GRR Finished

TUESDAY 2 JULY 2019

Jenny had dreadful indigestion last night – a combination of rich food and too much wine (obviously a bit more potent than the ciders!)  Sat up and played on my tablet for an hour or so, took a couple of Rennies and then managed to go back to sleep so all good.  We were up around 6ish and then did a slow pack up.  Larry had suggested that Jenny practice hooking up the van today but Jenny had visions of hitting up to the van a bit too hard and pushing the whole van down into the creek and therefore promises to do it another day instead.

We were on the road by 8am and back on the Gibb River Road by 9am.  This morning we finished listening to ‘Sphere’ by Michael Crichton which has kept us entertained during the boring lengths of driving on the Gibb.  As promised by the couple we had talked to at Mornington there was a particularly rough bit of road for about 5km and along this section we encountered a car that had only recently rolled over as they had obviously gone over the big corrugations too fast and lost contact with the road.  They were travelling with another car and were in the process of transferring the contents of the rolled over car to the other one.  We stopped to check they were all okay (they were) and that they didn’t need any help and got a thumbs up so continued on feeling  suitably reminded of how necessary it is to take care and remain vigilant of all the road may throw at you at any time.

We decided not to stop and inflate the tyres when we finally hit the tarmac near Derby so we continued on slowly and therefore didn’t reach the caravan park in Derby until nearly 1pm.  

The first site they had allocated us was right next to an amenity block and with a large boab tree in front of it so that you had to manoeuvre at a weird angle to get in and there was no guarantee we could pop the top up under the branches of the tree.   Although there were other vacant nicer, shadier sites around, management assured us they were all booked already and the only other site they had was over in the corner near the salt flats and in the sun so we moved there instead feeling a bit grumpy that we had seemed to draw the short straw without even knowing there would be one to draw.

 

The grumpiness was probably not helped by it now being after 2pm and having not had anything to eat but a few milk arrowroot biscuits since breakfast.   We decided food for our stomachs followed by food for the van were top priorities so headed into town to take care of both.

A big shop at Woolies Derby and BWS next door as all are supplies are pretty much depleted and then Jenny spent a fun half hour or so putting her spatial awareness skills to the test trying to cram six shopping bags worth of groceries into cupboards and fridge while Larry found some empty washing machines and put a couple of loads of washing on.

So domestic chores for the remainder of the day and we set the telly up for the first time this trip and watched the news while we ate our steak and salad dinner and are now updating blogs and Facebook etc.

The couple in the van next to us warned that there are often night time visitors in this caravan park looking to snitch anything not locked up or down (apparently a lot of people stupidly leave the cars unlocked here!) and the police regularly patrol through in the middle of the night so not to be alarmed if we see flashing lights in the small hours.  We are feeling exhausted so doubt we’ll wake for anything anyway!