November 3

NOTE - It is the morning of November 4 and we are in Carnarvon,I have a 5 bar net signal so we are sitting in the carpark outside Woolworths enjoying a cup of coffee and a cream donut while I push on and get the blog all uploaded to date.

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Up bright and early this morning, gasping for a drink (of water), should have taken some to bed with me. I woke up several times during the night thirsty - maybe something to do with the Aussie wine, but the the thought of crawling over Alan, then squeezing through the hole at the end of the bed in order to drop down to Winston's floor was not very appealing. Once achieving that goal I would then have to negotiate trying to open the back of Winston's rear end in order to climb out. Doing all this without waking Alan would be impossible, so being the thoughtful person I am (or just down right lazy ), I suffered and remained a thirsty girl till dawn. This is the first time I have got up before Alan, normally I allow him the privilege of negotiating exiting from Winston's rear end first and get the kettle on.

We planned last night to have a true English breakfast, bacon, eggs and sausages but two hours after getting up we really could not be bothered, mind you was only 7:30, we may change our minds yet. And we did change our minds, I cooked up another 8 sausages, then a packet of bacon and while doing that the heavens opened - no not singing holy songs about my improved skills in the kitchen, just chucking clean water down for the washing up afterwards (which we once again collected in our blue plastic bowl). Still raining and the bacon cooked it was time to do the eggs. Have you ever tried frying eggs in hot fat with rain water splatting into the pan and making the hot fat spit our and bite you? Fun stuff and no need for a doctor (if you are reading this Andrew i am thinking of you ).

Today we are packing up and leaving the Francois Peron National Park and once again heading further north. A pretty boring day all round, with a long tarmac road - booooo. Saying as we have been very economical with our clothes and having spotted a laundrette in Denham we decided to take a pit stop and do the washing, it should not take long, 4 pairs of shorts, 3 shirts and some undies between us from the last 10 days!!!! Yep, we have been a couple of real Vanilla Gorillas on this trip. Laundry done and a bit more shopping to do. Last year one of the things we did was to buy proper sausages (I have sausages on the mind I think ), but until now we have only had shop bought ones, OK and do the trick. No behave, they are for cooking and eating. In Denham we found a butcher and bought his sausages, yummy jalapeño chili ones which we have devoured so another 8 were purchased. The next bit of shopping is a new chair for Alan, these cheap 15 buck ones Britz have provided are thin bendy hollow tube things with a bit of canvas. We had bought the same ones last year and know they don't last. Anyway, Alan trashed his a couple of days ago and we threw it in the bin. Planning to buy another cheap and nasty on to replace it, it was off to the petrol station where they have a bunch of camping gear. Oh, no cheap and nasty chairs available. How to solve the problem, easy peasy. Buy two really comfy ones (mine has a built in food rest) and only give Britz back their one chair and the cover for the chair in the trash - wonder what they will say :).

Our new chairs are so state of the art, they even have a cooler pocket big enough for two cans in the left arm rest, how neat is that.

I am typing this in the car while Alan drives and we have just come to a junction. The signpost read Carnavon to the left and Northampton to the right. Is that a big clue that Brits were the main settlers here!! - time to sign off for now with the blog totally up to day and I don't have the ability to second guess what wonders we may still see today to write about them before we discover them.

We stopped at a roadhouse for a yet another lovely cup of coffee and a sandwich to maintain substance on this trek and to relieve the boredom of traveling on tarmac roads. So far every roadhouse or petrol station we have stopped at has made yummy latte coffees and toasted sandwiches - not this one. Hot water, instant coffee, tea bags and a 'do it yourself affair'. I can't be bothered with that so back to the car and retrieve a high energy drink from the fridge along with the sausages and bacon which were cooked this morning. Here is me, trying to hold items in my arms and mouth and shut Winston's read end when dropsy sets in. Now the high energy drink (tastes a bit like Red Bull but the can is twice the size) only has a very thin aluminum skin to keeps the liquid contained and it was this I dropped. Fizz, hiss, yep the can was punctured, a hole the size of a pin prick but our amber nectar was shooting out at a pretty high psi. Not to loose too much of this nectar I bent down and picked up the can, located the pin prick hole and wrapped my lips round it. Do you ever remember as a child the sensation of Creamola Foam neat out the pots felt in your mouth, this was a similar sensation.

For those of you who do not know or are too old to remember what Creamola Foam was, it was a can of concentrated powder to be mixed with water for a fizzy drink and was quite sour. By the time I got the can to Alan the psi had dramatically reduced but the can was still too full to be opened properly. Only one way to drink it - through the pin sized hole!!!  

There was one interesting find in this roadhouse, some pork scratchings and I just had to buy a packet as you can see why. No comments please with regard to the 'hot and spicy'  I won't respond instead leaving that to your imaginations!!

The night is drawing in fast and we really needed to find a place to call home for the night. A road on the left led to 'New Beach', (I fail to understand how a beach can be new or even just discovered to be given this name). We almost had the place to ourselves, there were of folks pottering around near a bush which intrigued Alan. We later discovered, as they brought their car in our direction that it was a group of three teenage Aborigines and two young kids. Now, when in difficulty and seeing a woman the best thing to do is send one of the kids to do the asking - how often have we done that in the past :) In this case it was the young boy who came up asking for water for their car radiator. I was more concerned with closing Winston's doors to keep the laptops and camera equipment from view, having watched one too many movies the little voice at the back of my head said their was an ulterior motive to this situation. Stupid of me, there wasn't. We filled up their car radiator which was bone dry and also a big empty coke bottle and they were on their way again with waves and car horn hooting.

All set up of the night, here is a picture of Winston parked up with his sea view and yet another sunset.

Darkness had set in when another vehicle appeared looking for a place to sleep. By now dark clouds had appeared and three drops of rain had fallen. The wind was picking up and in the distance lightening which we must have watched for about 2 hours, it didn't seem to move location and was pretty spectacular to watch from our now dry outdoor living room. It was very entertaining watching this other couple set up their tent in the wind (we did think about offering to help but, well, that meant moving ). They had a strange affair, not the standard tent on the ground or a pop-up tent like ours but a tent on a frame which was like a roof rack on top of their Range Rover. I should imagine in daylight and no wind it is quite easy to put together but in the wind tonight it was rather more challenging. For our viewing purposes it looked like a jelly fish in the sky, flopping around. Memories of our first attempt to put up a tend last year came to mind, their's looked equally ridiculous :)