Day 46 Wednesday 20/7/2022 Mulambin, breezy 15 – 22

A warm night of throwing legs out of the doona. Woody picks El Prado up at Toyota again in the hope that they’ll repair the car today. They can’t leave town without an assortment of pastries from Baked on 44. Yum, my ideal breakfast.

Endeavouring to kill three birds with one stone, I drop Woody off at Cooee Bay shops so he can walk home and visit the hearing aid place for some spare bits for his hearing aids, but they don’t have the bits. Pick up a prescription from the chemist, only to find that they can only give me one vial instead of three because their stock-picking robot is down. And have a blood test, which was the only success and hilarious. You see the nurse is the same Irish bloke that I saw last year and this time we have a discussion about how I could possibly leave the amazing food in Melbourne for the (his words) “shite they serve in Queensland where everything is fried”. He tells me that with Covid numbers now peaking in QLD things are quiet for him as no one is game to leave home. Apparently, “These Queenslanders are soft as shite!”. I can’t wait to come back for next year’s blood test. This bloke should be on the stage.

I take a walk on the beach as the tide races in and sketch the miniature poinsettias I find on the beach track. Rain is due tonight and clouds are building.

This park is different this year. In 2019 most campers were seniors like us with longer bookings. On weekends young families would arrive, often miners from the inland coalfields on a break. We didn’t make it to QLD in 2020 due to Covid issues but last year we found that there were a lot of folks with new rigs who were new to caravanning. This year there are few long-term seniors and most of the campers are young families with expensive brand-new rigs who arrive late in the day, leave early and keep to themselves.

The Toyota comes back, all fixed. Dinner is marinated chicken skewers with a quinoa salad.

Accom: $38.00

Fuel: $60.16 (229.7c/l)