Travel Memories: Camels on Cable Beach

We hit the road tomorrow, so blogging will depend on whether we have mobile phone coverage wherever we pull up each night. We are heading off to Crookwell in NSW as the first stop in our summer travels. Arriving in time to mind the farm while our daughter has her second child. Not a fast trip but we will keep moving each day.

I showed you the sunsets off Cable Beach in Broome a few posts ago so I thought I would finish the story of Broome with some pictures of another time honoured means of outback transport. Camels. Australia has a very large population of feral camels and is one of the few places were they are disease free.

We have ridden camels a couple of times. Once when our youngest son was with us on a trip to Uluru.  We rode camels in the morning and had camel pies for lunch. We decided  not to talk about our plans for lunch during the ride just in case the camels decided to protest.


These photos are of the morning camel ride on Cable Beach. I got talked into going with K on the this expedition. It was ok, but give me a horse any day.

Cheers Sue

A Ferg on the Move

 

The daily wash. Or twin tub packed away too soon.

I've been hand washing this week.
The twin tub is tucked in its space in the front boot of the caravan, where it fits neatly next to the generator. We (that is K )  thought that I would walk up to the washing machines provided by the caravan park this week, so K could finish breaking down our camp and put the other bits and pieces into the caravan boot.

Well........ Not such a good idea. It has been close to 40 degrees for a week. I struggled over with a big box of washing on Sunday, set up the big commercial washer and realised that now I had to sit and supervise the wash lest someone should decide that our clothes were more wonderful than theirs.
The big commercial machines are fast, but half an hour in the laundry was too sauna-ish for me.  Besides I have never liked laundromat washing. Its not so bad here because K is the washing machine cleaner outer, but I have a thing about my dirt mixing with everyone else's.

So plan B. Extricate my baby.......The twin tub now has all of the other things that live in the front boot packed around it so ..... Not gonna happen.

Plan C involves a soak and hand wash of each day's clothes. Get a bit of exercise. Use the kitchen sink to rinse. Not much wringing out happening, but dripping wet clothes dry in an hour at the moment. Not very many days to go. I can handle this. When are we leaving again?

Over the years before we found and adopted our twin tub we used to plonk the dirty stuff in a bucket with a lid and let the road do the wash. Half a day's road bumps for a wash, the other half for a rinse. Twist it all in a towel to wring it dry. Hope no one stole it off the back of the van at night. (We still have to worry about that.)
At one stage we thought we would make a Hill Billy washing machine  like this one . K and I looked for ages for an old fashioned wringer to bolt on the drawbar of the van. There were lots of  ancient washing machine carcasses in the dumps but no wringers. Other people must have got the idea before us. Just as he was about to get around making one (a wringer that is)  we stumbled over a portable washing machine in Broome. When that one died we found a dealer in the Adelaide Hills and believe it or not K decided to buy new rather than fix. Enter new twin tub...... Which is as I have said tucked away ready to travel and so I am back to hand washing.

And that,  I believe, where you all came in......

Gosh I love my twin tub..........pictured here snug under its cover in its rightful place next to the caravan door.

 

Cheers Sue


A Ferg on the move.

Post by Mr Fix It: Sure Start 6 for Airconditioner

Mr Fix It is so thrilled with the soft starter he installed on the air-conditioner yesterday that, while he was sitting in the caravan with the cooling running from the generator for the first time, he both rang the supplier to thank him and wrote a letter to Caravan World.

Hi everyone.
I'm the other half of this partnership. I'm pretty happy with the outcome of this fixing project.
Here's the text of my letter to Caravan World. Maybe they will publish it.

My wife and I have been very happily living in our 2007 Jayco Stirling van fulltime now for years. We work the tourist season in the NT and roam in the southern summer. A lot of our travel and off grid camping  is therefore in the very hot weather. Unfortunately our new generator wouldn't run the air-con despite it being well within specifications to do so.  On  hot nights we were forced into caravan parks. 

An electrician friend suggested installing a soft start unit to control the start up current draw. The air-conditioner manufacturer wasn't much help, didn't supply soft starts and stated that the air-conditioning was only meant for 240v mains supply. Yet we saw many campers running their cooling on a generator.

