Washing and Cleaning

SATURDAY 22 JUNE 2019

We were awoken just before 6am by people loudly discussing their day’s outing to Mitchell Falls and starting their cars up and leaving them running for 20 minutes or so while they got organised.  Of course they were the two couples of a certain age which we call the ‘entitled’ generation (ie we’ve worked hard all our lives and paid our taxes and now we’re retired and entitled to go where we please and do what we want and if we get the chance we’ll tell you how you should be doing it too).

So we were up having coffee and breakfast early and then we packed up the van (again, a 3 night stay equals a longer pack up) and on the road by 8am.  We trundled back down the road we have traversed a few days ago and remembered, particularly the Kalumburu Road, with a certain degree of trepidation.   We had given up on the shower screen and had tied that to the bed but Larry was hoping his mod’s to the microwave would hold up. 

The old theory held true though and the road back to Drysdale River Station seemed shorter and not as bad as we remembered it and we arrived there with the only mishap being the paper towel holder working its way loose (and this after we had only tightened all the screws on it yesterday!) Yes the mods worked on the microwave and it is sitting proudly where it was attached yesterday.  We refilled the water tanks and found a camping spot under some shady trees and then stripped the bed and took sheets, towels and bags of dirty clothes off to the washing machines.  Two machine loads going and we took our rubbish bags off to the tip and made our dinner booking while we waited for them to work their magic on our dusty, dirty stuff.

The inside of the van was swept, moped and all surfaces wiped down and we are walking on clean floors for a while.

Once they were all on the numerous washing lines on offer, we headed back to the van for lunch of toasted ham and cheese sandwiches and a sit down with books and drinks.  We then tossed up the two choices of either a visit to a local waterhole or hitting the hot showers which had just been cleaned and had large hot water tanks ready to go.  Having not washed my hair for about a week it was no choice at all for Jenny and the bliss of being clean from top to toe was too much to resist.  Was shocked to read the sign in the showers asking people to keep their showers to a respectable length and mentioned that one lady had been clocked using 48 minutes of hot running water so that many other people that night missed out on a hot shower.  So although the longest shower I have had for a week, it still was just long enough to accomplish the necessities.

After our showers we put all our washing away and then drove over to the shop so we could refuel the car and then bought some bread, eggs and a cold drink each and retired back to the van for another reading session.

About 5pm we wandered over to the pub for a beer and then our pre-ordered dinners of shepherd’s pie (Larry) and lasagne (Jenny) arrived complemented with salad and crinkle cut hot chips.  Yum.  Mars Bar cheesecake for dessert which was very rich and in retrospect we should have shared one but we have rarely had dessert in the last two weeks so it was a special treat.  We then waddled home to the van, stopping to admire the enormous expanse of stars in the sky in the clearing on the way back to the campground (normally we are camped beneath trees and can’t see that much night sky).

And so another, fairly quiet day of holiday comes to an end.  We had tried ringing Ben at the pub from the ‘phone in a fridge’ but when Ben answered the coins just fell through the phone and we couldn’t speak to him.  Oh well, at least we know he’s alive and not eaten by cats, and we will just have to wait a bit longer to find out how everyone and everything back home is going.