Saturday 16th August 2014

Saturday 16^th August

After typing and stealing internet as much as I could last night and with the locals getting restless and my eyes becoming dry and tired, we called it a night and went to bed.

In spite of my tiredness and a rubbish chips only dinner, (How bad was that!) I woke up early. There were no sunrises to be had at Coober Pedy that were worth taking a photo of so tried to go back to sleep. The wind had died down to a chilly breeze as I rose to take advantage of a caravan park loo. I did draw the line at the showers though so turned on our hot water system. Had a shower – Greg still sound asleep.

That’s the thing that comes back to bite you with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome – or the particular strain that Greg has. For the whole week he has been fine and hasn’t needed a sleep and come Friday, crash, needs a good 2 hours in the afternoon, then a good sleep at night with a sleep in until after 9am and as I am typing this at the Marla road stop car park he is asleep again. He does curse this blog but without it I would be so bored – or get a lot of reading done. Anyway along with the tiredness gets the short temperedness which happened too.

I digress…

So I get up, shower and pack my laptop up ready to go steal some more internet as I learned that the breakfast room opened at 7am.  Even if I have to eat breakfast and pay its worth it to get the blog updated before we get on the track where internet is scarce. As it turned out I didn’t have to eat but just sat quietly in the dining room with ‘weekend sunrise’ on the telly so I could at least catch a bit of news. Hopped on their internet and started frantically downloading text (easy) and photos (slow and time consuming). I must have been there over an hour as I was starving. Deciding not to download as many photos as it was becoming ever slower, I uploaded Friday with a fraction of the photos I wanted in it and saved, published and closed up. Job kind of done.

Back to the van and the wind had picked up again, I found Greg in our shower fully clothed, not with the water turned on but with the shower fan going flat out. There was a funny smell too. He said he heard a funny noise from the shower when he went to grab his gear to have a shower in the amenities block and found that the fan in the shower had turned itself on and was flat out, burning the motor. He said that it could burn out as we never used it. Which is fine unless it sets fire to the rest of the van – which would seriously impede our holiday.

I suggested we cut the wires – so Greg dutifully climbed up the back of the van and stood on the spare tyres to snip the wires. Job done and he got down. He had a shower, very proud of ourselves solving the problem so quickly. Stupid fan.

However – he just snipped the wire to the control not the wire to the actual fan so when I went to the shower to make sure it was good to travel, it was on again. Turned the power off in the van again and went to fill up some water containers from the laundry. Greg was in the caravan park showers at this stage.

Got sprung filling up water containers. There was a maintenance man with another man seemingly fixing a washing machine. I had spoken to him briefly when I was doing the blog in the dining room that morning and he had shown me photos on his phone. Lovely chap. Anyway he was there and I asked him if he worked here and he said he did and so I asked him if he had a long ladder, if we could please borrow it. He said fine and went and got it for us.  I was really pleased. I went back to the van with my slightly stolen water and told Greg who was preparing to climb back up the spare tyres. Not ideal and he could not see what he was doing when he got up there anyway. The ladder arrived. A fine tall one. I could use one of them at home. Anyway, Greg snipped the wires to the unit hoping there was no current or he was in for a perm.  There wasn’t, he survived, taped up the ends with duct tape and returned the ladder. Now there was a freaky stupid thing that didn’t have to happen.

We had 2 jobs to do before we could go. Actually 3. I had to get some groceries, and the IGA was 500 meters down the road so decided to walk. I got 100 meters and decided that there were too many strange folk walking around and I am not being horrid and racist as there were all sorts so came back and asked Greg to drive me to the shop. We could fill up with diesel while not hitched which was more convenient, at the same time. Then the idea was to hitch, dump the loo fill up with water at a price and go.

Right.

We had to find the dump point. This was on the main drag but out of town a bit. Then once dumped you had to spend 20 cents to get water to flush out and rechem. The amount of water you waste doing this  - for our little unit is criminal and you can’t turn it off.

Next the nightmare of all nightmares – filling up Gibson with water. He is a nightmare because there is the smallest opening to put in a garden hose that feds the water tanks – interconnected so you can’t fill one and then the other. Then the opening is very deep so you have to inseminate the hose so far into the tank that you might be doing IVF on a cow elephant. Next he gets an air lock and the water pours back out at you and you know whether the tank is filled or not. So you wait a minute hoping that it clears and more water spills out. By now you are getting cranky and wondering what sort of DICKHEAD puts such a small opening in a caravan inlet and why it so hard to fill up a frigging caravan.

He is an off roader van.

SURELY someone at Olympic might have figured that you need an EASY way of filling the bloody thing up. Not always do you have a pressurized really long hose. Often all you have is a watering can and a funnel. Its infuriating and frustrating and makes for a fine foul mood.

After an hour of stuffing around. Putting the legs down on Gibson so that he tilts, rocking back and forth to clear the air lock etc. My husband started to say naughty words he doesn’t even say around me, and I didn’t blame him. Its so ridiculous and time wasting and water wasting – and wasting water and time exclusively or together makes me cranky.

So we left Coober Pedy grumpy as hell and biting each other’s heads off at the smallest thing. This was not a good day. Greg wanted me to drive which indicated that he was tired to start with so I drove. I was fine to drive. YES I’M FINE!!

It was 230km to Marla. We still needed wood. The van wasn’t as full of water as I would have hoped. Greg is still grumbling about reconfiguring the tanks which I agree with. Not with the mood though.