 

Finally this month after a bit of online searching I found a company which supplies soft starters. Hyper Engineering. They supply a product called 'Sure-start 6'. I contacted them. A very helpful team. I gave them the specs of my air-conditioning unit and they supplied me the right part. It comes with an excellent install sheet. ( If in doubt get an electrician to install it.) The result after a cost of 150 dollars is that we can now efficiently run our air-con from our 3000 watt generator with plenty of power to spare.  A useful outcome as we are about to set of from the NT on our summer holidays and the temperatures are in the high 30s. 

 

 

Cheers  Kevin

 

The Other Ferg on the Move

 

 

 

 

 

Note from Sue

Actually he salvaged this second hand soft start off one of the old air-conditioners in the "to be repaired pile" here at the Homestead. It is too "big" for our little unit so he got busy on the internet to find one for us. Ordered, shipped and arrived inside a week.... a miracle for the postal service here. Installed and working in half a day.... pretty normal for Mr Fix It.

 

 

 

 

Mr. Fix It battles the Ants

Mr Fix It is right into the final maintenance tasks before we leave next Saturday. He has already worked on the air conditioner but this morning early, before it got too hot to be on the roof he dived into the bowels of the machine to fit a new soft start unit.  This will allow the air-con to build up power as it starts instead of it banging on at full power  as it cycles. This is not a technically accurate description but, as he is up on the roof still I’m not yelling up at him get a better one, so that will have to do.  But the net effect of this is supposed to be two fold. The massive jolt to the van as the compressor starts should eliminated and it should run on our generator if needed. Not that we plan to do that much but it would be nice if that were possible even for an hour on really hot outback travel nights.

But the technical description is not the real topic of this blog.





Mr Fix It On the roof of the caravan



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m inside going through cupboards. K Is clomping on the roof of the van. I hear  mutterings and thumping.  Drill noises. Louder conversations with passers-by. (Staff are all fascinated by what happens at the Ferg’s camp.) I have a policy of ignoring all noises not directed to me, although I keep an ear out for any sound that might indicate a slide or fall just in case.

“Jolly things” I hear.

Now…. the word jolly uttered by my husband is a sure indication that disaster has struck. In fact the whole family know that a sentence containing jolly twice, followed by a huff is the equivalent of anyone else’s very loud swearing.

Realising that something is seriously wrong I rush outside. “Something up dear?”

“Jolly ants,” he says. “Throw me up the surface spray.”

Spraying noises. Sweeping noises. Ant carcasses flying of the roof. A huff or two and all is well.  Ants disaster of epic proportions averted.

I blogged early on about ants. K says they were in every nook and cranny of the air-conditioner except the fans he had cleaned last week. All over the mother board, under the seals and everywhere. How did they get in? Through the tiny space left around the power cord! And while this is an amusing story, the little insects were pretty close to shorting out the motor and in the kind of heat we get here, that would have been a disaster.

Ants vanquished, the cover goes back on the Air-conditioner.

All good now

 

Cheers Sue

A Ferg on the Move

 

Travel Memories: Sunset over water

Sunsets over water have figured in our lives quite a bit.

There’s the sunset on Cable Beach at Broome, which I showed you in my last post. Truly spectacular.

Sunset on 80 Mile beach netted us some spectacular shots as well, taken with K's salvaged camera.

Sunset 80 Mile Beach WA

And then there was the sunset on Lake Argyle in the Kimberly region. The moon was up that night. I painted this when we got home. (No I don’t have a photo of the art work, I think it is in storage)
 

Sunsets and Moon rises, Lake Argyle WA

 

 

Sunset at Derby through the mangroves out over the water. We went to a corroboree that night, but that is for another blog.

Sunset Derby WA

 

Closer to home for us are the sunsets on Mindil Beach in Darwin. These are a dry season institution. Tourists and local flock to the Night markets to enjoy fantastic food and browse the stalls. We like to take a bottle of wine and some delicious munchies and watch the sun go down while sitting on the sandy on the beach. Usually catch up with friends and any members of the family who are in town.

