm in length fighting with each other which was astonishing. Caroline laughed and said how weird, have we ever had the time to sit down and watch two ants fighting it out, we would not even bother to see the ants, just walk by and get on with what we were doing in our busy lives.
Finally hitting the road, we had only around 100 K’s to go before we got to our destination which was to be at a discovery park in Forrestfield on the outskirts of Perth, as our ethos is 2 nights budget or free camping then a branded site, for obvious reasons.
Driving in on the highway I have a funny feeling, a pleasant one similar to wind, it’s a feeling or rather a gut feeling about going to Perth, I am excited as we have been looking forward to Perth, hoping that it may end up as a place to make our new home.
I had said to Caroline that if we drove past a Maccy D on the way in we should pull in and reload the missing photos that were lost on the TravelBlog server which crashed recently, loads of people’s photo’s were lost, for us it was 10 Blog entries worth, but as we have the facility to use free internet, we should grasp it to keep our internet costs down.
Just a small point to make, although it has caused us extra work to reload the photos and it will take us time, we still need to do this as it is important for us to maintain our journal, but the people at TravelBlog are great, they respond to requests very quickly and they have been doing a lot of maintenance recently to upgrade image servers and improve site functionality. TravelBlog also turned 7 years old on 5th April. They do a great job and they were honest enough to say that they had a problem, which caused the photos to disappear, we cannot grumble, as we do not pay for this service.
About 500 hundred yards from our final destination, were the golden arches shining like a beacon in the world of fast food junkies, we parked up and opened the back doors of the truck and noticed that the “Power Gorilla” only had 4 bars worth of power on it and the laptop is nearly out of power (not good), so we can only do our best until we get onto our powered site.
We managed to up load all of the photo’s for “its been a blast” for blog day 160 16 04 2009 so that was 1 down with 9 to go, it is a fiddly job as the text is still there but our photo’s have been saved across to an external hard drive so it all had to be re loaded back.
With this blog entry done we were on the fringes of the power failing so the laptop had to be shut down properly, which we managed to do, 2 coffee’s later, we put everything back in the truck and drove the last 500 hundred meters to our campsite, it was only 1 pm, we were quite pleased as we could have a slow-ish and restful afternoon, bliss.
The trailer is pitched in no time at all, we have had a lot of practice in fact 328 times to be precise, the site is quite quiet for Easter we expected it to be busy, the lady on reception said that they were busy. We have been given a spot under a nice tree which will offer us some nice shade from the strong afternoon sun.
A little way over from our site we spy a nicely painted Motorhome, it was mostly white with a yellow wave effect, sadly we did not get a picture of it, but painted on it was “The permanent residence of Rod & Betsy Smith”. We thought this was great, but we did not get chance to get a picture before it moved on.
The camp kitchen is 30 meters away so we wander off to put the kettle on, and after a quick mug of tea, things need to get done, the first being getting our blanket new blanket dry cleaned (so much for a restful afternoon).
Back home in England, Caroline and myself have always had good jobs! In the sense of being well paid, and we have never have been foolish with money, OK, we ate out every week because we were so busy, so we used our eating out time as a place were we down loaded our weeks events to each other, some may call this extravagant, anyway the point I am trying to make is that we never used to shop in the Salvo’s.
Someone put the idea in to our heads that the best place to buy a blanket was the Salvo’s or “op shops” as they would be a fraction of the cost, so with this in mind and the fact that we were not prepared to be cold again we thought we would get a blanket should the opportunity arise. Well it did in Kalgoorlie and we got hold of a lovely pure woollen blanket for $15. Caroline insisted that it was to be dry cleaned before we used it so this afternoon we dropped it in to a dry cleaners.
$27.00 Dollars please, Kerching! so the total cost of our blanket was $42.00 surely we could have got a new one for that? Still we live and learn.
Next on the things to do was Bunnings, I love Bunnings, but I think that is just my age, I am a bloke that can do most things, and back home I had my little workshop, if it was broken I could usually fix it, and usually had the tools to do so, I used to maintain my 2 motorbikes and generally enjoy being able to do. Over here it is so difficult, I don’t have a decent toolbox, no bits and pieces or even the basic stuff like a battery drill.
Our tent poles on the inside of the trailer have a locking mechanism that is to say the least cr*p, and over time the poles move, sometimes you put the trailer up and if the poles have moved the tent becomes saggy or a funny shape. I came up with an idea to stop this, by using what us Brits know as a jubilee clip, its basically an adjustable band that can be tightened up.
I installed one of these clips on each of the poles and it was a success, I said to Caroline we will only have to do this once and it will be sorted.
Bunnings is the equivalent to B&Q and is an excellent store.
We got back and while Caroline had a swim as I wrestled with the poles, which turned out successfully, Caroline came back and said the water was freezing cold, which I guess it would be as the afternoon was so hot, she was delighted that there were no children in the pool she had it all to herself. Perhaps others were the sensible ones staying out of such cold water.
Just before dinner Caroline Skyped her parents for a chat, It is also one of Caroline’s brothers birthday today, so she sent him a message (Happy Birthday Andrew).
Tonight’s evening meal was last nights curry, and curry always tastes hotter when it has been left to fester (in the fridge of Course). The camp kitchen was hot inside anyway, and from the cooking I was hot, and then eating the curry I thought we were going to spontaneously combust.
The final thing we had to do was the blog, so Caroline sat down with the laptop and typed away, she can touch type, this means she doesn’t have to look at the keys whilst typing like I do as she knows exactly where they are, I suppose a bit like a piano player.
It still takes a huge amount of time, looking at our route, recalling what we have done and generally producing something that is a true account of our day’s events.
We publish then shut the laptop down and fall in to bed exhausted after another busy day.
The T's
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Tina
non-member comment
Hope the feeling remains!
Hey You two, Sounds like the adventure is still just that, and your now well experience travellers, still loving the blog and well worth your efforts! Some of your comments should go in a book as they've made me laugh out loud, this one in particular Andy "Driving in on the highway I have a funny feeling, a pleasant one similar to wind"... :o) Hope Perth is all The T's want - and more!! Tx