Sunday 30th September, 2018

We woke up to a sunny morning, quite a change from the night. We had switched the fridge off overnight as usual because it freezes everything inside if we leave it on. In the morning we found that we couldn’t actually get the fridge going again, despite trying many times, and switching everything off and on again, changing gas cylinders – absolutely everything. I even read the manual.

It meant a slight change of plan for Sunday night, with the need to be able to run the fridge on electricity. It cannot run for long on DC power without draining the battery. We had a look at the Muir Highway again to see if there was a place on the way to Mt Barker for an overnight, but there are no caravan parks on the route. We decided to stay in Manjimup.

We still wanted to do the walk to Big Brook Dam from our campsite. It was supposed to be about a 3 kms walk there, so about 6 kms altogether. When I checked my phone on return it said we had gone 7 kms. It became cloudy on the walk, but no rain, thank goodness. It wasn’t very far to the water and the walk around the dam is bitumen – supposedly for wheelchairs, but also handy for prams. We had a chocolate bar and some almonds which we ate at the ‘beach’ – it looks like sand has been brought in to create a swimming area. That was just over half way around from where we started.

There was occasional seating and a couple of bird hides on the route. The first part was overgrown and we couldn’t see the water very much, but the return on the other side had better views.

We had lunch followed by a rest, then packed up and drove to Manjimup. We are staying in the caravan park in the town. We wanted to do a bit of shopping, but felt too tired to do it after we arrived, so it will have to wait for the morning even though the Woolworths is just across the road from here.

It’s vaguely damp, with very light rain this evening. The temperature inside is quite comfortable, though I should perhaps put out the heater for the morning. Although we enjoy camping without hookups we are really loving our first night with ‘normal’ electricity, town water to the taps and sullage. TV reception isn’t very good, but we were able to watch the news. Then we watched the final episode of ‘Patrick Melrose’, very good drama with one of our favourite actors.

We have our electric hot water system on and have opted to have our showers in the van rather than go the short distance over to the showers. They look clean and nice, but the effort of taking our stuff over doesn’t seem worth it.