Day 46 Friday 23/6/2023, somewhere in Qld, cloudy 11 – 26

Last night the TV aerial winder dropped out of the ceiling. For those who aren’t familiar with the workings of such things, the T Bar aerial on the roof can be raised and lowered, and rotated to the direction of the best signal by using a winder and ratchet in the ceiling. This morning Woody is like a frog in a sock wanting to put it back together. We had replaced the winder when we were staying at Nicholson back in February. Try as we might, we can’t get all the parts in and screwed up. It’s a 3 hand job which being height challenged (AKA a short arse) means I must kneel on the bed to reach the ceiling. In desperation, we try Dr. Google and YouTube and find a woman in the US who shows us how simple the task is. Still, we can’t get it right. At this stage, I’m sipping my breakfast coffee and munching on a peanut butter-smothered rice cake. We decide that one of our parts must be damaged so Woody drives down to Hervey Bay and pays 70 odd bucks for the complete assembly. We wolf down lunch and set to work. Guess what, we can’t get it right, the ratchet won’t align and the handle can’t be screwed in. It’s afternoon when we realise, with the use of a head torch and a magnifying glass that the screw needs to be turned with an Allen key. A really small Allen key. Smaller than our smallest Allen key. Woody drives over to the hardware store and returns with the right Allen key and a pineapple. A pineapple? He explains that he was too embarrassed to buy just an 80-cent item. Don’t all hardware stores sell pineapples? Only in Queensland eh. The Allen key fits perfectly but the ratchet still doesn’t align. It’s about this point that Woody walks outside and notices that the aerial is hanging over the front of the van, duh. A quick reposition and everything screws into place easily, just like the American woman said it would, this morning. By now it’s 4:00pm and we know what that means…happy hour. It has taken us all day and $70 to fix something that only needed an 80-cent Allen key. And, a pineapple.

In the meantime, Elle has been trying to get TV reception, she moves ‘Betty’ the motor home to no avail.

We’re having a shared roast dinner tonight. Elle cooks a chicken in the air fryer and some greens. VeeWee provides the roast potatoes and pumpkin but not before she scalds her foot, drops a piece of hot pumpkin and steps on it mashing it into the floor mat.

The topic of conversation over dinner is how something breaks on every trip when Elle notices that her fridge has stopped working. It’s one of those automatic ones that chooses whichever source of fuel is available so we turn on the gas but it still doesn’t start. We find the circuit breakers after removing the pantry drawers and Elle’s smalls to reveal the wiring. It’s about then that we stumble upon a YouTube video that tells us how to reset the fridge. We press and hold that big fat button in the middle and voila!

Dessert, by the way, is baked bananas with crushed cashews, peanut butter, chocolate chips and ice cream cooked in our oven. Sounds delicious doesn’t it, but we’re all too stressed and just gulp it down in a hurry to get the fridge up and going.

Accom: $32.00