A few weeks ago I was making up the bed in the Winnie and damaged my thumb. I’ve had an ultrasound that confirmed tendonitis. A visit to an OT confirmed that a splint is the answer. I got to choose the colour and she made it as I watched. Wearing it is awkward and as it is waterproof I am even supposed to wear it in the shower. Also swimming, I guess. For the next two weeks until I see her again.

We were at the Writers Festival today. Stephen has a cold and was feeling a bit poorly, so the first thing we went to was a musical event at the Calloway Auditorium At 2.00 pm.

Robert Hoffman singing and talking about lieder. He was dressed in a suit and tie at first, before breaking out into a different persona. So we think the suit was a sort of misdirection. He is a lovely singer and very funny.

We stayed around afterwards to talk with Eversley and have a coffee. We were sort of listening to David Stratton being interviewed, but couldn’t get seats close enough to hear clearly. Then we went to the bookshop. There was a notice up that many books were unavailable due to a train derailment in SA. Well, I found out on Thursday that our new fridge was on the train that derailed, we think it was on Monday. The thing is, I don’t know why the freight company didn’t immediately let their customers know that there would be a delay in deliveries.

As it was, on Wednesday we dropped off the Winnie and they stripped out the old fridge, as the new fridge was due to arrive. It was only when I rang up on Thursday and put them under pressure that I found out. They hadn’t let MyGenerator, who sent the fridge, know either.

It seems very silly as clearly a derailment is not the freight company’s fault. Why just wait for irate people to contact them wanting to know why goods hadn’t been delivered.

Matt was going to come to tea on Friday night, but we didn’t want him to come home whilst Stephen was infectious, so I went to visit him instead. I shopped for lemons and throat lozenges on the way home.

As usual we had a bit of a disturbed night here until about 12.30 a.m., then quiet enough to sleep through for the rest of the night. The fridge was still working on gas when I switched it off. This morning the flame has been blowing out in the wind, so have switched to 12volt as we are getting plenty of sun.

At about 7.15 a.m. we noticed a noisy generator next door, with a caravan in the next set of bays. When we investigated it turned out to be a pop up cafe. They are doing a range of foods and icecreams as well as coffees. I had a flat white after our swim made in my own cup.

Eversley, Geoff and Lizzie joined us for morning tea and because we didn’t know about the pop up cafe we had already arranged to bring food and drinks. Geoff and Lizzie have moved to the campervan, which Lizzie can easily drive. It is large enough to use for short trips, though they are planning a couple of weeks away, including going to the Nannup Music Festival.

We admired each others’ vans, but for the moment we are satisfied with our much larger van, especially for long trips.

Stephen and I had a swim after our morning cuppas. It was cool outside, oddly making the water seem less cold. We had a lovely splash around before meeting up with the others. As we had lots of shade we set up outside our van rather than on the grass. Eversley’s car was next to our van which left enough space for the five of us.

Lizzie and I took the photos, so there is one with her and one with me in the group.

They went for a swim after morning tea and we had went for a walk along the beach.

It may be next summer before we are all available to come here again. Geoff and Lizzie would like to spend the night in their van and Eversley is working out whether she can cope with sleeping in her car. If we had her in the middle it should feel quite safe.

We really like the beach here and it is relatively uncrowded compared with Mullaloo and the animal exercise beach around the point. We walked up to take a look.

This was why they bought the little boat into shore. Matt has done this type of water skiiing, but only on the river.

We came here at around 5.00 pm to spend the night. We went for a walk along the beach before our evening meal. There is a westerly this evening and it is much cooler than last time.

We’ve parked away from the grassed area as that can get quite busy overnight with cars arriving and leaving, plus is a premier spot for people arriving in the morning. We’ve taken one of the longer bays on the end of a row. A small car can fit behind us.

Stephen has been involved with WASO chorus during the past week. Although they only had a small segment in the concert they had been having rehearsals each night from Tuesday, with a performance Friday night and Saturday afternoon. Eversley and I had tickets for Saturday afternoon, which meant we were free on Friday night. So, Eversley had her first overnight in the Winnie and I had my first experience of sleeping in the overcab bed.

It was very hot during the day and we decided to follow the pattern of leaving quite late in the day. I picked E up at her place in Gwelup, then we drove to Mullaloo Beach, ordered fish and chips, and spent half an hour there waiting for them to be cooked. We went over the road and sat on the grass. As people passed us with their fish and chip orders we asked them what number they were, and this gave us a way of timing the orders.

We took the fish and chips back to Pinaroo Point and found a spot near the lawn to park. We took our meal down to the beach to watch the sunset. On a warm evening (we still had a warm easterly blowing), it was quite heavenly even though I managed to get sand on my fish. We had a tiny bottle of bubbly to share. We walked down to the water to paddle and wash our greasy fingers afterward.