Sunset Mindil Beach NT

Oh and I’ve already told you about the sunset cruise at Katherine Gorge.

We have also watched the sun go down at Karumba on the Gulf of Carpentaria. (We turned east of the Stuart Highway that trip and went over to almost to Cairns and then down the east coast) There was standing room only at the restaurant, which specialises in sea food, so we parked ourselves with the “bring your own snack from the caravan group” and yarned as the sun sank spectacularly into the sea. We have no photos from this trip at all since some nasty creep stole the laptop before I got a chance to sort and back up the shots. I guess that is as good a reason as any to retrace our steps one day soon.

There is something spiritual about watching the sun seem to go underwater. A universal reaction is to cheer and clap at the precise moment when the yellow ball is extinguished by the water. Doesn’t matter what language you speak or where you call home every one is driven to clap. Cheering creation I guess.

Applauding Sunset Mindil Beach NT

Brings tears of joy to my eyes.

A Ferg on the Move.

Travel Memories: Cable Beach Sunset

As you know by now Mr Fix It is a magnet for damaged devices. Computers, pads, chargers, rice cookers, microwaves, jump starts and the topic of today's post, cameras. He was given one a few weeks ago by a very interesting lady, a solo traveller, because it would not save. Not sure what was wrong but he is trying to track her down now to give the working camera back. We really don't need it as we have two good cameras and two phones that take excellent shots.

This is not the first camera K has repaired. The most memorable story goes like this.......



Pearlers of Cable Beach at Sunset

Some time ago before we moved permanently into the caravan  we travelled from Adelaide to Darwin, across to Broome, down to Perth and back across the Nullarbor to Adelaide. One of the cameras we took with us that trip was salvaged.

A couple of months before we embarked on this adventure  K  acquired a digital camera that was producing out of focus pictures. I would have ditched it but this is just the kind of challenge he relished.  (and still does)

So out came the tiny clock repair screw drivers, the solder set and the multimeter and off he went. Like a surgeon he dissected the camera, removing the shell then each of the internals, which he then laid out in a line across the table in order of removal. Every tiny piece stretched from one side of the table to the other.  Dinner was eaten on our laps that week.

He then proceeded to remake one of the small plastic cogs and fit it into the focusing mechanism. After a couple of false starts whereby the bits were joined far enough to test and then removed and re-joined a couple of times,  the line of parts magically reformed into a camera.

The quality of the repair is shown below. Behold a famous Broome Cable Beach sunset captured by Mr Fix It's famous salvaged camera.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

Not sure where the camera is now.... A good home I hope. 


Cheers Sue

A Ferg on the Move

Getting Ready to Travel: Fixing and sorting

With only a week to go before we up anchor and sail away south and then east, the fix and sort routine is in full swing. I was going to say sort and throw away routine, but with Mr. Fix It around the fixing is more common than the tossing.

Some serious maintenance on the water system was completed today. We had a very annoying leak that dripped water under the van and sometimes caused leaking into the cupboard under the sink. While the local wild life really enjoyed the cool damp spot to nest on a hot day, this state of affairs could not be allowed to continue.  The diagnosis of  a combination of lime build up in all the connections and the hot water service, as well as worn out hoses,  meant that today K spent an hour alternately wriggling into the corner cupboard and sliding under the van to clean, tighten and de-lime everything in sight.

He has also pulled the fan apart and cleaned it, de-limed the showerheads and climbed up on the roof and cleaned  the solar panel.

Meanwhile I have been sorting and moving the electric appliances to their travel homes and pulling out the things that don't require us to be hooked up to 240 volts. Of course we can still use some things on the inverter, so the coffee machine stays on the bench for morning kick starts. I have dragged out the 12 volt chargers for phones and computers, put away the glass oven and given away the electric toaster I have not used at all this year. We have one of those wire camping toasters and I prefer it.

The electric kettle might go the same way as the toaster since the old camp kettle with the three times repaired whistling lid works well.