On we drove in stony silence until I said that we had to stop for lunch as it was 1.30pm South Aussie time. We pulled up at a stop which was probably the most untidy ever. There were no public loos but lots of evidence of people using the surrounding flora as toilet stops and decorating it accordingly with toilet paper. It was quite disgusting. Unfortunately we also decided to have a look for some firewood – which there was not so much as a stick. I gave up and went and made lunch. Now that’s a novelty. Greg came back still in a black mood. Made sangers, wrapped them in glad wrap and got back in the car. Him with a Solo drink and me with another cuppa tea.

Wasn’t our best day.

On I drove and we came across a dry river bed which had wood but I was going 100km per hour with a 3 ton van so could not just ‘pull up like that’ and was told by my husband that I should have seen all the wood there for the taking. Course I should have – never mind looking at that black thing in front called the ROAD! You can glance at the scenery but don’t have much time to take in detail.

Anyway, since there was a lot of wood there, all I did was look out for another creek sign so I could slow down and stop – hopefully there would be enough room to get Gibson right off the highway (my other concern). As luck had it there was another creek and lots of wood so Greg asked me to get the chainsaw out  and chop it into lengths so he could put it behind the spare wheel. I had a better idea – why not chop it right up into choofer sized bits which saves me getting the chainsaw out again.

So while he went away with his rigger gloves and collected some wood, and hopefully a better mood as well, I got changed, found work boots, helmet, filled up chainsaw with fuel and chain oil, tightened the chain and got it going. It was awful wood and my Dad will kill me as it had some dirt in it. Dirt bluntens the chain in a jiffy – I did find some decent wood and left the dirty wood to one side. It was very old which means it would be very dry and burn well (in theory). It didn’t take long before Greg the wood gatherer had a bag full of wood and we loaded it into the van storage part and I changed out of lumberjack outfit, washed hands and got back into the driver’s seat. Job done.

Hooray the Oodnadatta sign - we made it this far!

On to Marla. Greg had an idea that we would not stop here but keep going at the start of the track. However by the time we got to Marla I was stuffed and we both decided to stay. Not in the park as you pay for nothing much but in the car park which is beside the highway. Greg had a snooze and I updated this.

Hope to get to the Pub!! The pub, general store, takeaway, restaurant and service station is the same building. We fuelled up as soon as we got there so that would save doing that the next day.

Greg woke up as it was getting dark and we walked together in the cool of the evening over to check out the pub. The wind was up and I was freezing – even put my hoodie hood on – now that’s a good look. It didn’t matter as it’s a roadhouse with a pub in the middle of nowhere and nobody was dressed nicely – in fact if you went upmarket from jeans and a sloppy joe you would have stuck out!

The Marla Roadhouse. We states to the left of this carpark

The pub area had a vast tiled area and 2 combustion fires – only one was going so I sat so close to it I almost hatched it. There was lots of room between the tables so what we should have done is sat at the bar if we wanted some local company. Anyway to our great surprise we ordered a red wine that was actually nice. A Wynn’s Coonawarra Cabernet gatekeepers or something like that.

We decided to stay for dinner – only because we weren’t sure what we were doing so I had nothing out of the freezer for dinner and the other option was pasta. Having had chips for dinner the night before (naughty bad people) Greg wanted something with a little more to it that pasta. Which is my ‘when all else fails’ meal anyway that I like to keep for emergencies. They had T-bone steaks for $22 and chicken Schnitzels for about the same – a bit cheaper. All came with a sad looking salad and chips. I asked for vegies. My husband had another reason to not like me today. Ordering things with special requirements. He hates it.

Our meals came and we could have sat at the pub part but the dining room with metal chairs with pastel padding from the 80’s (and almost retro) looked more conducive to eating dinner that bench seats with no backs. So we stayed there. There weren’t many people. A truckie tucking into a mixed grill, Mr and Mrs very thin who looked like they hadn’t seen food in a week and his jeans were so short that his socks needed a party to invite them down. They were tucking into the biggest meatballs I had ever seen and making a job of it. Maybe its their weekly feed. Then there were 2 women on the table next to us having a deep and meaningful chat.

Then an indigenous family came in, rather 2 women and their kids – about 6 between them and they ordered take away.  It was Saturday night after all. The kids were so well behaved and they all spoke to each other in their native language which was so refreshing. In the restaurant were 2 of those machines that you put money in and you control the arm to grab a prize. There was also a chocolate machine. The kids all went for the toy machine and the grand prize was a football. They all had a go but none succeeded. Even Mum had a try before they all gave up and their order was ready and they went outside to sit on the picnic tables and chairs to eat.  It was so lovely to watch and so nice to see them all yacking about in their own lingo. I really enjoyed their interaction.  

Anyway, we finished our meals which were really good. The vegies were interesting, a green bean, 4 bean mix medley. Garden fresh and in the middle of the desert don’t go that well. The Steak was just lovely and cooked to perfection. I would have paid a lot more for a lot less at home. Greg had a chicken schnitzel that was good quality breast meat and done so well he stuffed himself. We waddled back to the van and went to bed as we were buggered. It was only 8:45pm. So Mister Gibson and Lady Cruiser had their first night among the road trains also sleeping in the same car park. There was enough room that you could have parked 50more road trains. Free camp. Yay!