2006/08 Australia trip - Melbourne |
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Thursday August 17th
Sandie finally had her hair cut at Chadstone, and I managed to find light bulbs, a fuse holder, and a cleaning kit for the CD player, so we could get on with fixing up the camper.
Friday August 18th
Cleaning the interior of the camper took all day. The combination of cooking grease and red dust (a combination used as paint by the aborigines!), was difficult to dislodge. We also had the windscreen replaced as it had a few chips and the beginning of a crack.
Saturday August 19th
Cleaning the exterior was a bit faster, but still took all day as we had lots of visitors to see.
Sunday August 20th
Sandie began the horrible process of sorting through what had to come with us, what would stay in the camper or the spare bedroom, and what to toss out. I had promised a slide show of our Australian trip before we left on Tuesday. It sounds simple enough, but looking through tens of thousands of pictures to select a hundred or two takes a long time! John and Edna now have a very nice large digital TV, so we would have a great place to do the slide show, but all these new technologies never seem to mesh perfectly. We ended up with something that worked but we weren’t sure if we should be adjusting the TV to suit the computer or vice versa!
Monday August 21st
By Monday it was clear that we would need another suitcase to get around the weight limitations on the Los Angeles to Minneapolis leg of our flight. We also wanted to get everything on the camper topped up so that it was ready for use again.
We found a large suitcase that would fit nicely inside the camper, thinking of future trips, and then set out to fill up with propane. I hadn’t asked John where to get it as I knew the ideal spot, across from the shopping centre. However, my ideal spot now only did exchanges and not in our tank size. We got directions to another place, took a wrong turn, found another place who did fill tanks but didn’t have the right connector, got directions to another new big store who now only refilled their own brand of tanks, but sent us to one of their old stores miles away who filled our tank for us! How to burn an entire afternoon!
It was a busy evening. Sandie was doing most of the packing while I was still putting the show together. We finished giving the slide show at midnight, and had the packing finished by 3 am.