The glue and other repair essentials are sitting on the table and bits and pieces are getting wiped and repaired as they are put away. New box for the sewing kit, sort the fuses back into sizes and tape the lid, charge the batteries for the torches, throw out chipped mugs......

The first aid kit looks like a bomb hit it and there are a couple of out of date medications and creams, open boxes of dressings and stuff. I will buy replacements tomorrow. This is one thing we never mind spending on.

You may have noticed that I do take a swipe at K for keeping things, but I have to confess that the bathroom storage, which is entirely my domain, is in a very sorry state. Old makeup, dried up nail polish, products with  scents  I have never have and never will wear and general debris. I am ashamed. Big throw out needed.

The camp looks like a herd of feral pigs ran through it. Things half packed up and laying every where.

Time for a snack. Fruit and nuts I  think.

 Cheers Sue
A Ferg on the Move

 

 

Intrepid fire fighters

 

There has been a fire travelling down the river here for over a week. Monday night it was close enough for Fire and Rescue to burn two fire breaks very close to the caravan park.


So Monday night, just in case, my closest neighbour and I spent three hours soaking our camp site and hers, while watching embers floating over head and pouncing on them before they could take.
K and my neighbour's partner used the fire hoses to kill anything that landed on the roof and garden of the bistro. While the fire fighters managed the burn off. Very exciting.

Imagine if you can the tourists who grabbed a slab and their chairs and sat in the bistro watching the whole operation with no idea that their own rigs were getting showered by embers. (I'm too polite to use the words that come to mind to describe this behaviour) You can just see them sitting in the middle of the Bistro in this photo.



Fire is still burning. Not close to us.


Life in the outback!  Never boring. Always fun.




Cheers Sue


A Ferg on the Move

 

 

 

Why would I need two?An anit-consumerism rant.

Too much time on my hands. Too much TV. Too many two for one offers.


I am insulted by the implication that I can be persuaded to buy two of some absolutely got to have appliance. If something is too good to be true then it is best avoided in my experience.


And then there is the free trial. With no full price on the advertising at all. Do people really fall for this?

Yes I like to have the right tool for the job. Yes I am happy to swap out for a tool that is better but.....


And anyway if I buy something and it breaks Mr Fix It is going to insist on repairing it, or both of them if the deal was two for one .


OK rant over. Time to think about dinner.


My spice stash ready for a tasty frugal dinner

Cheers Sue


A Ferg on the Move.

Strutting to no avail

 

I just had to share the delightful sight of the local peacock getting romantic this morning.

Posturing, dancing, cooing and being ignored by his potential love.

Poor man. All that effort and nothing. She is clearly too smart to fall for a good looking male, all show and no substance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I chuckled all the way to the clinic.

Cheers Sue

A Ferg on the Move

A semi productive day, between naps.

I felt fantastic this morning. Awake at 7.30, still cool outside, full of energy, things to be done. Washing, turnout a cupboard, make yoghurt, bake bread. Pride cometh before a fall they say.

Well ......I set myself a few too many things to do in my current state of health. I feel so much better that I did this time last week. But..... it didn't take very long hanging over the twin tub for me to realise that I am still very wobbly. Glad that there are not very many tourists here during the day 'cos they would have seen me laying flat out on my camp lounge panting, after lifting out a load of clothes and hanging onto the back of the van while trying to peg out shirts with one hand. You see bending down and then  looking up sort of upset my balance.  (I placed a chair in a strategic spot for the next load.) Eventually the wash was all dancing in the breeze looking quite pretty.

 

I took my self back inside the caravan with the air conditioner to recover.

After an nanna nap, which I am entitled to because I am one, I boiled the kettle to put in the thermos for the yoghurt. This is when I found that my brain is not working so good. Three trips to the outside kitchen that kettle cost me. Find and fill kettle, go back to the van for the lighter, go back to the kettle to work out what I had gone into the van for, light stove, collect kettle when it whistled. Gosh I hope the stuff brewing in the ESIYO thermos really is yoghurt. Could be anything the way my mind is working today.

 

After another lay down I managed the bread mix ok.  Didn't get to turn out a cupboard. Decided that would just be silly.

