Day 62 Tuesday 27/7/21 Mulambin, sunny 23

I pop into a clinic for another shot (this time it’s one to keep oldies moving) and aside from the man with bright pink hair there’s a cowboy in the waiting room. A real one, the hat, the boots and the bowed legs and an ad for a rodeo on his shirt. I’m called in to see the doc and he’s an Indian (of the subcontinental variety). The doc directs me to the nursing station where one nurse has a persistent cough, and the one I get tells me that she’s new. Hopefully to the job not the profession though I get a little nervous when she asks if I want the needle in my bum. The arm will be quite fine, thank you. I’m still having concerns about the lack of mask wearing in medical establishments up here but at least the receptionist is wearing a mask, though it’s not much use hanging around her chin like a soggy blue flag at half-mast.

Jabbed for the third time since we arrived here we take a walk around town, it’s a lovely day for a walk and we’re fascinated by the offerings in real estate agents windows. A house here, one block back from the beach is the price of a suburban unit in Melbourne. Getting a feel for what must be the best street in town we drive up there for a look. Up, up, up so high we almost have an aerial view of the whole coast and the islands.

I take a slow walk along Lammermoor Beach where the sea has offered up more intriguing delights. Dead crabs and lots of small hairy clam shells still joined together looking like tiny jewel boxes.

Happy hour becomes something of a comedy. Double or Nuthin’ and Shirley Temple arrive back from the supermarket with the last of the stock of air fryers. Giving air frying a break I’m cooking a chicken drumstick and risoni tray bake. Which means that I have to run back across the park every 30 minutes or so to check its progress in the oven. The dinner seems to have more sauce than I think it will need and as I juggle putting it back in the oven the disposable foil tray collapses sending a cascade of cream sauce between the two glass panels of the oven door and into the pots in the drawer below. And into the floor mat. Awash with cream sauce and trying not to laugh over spilt cream I somehow manage to mop up the majority of the mess and get the bloody chook back in the oven and the floor mat flung outside where it can be dealt with tomorrow.

I return to the Prado camp to find El Prado demonstrating his new Aldi temperature probe on the chicken that is roasting in their Weber. With no intention of reading the instructions, the probe protruding from the chook, a temperature display that he can’t read and a burnt hand El Prado still can’t tell if the chook is cooked or not. Elle not so quietly tells him that you just need to look at it to see that it’s cooked!

Perhaps we should have stuck to air frying tonight.

Accom: 42.00

Towing Kms: 0

And the moral to the story: Disposable foil oven trays don’t always take the work out of cleaning up.