Saturday, 19th February …..

It’s pouring with rain here at Myrtle Park and we’re sitting snug in our caravan watching Series 3 of Dexter. A lot of the other campers have had a bad night and many have folded their tents and disappeared, back to drier areas. There was a big influx of caravans and campers yesterday and space was at a premium. There’s a group of fifty caravans and 18 tents gathered for a rally of old-time dancers. They meet here each year and their get-together culminates in a dance. We’ve been told quite firmly that it’s a private affair and we’re politely not invited. Oh, well, we’re not great dancers anyway. On my afternoon walk yesterday, I noticed they had an entertainer – a country and western singer with the obligatory big hat yodeling Rose of San Antone. Not our kind of people at all!
The storm has knocked out the electricity which operates the flush toilets and the pump for fresh water. We’ve set up our generator under the awning so that we have enough power to run our appliances, and have a series of containers arranged to collect the rainwater. In the last couple of hours we’ve collected about 35 litres and are running out of bottles to store it.
It’s Marilyn’s sister’s birthday today so we drove up to the lookout earlier to call her and empty our porta-potty at the same time. There’s no dump site at Myrtle Park and the closest place to empty the toilet is a long drop at the Lookout. Apparently, everybody from the park does the same.
I’ve attached a couple of photographs of interesting campers parked beside us. The first is an Aussie Swag design owned by a young woman who is travelling alone, we think to come to terms with a number of recent deaths in her family. She is a submarine navigator and has taken leave from the regular navy to have this trip. She maintains her connection with the Naval Reserve and goes off to training and other sessions which give her some income. She travels with her dog, a Great Dane/Irish Wolfhound cross.
The other one is a home-made job and is made of PVC cladding. I wonder how waterproof it was in last night’s downpour. It’s an education seeing how other people do it. Clearly some have limited resources and their caravans reflect this, but they’re out there seeing the country. Others have much bigger vans than ours with everything that opens and shuts. One couple we spoke to are setting off on a 6-year trip around Australia. They have a bigger ‘van than ours and a brand-new annexe which still has the creases in it from the original packaging. They have two little dogs, Angel and Molly (the most common name for Maltese Terriers, by far!) and a window box of pansies at the door of the ‘van.
There are lots of Winnebago-type campers with little Suzukis towed behind. It’s not what I would choose but everyone to their own.