I am now lying down again. But I'm not wasting time. I dug out a blanket I am knitting which I  haven't touched for a while 'cos it is 12ply and hot to work with. The air-conditioner  has taken car of that problem. There's some measurable progress happening even if there is delicate snoring going on between rows.

And I do hate it when the doctor is right. He said to expect sudden bouts of tiredness for at least this week. Side effect of being unconscious for 24 hours. "Get up and do things when you feel like it," he said. "Move around a bit. Rest when you need to." Drat the man.


K must have had a long day too. He's watching the back of his eyelids in the annex.

However I do feel some sense of accomplishment. It is amazing how comforting the normal routines of life can be.

Cheers Sue

A Ferg on the Move



Getting Ready to Travel: The spice store

So we are moving out in two weeks. Time to leave our NT  home and hit the road for a few months. First stop will be the NSW farm in time for a new grandchild.

Lots of jobs to do when you have been camped for 6 months in the same place. All the things that make life a bit easier are out ether in the van or annex and all the things that we have both collected need to be sorted and either packed or disposed of.

Inside I am tackling the food stores. Using up things that won't travel well and stocking up on staples that travel. And chucking out things.

It never ceases to amaze me what I find even in our tiny storage spaces. There's a tin of milo and one of drinking chocolate. We don't use either. Must have bought them last summer to make drinks for the grand kids. Four packets of half used loose tea, complete with insects, that were in the back of the bottom locker that is only supposed to have cans in it. The peahens are picking through that lot right now. I don't know how many jars of jam, a thing I don't use much at all. The backpackers can have a couple of  those. Some old looking tea bags are going as is a very old packet of custard.

As we travel I move from meals made from scratch with mostly fresh ingredients to quick meals made from the stores.  So I have just done a check of the herbs and spices and I'm making up packs of our favourite seasoning mixes. I make these myself because the bought ones have salt, something called flavours and often have gluten thickeners.  If I am being really good I might even mix up a couple of chicken meals and lamb mince meals with my spice mixes ready to pop in the microwave or crockpot for hot travelling evenings.

I am making my Italian mix of  2 parts each of dried basil, dried majoram, dried oregano and one dried sage. Great in sauces and in vinegar and olive oil as salad dressing.


Lamb mince, gluten free pizza, with sweet potato,
 sundried tomato and yoghurt topping

I made a lamb mince pizza last night with this seasoning, dried tomato strips and left ever veggie. Topped with a bit of yogurt..... Yum



Lettuce, tomato and avocado salad with home made Italian dressing

Topping up the Cajun mix with paprika and chilli powder, pepper, oregano and thyme

I have finally used up the last of the bought curry powder so now I am going to recycle the little box and fill it with a ground mix of 3 tsp turmeric, 2 tsp coriander, 1 1/2 tsp cumin, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp ginger, 3/4 tsp yellow mustard, 1/2 tsp fenugreek, 1/2 tsp cardamom, 1/2 tsp cloves, 1/2 tsp nutmeg, 1/8 tsp cayenne pepper, 1/4 tsp black pepper.  This one is not cheaper than the bought box, but so much nicer.

This exercise should use up most of my stored spices and herbs, which I won't top up until I get to the  big smoke. I will use up or give away the various packets of flour except for the gluten free bread mix and the yoghurt makings. And I think the baking powder is way past its use by date.

Things are looking good.

Cheers Sue

A Ferg on the Move

  

Smoke in the air

Caravan nestled under the trees.
Outdoor kitchen under the gazebo

It is almost the end of the burn off season. The native grasses grow pretty high in the wet. Its not uncommon for the grass to be head height. Dry it burns quickly. From the middle of the dry until now-ish there are always burn offs to reduce fire load before the build-up electrical storms begin. We get pretty good at driving through smoke on the roads.

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There is  always the chance of a campfire getting away from campers, who no matter how hot it is seem to believe that they have an unalienable right to make a fire where ever and whenever they want, even right next to my car in a pile of leaves. (Lost my cool that day. School teacher voice like a whip across the car park. Startled campers scampered off to make a pesky fire somewhere else.)

