I’ve written this blog over two days and edited it to remove confusing tenses. However, some may have been overlooked.

We’ve decided to keep our usual getting up time at dawn, which is now 6.00 a.m. This means that we do need to get to bed a little earlier than usual, taking into account the time change. That meant we were on our way out of the Wyndham Caravan Park by 9.00ish, but not before going to the big boab in the park to have our photos taken. Thank you Chris. He knew how to use the various cameras on my iphone 12 to get different perspectives.

Then it was up to the 5 rivers lookout. On the way we found out that our stuff on the loft bed does not fall off when we are going up steep slopes. I used the power button to get us up to the top and drove in 2nd gear on the way down. And it was well worth it, even though the smoke haze was very evident from the top. I was dying for a cup of coffee and the fact that a tour group was there having their coffees made it worse, so used one of the coffee bags for a quick cuppa. We stayed long enough to encounter a second tour group as well.

Have I mentioned that older women love our camper. They are often the buyers and I expect more younger women would have them if they could afford it. For some reason the combination of the Toyota Hilux vehicle and short caravan really appeals to us. We can enjoy a sense of adventure whilst having all home comforts. So I wasn’t surprised when one of the women from the tour group came over and expressed her admiration. She told me she actually has a motorhome, but this would be her preference. Stephen said there is an 18 month wait for new ones and she shook her head, too long to wait. She would like a used one. Even though the prices are inflated.

After that we headed back to town to visit the big crocodile and take photos. There was an indigenous artist working nearby, and he showed us one of his paintings, which he said is based on the traditional rock art in the area. His father wrote a book about it that is available in libraries. I couldn’t resist the painting and Stephen used cash to pay for it. The artist, Claude, has signed the back and printed his name so that we can look up the book.

Then we were on our way. Throughout the drive we found the landscape incredibly beautiful. To some extent I think the smoke haze even enhanced it and made the mountain ranges on the sun side look more menacing. The pastel colours were lovely. We keep wishing we didn’t have to drive away from a view, but then there would be another view coming up.

There were no tours available to the Bungle Bungles yesterday, but it was really too hot for it anyway. We watched the news and weather last night and found out exactly why we are noticing the heat, we are having a heatwave. Today, Tuesday, the maximum will be 37 degrees.

We’ve decided to camp next at Mary Pool halfway between Halls Creek and Fitzroy Crossing as both towns have bad reputations with the Wikicamps crowd. There are theives frequenting the Halls Creek Caravan Park at night and it’s a ‘thing’ to throw rocks at cars in Fitzroy Crossing, so even passing through there is apparently risky. This is according to the commentary on Wikicamps. We have had to do without airconditioning, but our fan does help and we are still having cooling down happening overnight so that we can sleep fairly comfortably. I’ve been checking the weather to see when we can expect cooler days and we have at least 1,000 kms to go.

I did a load of washing before leaving yesterday morning and we put it out to do some preliminary drying on the line. We thought we would have to use our clothes airer once we got to our next camp to finish off. This was yesterday and in 45 minutes on the line the washing was mostly dry, just some thick socks were slightly damp.

It was a pretty full house here at Mary Pool last night. It’s good to see so many people not being wimps about the heat and still wanting to stay in bush locations. We didn’t hear any generators running.

Artemis had to cancel it’s first flight to the moon, sadly.

And our gas bottle ran out last night so Stephen had to get out and change bottles. We mostly cook using electricity for cooking, my mini electric frying pan is ideal for evening meals. So, it’s just the fridge and water heater that consume gas. And we are sometimes at caravan parks and use the water heater and fridge on electricity. It doesn’t feel like we get many nights using gas before a bottle runs out, but Stephen is keeping a log of the trip and can give us a better idea of how long each bottle lasts. We expected the gas to run out quickly in the Adria when we used gas for room heating, but maybe the fridge is just as power hungry.