We’ve arrived back at the Deloraine Caravan Park today after being at Myrtle Park since we returned from Perth. Myrtle Park is beautiful but certainly cold so we’ve decided that Deloraine, although just as cold, at least gives us electricity to run a little column heater. The ducks seem pleased to see us and have been hanging around the door of the ‘van since we arrived.
Tonight is the AGM of Giant Steps. Like many independent school, Giant Steps is nominally owned by a company whose members are parents and community members interested in what the school is doing. Typically, it has been hard to recruit company members in the past; even parents don’t bother to join. It only becomes an issue at AGM-time when a certain number is required to attend to make the meeting valid. Every year, Karina spends hours on the phone, encouraging people to come or, at least, send in a proxy form. Marilyn and I decided we should join the company and will turn up tonight to swell the numbers. The only real business, apart from accepting reports, is to elect members of the Board so it shouldn’t be a late night.
It was nice to be back at Myrtle Park for the past week or so. We arrived after dark, having collected our ‘van from the fellow who was fixing the leak we had discovered. Steve, the caretaker of Myrtle Park, said, ‘Not you again! What the bloody hell are you doing, coming back to this bloody cold place? Park where you like, there’s plenty of room.’ A lovely, typical Tasmanian welcome!
He was right, of course. It was bloody cold. Monday was the coldest night and we were told it got down to -6 degrees C. It was -2 in Launceston and Myrtle Park is usually a couple of degrees colder than that, so -6 might have been accurate. Anyway, I was pottering around in the morning when a couple of people wandered over to ask for help. There were about a dozen vans in the park but they both came to me, the least handy man in Tasmania. One of them, a woman travelling alone, wanted to hook up to my battery to start her car. She had jumper leads and knew what she was doing so that wasn’t too difficult. If it had been left to me to hook up the leads, I might have repeated what I did in Strathgordon in about 1980 – connected them to the wrong terminals and blew up the battery.
The other request for help was from a man who was travelling with his wife. Again, their Toyota van wouldn’t start but it wasn’t as simple as using starter leads. He knew he had power but the engine just wouldn’t turn over. Did I have any water displacement spray? What? I’ve got RP7, will that do? Apparently, that’s exactly what he meant. Oh well, let’s open the engine cover and have a look. In the Toyota van, the engine is under the front passenger’s seat. Reg hadn’t been able to open it. Maybe I had a pair of snub-nose pliers which would do the trick. What, this is becoming too technical for me.
Anyway, we discovered that Reg had been pulling the lever towards him and it needed to be pushed to lift the seat. A quick spray around what Reg felt was the distributor cap and away it went. That scored a few brownie points and did the self esteem no end of good.
In the meantime, Marilyn had invited Reg and his wife, Anne for a cup of coffee so they arrived with a packet of Tim Tams and settled in for a chat. So we were a little late in getting away to catch up with Jamie for his birthday. He had expected us to ring him first thing in the morning but, with one thing and another, we had not done so. The funny thing was that, when we arrived at the shopping centre, to get a few things, we found a young woman stuck half-way in to the space and not able to go forward or back because her back wheel was on the concrete surround. Flushed with my recent successes, I leapt to her assistance, gave her a few reassuring remarks and guided her into the space. My third good deed of the day and it’s only lunch-time.
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