Tuesday 22nd April, 2025
At about 11.00 a.m. we walked to the library where Stephen was hoping to find more information about the town. After yesterday’s rain it was good to have a sunny day. We were told about a nearby cafe, so we went to check to see if Google Maps was correct about it being open. Fortunately it was and we enjoyed hot drinks.
Stephen had a chai latte made with sticky tea leaves and spices. Turned out to be very expensive and we paid $15 for both drinks. It was also difficult to get it strong enough and they had served the milk separately, with a strainer, and he found this a bit tricky to manage.
At that point we decided that we would go to Northam, a bit closer than York. Northam has a free RV camping area on the river. When we arrived we were able to get a good parking bay on the end of a row. The RV park is somewhat similar to the one at Wundowie and it too has a dump point and drinking water tap with a push button. You can’t fill your RV tank, but it suited us to just have access to fill our water jug.
We had a very warm and sticky afternoon. It was uncomfortable inside and by 4.00 p.m. the midges came in and made it uncomfortable to sit outside. We went for a walk to the bridge, but showers made us cut it short after a little while.
We had leftovers for tea, spaghetti and pasta, with frozen peas. We had bought some bread, salads and alcoholic ginger beer at the IGA in Wundowie. We had two cans of the ginger beer, unlike us as we usually just share one. The alcohol didn’t seem to have any effect on us.
By about 10.00 p.m. it had cooled down sufficiently for us to have a comfortable night. There was some rain overnight, but it didn’t actually storm until the morning. Fortunately, there was no wind, so we could leave the windows open and watch out for lightning and listen to the thunder and heavy rain.
We got ready to leave between rain showers and headed off at about 11.00 a.m.
We had a Working Voices Alumni meeting at 2.00 p.m. in Bentley. To extend our holiday a bit we shared a big breakfast at the Dome Cafe and only headed off in time to get to Bentley by 2.00 p.m.
The battery level was at about 50% by the time we left Northam. We didn’t get much solar due to the clouds and rain, but went ahead and did all of our usual things (boiling the kettle 3 times for teas and coffees, and I blow dried my hair) We also ran the Starlink. This was because we were testing out the system, we have the gas stove as a backup of course.
By the time we arrived at Bentley, with solar and the DCDC charger, the batteries were at 90%. We would not be able to use as much electricity if we were intending to stay for a second night.
The batteries reached 100% quite quickly on Thursday morning. The fridge is still on, but as we haven’t been using the electric appliances, there is very little draw on them.
Overall, we are happy with our power set up. I’ve sold our two Ecoflow power boxes on Facebook Marketplace and our replacement Ecoflow Delta 3 plus hasn’t arrived yet, normally we have some backup. Perhaps it was good to test out the system without any backup, I found I was still prepared to push things a bit, just to see what would happen. But, I’ll still be glad to have backup power for our winter trip