Friday 10th May, 2019

The irony of the title of yesterday’s blog post was that when we were being ‘rescued’ someone described us as ‘an elderly couple’. We don’t feel elderly, of course. Hence ‘Young again’. Plus, we are in the town of Young and didn’t intend to have a second night here.

Today we did some more sorting out of the insurance claim, etc. Some progress has been made, but we are not sure if the repairer was able to get a quote to the insurer today. They found that the fuel tank does not have a hole in it, and the repair will involve the fuel connections (or something like that). If they can make generic replacement of parts and not have to wait for parts from Italy, we should be able to get on the road in a reasonable time. Shipment of parts from Italy take four weeks. The insurer said that if we are happy then they are happy on that issue.

We still had the ute we borrowed yesterday, and now that we feel we will be until at least Tuesday, we decided to make ourselves comfortable in the cabin. We drove to where the Winnie is parked and packed up food, clothes, etc. We emptied the fridge and turned off the freezer section. I was worried that if we turned off the fridge we might end up with water at the bottom of the fridge. Having only one compresser working should mean that the batteries are not too challenged. Also, the Winnie is parked outside and should get good solar power after today. We have had a cloudy and wet day today, but fine weather is forecast.

We checked, and found that the accommodation allowance is less than we were told yesterday, though will still cover us for up to three weeks (we hope we don’t need it) and that we can also have access to a hire car up to $500. We are taking advantage of that and have a car for the next three days. A nifty little Corolla with very little ground clearance.

It was too cold and wet to go outside to take a better photo of the car.

On our way to pick it up we called in at a bakery cafe. It has a beautiful upstairs area.

There were a few nice areas with couches and armchairs, as in the featured photo at the top.

We arrived at about 3.00 p.m. and by 3.30 when we left lots of families with school kids had arrived. The kids were ording sausage rolls and chips to have with sugary drinks. Not one was overweight. We theorised that parents came into town to pick up their kids from the various schools and this was their Friday afternoon treat.

After we picked up our car we drove to Woolworths to get supplies. We were planning to shop before the incident with the Winnie and were able to get most things. We only have a tiny freezer in the cabin and had to leave frozen things off the list, getting everything else.

We are at home making ourselves comfortable. There are no armchairs in our cabin and we’ve brought the plastic outdoor chairs into the living room. Last night when we arrived back here I was terribly cold and found that air conditioning did not provide enough warmth. We are not used to an electric blanket on the bed, but because we don’t have much covering we put it on last night and that was when I finally felt warm again.

We do like the little cabin. We can cook and prepare our own food, and we have privacy.

We plan to do some exploring over the weekend, which is our motivation for renting the car.