Stephen finally felt confident in driving the Toyota Hilux yesterday and we made it to Emerald without feeling too tired. We were parked up near a bridge and a botanical gardens. We were also within walking distance of a shopping centre and I donned a backpack and went there for shopping.

We enjoyed a short walk in the botanical gardens. In the children’s playground they had a monorail with little pedal cars. We saw one in Rockhampton as well. It looks fun, but the kids have to pedal hard and they go rather slowly.

In the morning we went to empty the toilet and get water, then Stephen went to Woolies to get some extra stuff that would have made the shopping too heavy for me to carry the day before.

I had made an appointment with an auto electrcians the day before and we rocked up at 11.00 for our appointment only to have Rod, our expert, about to have his smoko. Still, it gave me time to remove all of the cushions, etc. from the benches so he could access our elecronics. He confirmed that our DCtoDC charger was working, but it wasn’t linked through the shunt that would have allowed me to see the power coming through on my app. He corrected that problem and also rewired the batteries and connected the 240v charger to the shunt as well.

On our drive afterwards the batteries performed as they have in the days since we bought the camper, but at least I understood the negative values I had been seeing as the fridge operating on DC when we were travelling. It can draw up to 10 amps, but this no longer shows up, there are now positives values.

The batteries are not reaching the super high voltages they were reaching in the Adria, but that is a good thing as it worried me to have them sitting on 14.4v whilst we were travelling. The DCDC charger is clearly doing a better battery management job than previously, so that part might be due to our installer at the sales yard. We had two people doing the installing and it probably never occurred to them that I check the input/output so obsessivly!

Tonight we are staying at a place called Bogantungen, just off the highway. This donation camp has a toilet and drinking water and is in the Drummond Ranges. It is much more peaceful here than last night although the highway is close by.