We spent our last night in Queenland at a billabong camp just beside Camooweal on the border. There was wonderful birdlife, including some brolgas who came by our spot in the afternoon, then walked close by us in the morning. I was too excited to get the camera out in the morning, but did get some video of passing cattle.

We enjoyed a meal at the Homestead last night, doing an unusual thing of order two meals, which meant it was a bit too much food for us. We can’t rely on pub meals being enormous, though they were in this case, and at least it gave us a chance to have chips and salad with one and veggies and mash with the other. We were able to sit in a sheltered outdoor area with good ventilation, and hope that wearing our masks inside, where it was crowded, was sufficient protection. The shop, cafe and bar all have good ventilation with open doors.

Stephen has made an appointment in Kununurra for next Thursday to have our vehicle inspection that is part of getting it registered in WA. Hopefully we can cover the 1300kms in time!

We are enjoying having a less squeezy living space, with couches we can use with the table as a dinette, but also allow both of us to lounge with our feet up. Our loft bed is a bit higher than in the Adria, and Stephen is reporting that the step down causes a bit of knee pain for him. I do a sort of ballet move on the little wooden step so that I step down facing inwards, then turn outwards, and haven’t had any problems. We have a sturdy hand rail to assist, as well as the wooden step.

It was also not possible to assess from the photos, but the kitchen benches are very deep. This means that we have better bench space than is apparent even for washing up or cooking on the 3 burner stove top. When we get home and can do a proper setting up of the spaces we should find we can fit everything we need into the cupboards. Our personal cupboards for clothing, books, etc. are quite large enough even though we have summer and winter clothing to store and we are using the little wardrobe for shirts, trousers and jackets.

It is like having a small caravan on the back of the car. I am still using the cab space for storing stuff whilst we are parked, but hope to tame that a bit as well, so there is not so much of ‘vanlife shuffle’ happening. Having the bed out of the way on top of the cab is good, and if we ever feel we can’t make it up there anymore we can turn the dinette/couch area into a bed that is nearly as large and just use the loft for storage.

We did a load of washing yesterday evening, which was dry this morning by 8.00 a.m. I did another small load today so that we will be mostly up to date when we move off tomorrow.

We will contact Matt tonight as we have excellent internet here and may not have a good signal again until we get to Katherine.