I set up the bed in the front part of the overhead cab, pushing all the stuff we keep stored to the back. With both windows open this made for a fairly comfortable spot, though the foam mattress is very hard. We went to bed at about 9.30 as we were so tired, with the strong, warm easterly wind still blowing and quite high humidity. It didn’t cool down after midnight. I had the ladder set up to reach the bed and climbing up and down at night would be the main negative about sleeping up there. A foam sleeping pad would make it a comfortable bed.

Eversley had bought her own sheets and pillow for the lovely french bed in the corner. This has a very good mattress bought by a previous owner of the Winnie for $1,700.

We got up at about 7.30 and had tea/coffee before going over to the beach for a swim. It was very calm with only a few swimmers and fishermen out. However, people had begun to bring their jet skis down and there was a section of the beach already set aside for them. We were aware of small waves coming from them as they sped through the water.

Then it was time for showers, followed by breakfast. We headed home at about 10.30 a.m. We were glad to take advantage of the unusual situation of Stephen being busy with singing, which he loves, and me wanting to camp at the beach overnight and wanting company.

On Friday morning I went over to Ken Peachy Caravans to get a quote for installing a 12V fridge. I was hoping to get their recommendation and that proved to be a false hope. However, after lots of research we decided on a fridge that will suit us and also them in terms of having a installation frame.

We ordered the fridge ourselves as it was on sale with free shipping to private customers, and it will be delivered directly to them. The fridge has an upright side opening fridge section at the top and a drawer freezer at the bottom, each running on a separate compressor. We are able to fit a slightly larger 12V fridge in the space where the three way fridge sits as it takes up less space and we also found an unused six inches at the bottom of the cabinet.

The Winnie is booked in for the 20th February to have the new fridge installed. That allowed five days for shipping, plus a couple of extra, as advised by KP staff.

For our night away we used a combination of cooler bags and the fridge freezer which I had managed to get fairly cool on gas before putting in two freezer bricks. The only thing in there was yogurt for breakast. The wind was very strong, with gusts coming from the rear of the van, which meant that the flame wasn’t blown out immediately, but with the shifts in wind direction it was pretty sure to blow out if I didn’t switch off.

This is quite a change to my normal assessment of having a hot summer. We are spending more time at the beach and it is really making a difference. Of course, we have excellent air conditioning at home, but with the heat making it difficult to go outside we can still find it difficult. Last summer wasn’t particularly hot and it has taken until February for things to heat up this year.

The pink glow behind the van is an indicator of the humidity in the air. It was a little uncomfortable for sleeping, despite the wind, until the early morning.

This week is quite busy for Stephen with rehearsals for a WASO concert from Tuesday onwards. The choir is not singing for the whole concert, and rehearsals aren’t very long, but still involve going out each night. Fortunately it is all happening at the Concert Hall which is readily accessible by bus. The forecast is for temperatures in the high thirties for the next few days.

Despite the busyness, we decided to spend last night at a different beach location which we checked out when we went to Mullaloo Beach. I picked up the Winnie in the morning and in the afternoon we brought it up on the driveway to fill the water tank and load our stuff. When I took the Subaru to the caravan park I went to the service station for petrol and after picking up the Winnie refuelled her as well.

We were heading up the freeway at around 5.00 p.m. and although there was a lot of traffic the journey was fairly stress free. On arrival we found a good spot to park and had ‘happy hour’. A man approached us to ask about the motorhome experience and in the course of discussion said that the rangers were OK with people staying overnight and a woman had been staying in her truck camper for a few nights.

The discussion lasted a while, which meant we were hungry and didn’t get out for a walk until after our evening meal. My photos are quite grainy as there wasn’t much light.

We parked nose into the parking bay so that the westerly wind was on the opposite side to the fridge. This worked well until later in the evening when the easterly started. The flame blew out and our fridge, having just about reached 5 degrees had to sit for the rest of the night. Stephen and I have discussed getting a 12volt fridge and we have an appointment with Ken Peachy on Friday to get a quote. A 12/240v fridge can run on far less electricity than a three way fridge.

We can run our present fridge on 12v during the day when we have lots of sunshine, and a bit of driving charges the battery fully. But, we can’t leave it on 12v overnight or parked in shade because of the high draw. And it simply doesn’t work very well on any of it’s three power sources when the temperatures outside are high. We have a fridge thermometre which gives us the sad news when the temperature goes above 5 degrees. And there are those times when we have to remember to switch it off overnight in cold weather to prevent it from freezing our salads and drinks. We have battled the fridge for 2.5 years and we feel its enough!

It was still quite windy this morning, but we decided to head down for a swim anyway. The beach had a quick drop off just after entering the water and we were able to enjoy swimming whilst staying close to the shore.

We showered in the van giving the water heater about 10 minutes to take the edge off the cold water. A relaxed breakfast, then we packed up to head to Gwelup for the writing group. We were late, but it didn’t matter as the participants were well away with talking about their writing projects. It was very interesting and we feel inspired to keep on writing.

I was going to return the van and pick up the Subaru this afternoon, but it was hot and I felt tired. Stephen pointed out that I can drive past the caravan park on my way to visit Mum tomorrow to do the exchange.