Thursday 4th January, 2024 Albany to Cosy Corner East Campground

Yesterday morning I went out to see what I could find for breakfast. The main aim was a coffee. The IGA has stopped making bacon and egg toasties and the cafe I went to only had sweet items, so I settled for coffee. Apart from that we had our normal breakfast of cereal and fruit.

We had a fairly good night in the carpark, being woken by freight trains occasionally, and once by someone shouting. Stephen spoke with another van person who advised us that there is sometimes trouble in the IGA carpark and staying in the convention centre/hotel carpark over the other side of the railway is a better overnight option. We shall try it.

I decided to cook a spaghetti bolognese for our evening meals at Cosy Corner, so we shopped for that specifically, as well as whatever else we would actually need for our planned three night stay. This means we are not trying to store things that aren’t important. There is a little local cafe and general store within about 3kms, but unfortunately it is now closed. Our nearest store is about 10kms away and we would have to drive there. So, we hope we have covered everything we will need.

Drinking water is the main thing that holds us back for long stays off grid, but we have refilled the water tank a few times now and could drink that water boiled if necessary.

We filled and emptied at the main Albany service point before heading out to Cosy Corner East. On arrival we drove around the campground. There were a few vacant places, but the No. 1 space looked the best. It’s very close to the toilets so we are hoping we don’t get a smell. On the other hand we have a certain amount of privacy and a bit of shelter from the wind. It’s also fairly flat.

I spent about half an hour trying to pay at the parking meter that is used to pay for camping. But, later found that you don’t have to download the app, you can just manually pay and get a ticket. Next time! In the evening the campground host came around to check and was surprised when I showed him our camp booking on my phone.

We went for a bit of a walk along the beach before coming back here to do the cooking. A rare event, I used the gas stove top, but it was handy as I needed two saucepans, one for the sauce and one for the pasta and green beans. Stephen chopped up a large carrot into small pieces for the sauce.

I found a fairly good spot for the Starlink and it has been performing quite well. We won’t leave it on all of the time, but I need it for this blog for uploading the photos and we will need it if we want to watch something on Netflix. We have another movie in mind that is available there. For everything else the weak, slow 4G signal should be enough. We listened to a podcast last night on healthy living and that worked just fine. Starlink uses a fair bit of power and so far we haven’t had much sunshine today.

You can click on the images to bring up the gallery so that they are full sized.

Last year I read adventure novels by Alan McDermott, The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathon Haidt, The Palestine Laboratory by Anthony Loewenstein, The Abolition of Sex: How the “Transgender” Agenda Harms Women and Girls byKara Dansky, Born in the right body: Gender identity ideology from a medical and feminist perspective by Isadora Sanger, The end of the world is flat by Simon Edge, Tough Crowd by Graham Linehan, The Places in Between, by Rory Stewart, The strange death of Europe by Douglas Murray, The Gran Tour by Ben Aitken (and some of his other novels), including Dear Bill Bryson. Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier, Trans gender Identity and the new battle for women’s rights by Helen Joyce, Material Girls: Why reality matters for feminism by Kathleen Stock, The man in the bunker by Rory Clements, 4WD Driving Skills: A Manual for On- and Off-Road Travel by Vic Widman, and many, many more, far too many to list. One of the great joys of being retired. But, it means I sit too much.