In the pool one day last season a fellow camper told a hair raising tale of a campfire gone wrong and how close they came to their tent going up in flames when the people in the site next door used the camp fires welcome policy of a camp ground  to light a fire on the border of the two sites on a windy cool night.

As I have said before I am one of those strange campers who prefer not to have smoke pouring in through the caravan windows. I quite like to visit someone else's fire and wash the smoke out before bed.  And wash the clothes too. Very un-Australian of me.


Smoke haze over the Mataranka Homestead caravan sites

Any way last night the burn off smoke created twilight early, and this morning the almost empty camping areas of the park were misted by smoke and I couldn't resist the temptation to try out the camera on my new ASUS tablet notebook.

Smoke like mist in the distance

Cheers Sue

A Ferg on the Move

Eating the crocodile. Or what's this at the bottom of the freezer?

No one has done any shopping here for three weeks since we were both not here. In both senses of that statement.  I am still restricted to camp most of the day, as my chest is still very sore from the intubation tubes and I have two wounds, one each side, from the operation which I am not allowed to get dirty or wet.

Yesterday I bought meals from the  bistro, which is strangely still operating a full menu because we have a number of bus tours coming through. What tourists are doing here at this time of the year is beyond me. It is really hot. But they are in the cabins so I guess they can turn on the air con. (mine is chugging along nicely since Mr Fix It gave it a kick, gently of course, yesterday.)

Carrot, corn and coriander salad with lemon olive oil dressing

So serious investigation of the stores in the caravan kitchen was in order if any eating was gonna happen today. In between thrilling TV shows (as Springsteen would say..57channels and there's nothing on)  I rumbled around in the food lockers.  Tinned corn, tinned fish, pickles, chutney, dried peas,  bread mix, some homemade yoghurt and carrots made their way onto the bench.

Fresh gluten free bread ready for a ploughman's lunch

Bread is easy. Five minutes mixing, forty minutes rising and an hour in the oven. Didn't even need to put the dough in the car to rise. It was 38 in the annex. I reckon the dough might have started cooking in the car.  Oven outside under the annex. This is when the outside kitchen really works.

Pickles, chutney, tinned creamed corn and tuna from the stores made a ploughman's lunch of sorts.

I made a journey into the freezer to see if anything might work, with minimal effort, for dinner and nestled next to the last precious packets of farm grown lamb I found a packet of crocodile meat K had bought ..... well I'm not sure why.

Crocodile steak

Butter chicken mix, some yoghurt and tomato sauce and we are dining on "Butter crocodile noodles" and carrot and corn salad.

Butter crocodile, fresh bread, carrot and corn .
Croc meat is pretty bland, but has a sronger texture than chicken.
That's why I used yoghurt in the Butter Sauce,

You never know what you will find if you dig in the freezer. Better him inside me than me inside him I say.

The real deal. Salty croc at Victoria River WA

Cheers Sue

A Ferg on  the Move

 

 

 

 

 

Viruses and jammed fans

I know better than to answer yes to that question on the screen about making changes to the system. I really do know better. 


Now in my defense I was drugged up quite heavily with pain killers which might explain how my finger said yes when my brain said no.
My finger won and the virus defender sprayed warning messages to me frantically. Files disappeared or locked and rude words I am not allowed to say nearly made it out of my mouth to the air.

End result is that I am sitting on the bed while my computer is copying files from the various places I have them stashed.  I only lost some Bible Study notes and some music PDFs that I don't think are on the backup drive.  On the bright side I am getting quicker at restoring my system.   


Inside is a good place to be. At 4pm it was 41 degrees in the annex. Mr Fix It has just made a perilous expedition onto the caravan roof to unjam a fan in the air-conditioning unit. The poor thing was going into error mode as the outside temp came up. My solution until K got on the job was to spray the van roof with water and reduce the roof temp. A perfectly adequate fix for about an hour.

Both fans are turning freely now so our hard working old air con has the indoor temp under control.


Can't wait till this evening when I can sit outside, covered in insect repellant given recent events, and watch the sunset.

Moral of this story. Don't click yes.


Cheers Sue


A Ferg on the Move