July 2016, Cape Hillsborough, Qld

It’s Woody’s 70th birthday, we drive into Mackay for lunch and find a friendly Thai restaurant overlooking the marina and have a delicious meal. We can’t complain about the service as there is no one else there.

Back at camp we spend the afternoon preparing Woody’s traditional birthday Chinese dinner. You know how people develop strange traditions, well ours is an odd mix of favourite foods. I bake a chocolate cake in our wondrous newly replaced oven then can’t figure out where to put it, the cake that is. The coffee machine is on the bathroom floor along with the fruit bowl, but that seems to live on the bathroom floor most of the time and a pumpkin that is waiting for us to cook with a lamb roast …sometime, somewhere. The table has the ingredients for the Lup Yuk, a dried Chinese pork, with potatoes, Woody’s favourite. The sink is where I’m preparing the Fried Rice and there are little piles of vegetables and bean sprouts everywhere, in order. Damn, the bed is the only flat space left in the whole caravan. The weather has turned nasty, Queensland nasty, as forecast which rules out the champagne sunset on the beach and has dictated that all of dinner will be cooked inside. While outside steamy rain thumps down. With all the food there’s barely room in the van for us. Woody please don’t sit on the bed!

Footnote: Little did we know that the persistent rain would continue for another three days.