Last month

Wow. March already. Eemeli (or Email as Dad in Seattle prefers to call him, which has now become a standing joke with the family in Finland as well) has been here a whole month. We have introduced him to Aussie Rules aka Australian Rules Football, which contains lots of running & some rough & tumble tackling. We're pretty sure he can take it! He had his first History test, which appeared to go well, as he knows the material really well, but has a few difficulties getting it out on paper in English. Kelly has decided that Eemeli is more fun to sleep with than us, which means less times I have to kick him down to the bottom of the bed to make some leg room. And a new haircut too. Julie reported that the hairdresser spent more time on Eemeli than she did on her. Now that's I call "getting your priorities right".

I have installed the new bushes on the top of the shock absorbers in the front of the bus & we now have it riding like it should, not bouncing all over the road. The bus went in for more work this week, this time to get the exhaust brake fixed, which turned out to be a simple faulty connection on a switch, & the exhaust brake now works. So I can flick it on going downhill & not have to be poking the brakes quite so often. The big test will going "down the mountain" tomorrow. The next job (over 2 days of next week) is a clutch rebuild. I am so glad that we have this period of time to get the bugs ironed out before we hit the road on longer trips & then permanently. We are leaving tomorrow (Friday) for the coast, to get a head start on the Canberra Day long weekend. The weather should be somewhere between OK & miserable, so we may be doing a whole lot of relaxing & doing nothing. Which is probably a good thing as the stress levels over our ongoing financial situation had me "down & out" with a migraine yesterday. And on that subject, it looks like we finally have a full refinance package that clears our debt & re-establishes a bit of balance (yes, pun intended) in our lives.

OK, we left for the coast (finally) just before noon, via Cooma & Brown Mountain. Of course there was the mandatory stop at the Bemboka Pie Shop for a late lunch. It was Eemeli's first meat pie. Yay, another first! The trip proceeded rather uneventfully (except that the co-pilot went to sleep & the other co-pilot wasn't much better), until our arrival at Dalmeny Campground, where our booking appeared to be non-existent, so we wandered around the Narooma area for a while. We were just leaving one park that very clearly said that dogs were not welcome, when the phone rang with a call from Western Australia. Would we accept a contract for $300,000 on the property in Kalgoorlie? Ah, yeah! How do we get it to you? Well, your managing agent has my email address. OK, it's on its way. It really was that easy.

Finally we arrived at the Surf Beach Resort, where the people were just great, making sure that we were happy with our site. Which BTW is overlooking the ocean & it's fantastic. By this time it was getting late & way past grumpy time, so we opted for dinner at the Golf Club. We had walked no more than 50 metres when a van stopped & the driver asked whether we were going to the Golf Club, & invited us to hop in. Turned out that he had a booking from the Resort & no-one was waiting for him, so he was very happy to pick us up & not waste the trip. We caught the same shuttle bus back after dinner.

Saturday has been an exhausting day, with a swim in the ocean (freezing!) & a much gentler swim in the creek. Then Julie & Eemeli took Kelly for a swim & I got the job of rinsing him off in the shower. The lesson about the bus on this trip is that the 2 knobs in the external shower thingy above the slide-out BBQ are not a flow tap & a mixer tap, but are in fact one hot water knob & one cold water knob. Glad we got that one sorted out! Altogether it's been a day of swimming, lounging around, eating, more swimming & talking to people.

Sunday, we woke up to light rain, just in time for the surf carnival down on the beach. Our rain preparation these days consist of dropping one side of the awning so that any collected water just runs off on that side. More swimming, lounging around, eating, more swimming & talking to people. That night, the rain REALLY came in & we had to batten everything down, which consisted of closing the windows & pulling the awning almost all the way, to the point that we could still open the door without gouging a huge gash in the awning. We played Uno & discovered that the rules that Eemeli knows are quite different from ours. We played ours this time & next time we'll use his. This particular pack is the Sydney 2000 Olympics version, which includes the ability of a Wild card to block any Draw 2 or Draw 4 on the stack, as well as a Trade Hands card (one per colour) which can be very handy if you're sitting on a fistful & someone else is on Uno. Of course, Eemeli won hands down.

Then of course, with Monday came the packing up & moving out. The good part was that by the time we were ready to leave, nearly everyone else had already gone, so there was nothing in the way for backing the bus out. We found out as we were leaving that ours is the biggest rig they have seen there.

The next complication was the voltage meter suddenly spiking to its maximum, & I finally figured out that this coincided with the air conditioner suddenly going from whatever setting it should have been on to full blast. Later on, there was a strange baking smell, somewhere between freshly baked bread & over heated brakes, which I eventually figured that it was the alternator overheating. But there was not much we could do except keep going, & stop a little more often. Of course, all of this started as we were about to climb up the Clyde Mountain, so it was not the slow & stately grind that it usually is (20 Kph in second gear on the steepest part), but more slow & worried. But we did make it home & the bus is going in again on Thursday for more work.

Crazy. In all the distance we have travelled with Eemeli since he arrived here over a month ago & all the promises we have made that he really will see a kangaroo in the wild, a live one that is, he finally got to see them on the hill at the back of my workplace. There is a mob of about 50 of them that range up & down the hill, & today was the first time I have seen them for about 2 months. So I collected him after my work & his gym session, & took him back to have a look. I think we can see from the photos that he was excited. With all the rain we have had, the size of the mob has grown to nearly 100. Update to that story: I have only seen the kangaroos down the hill once since then.

Last weekend, the fridge decided to make a very loud noise, that sounded like there was something vibrating. When I defrosted the back of the freezer, I found a piece of black plastic that looked like the end of a fan blade. So I called the customer care number & the earliest they could get someone out was Wednesday morning. And sure enough, it was a broken fan. It took the guy only a few minutes to swap it out. That'll be $200, thanks. But we spent those 3 days "camping" in our own kitchen, with some stuff stashed in the bus fridge & freezer, the drinks fridge cranked up to be a freezer & the things we needed instantly stored in the Esky in the kitchen covered with ice.

Eemeli has taught Kelly to jump over the barricade in the passage, which he now does very well. Angel just stands up & leans on it, wondering where the brown dog has gone. She develops habits quite easily, such as knowing that when I leave in the morning, there is a treat on offer. She "sort of" sits for the treat. and then there's the game of playing with Eemeli's pyjamas. Or my socks, or Julie's feet, or anything else that happens to be at floor level. Everything else that is not a habit is just not in her realm. Put a piece of meat on the floor & Kelly will eat it. Angel will just sniff at & wonder what she is supposed to do with it.

The property in Kalgoorlie now has a buyer & is now due for settlement on 6 April. We have secured a refinance on the Bentley property & our own house, which doesn't gain us much, but clears the way to sell Bentley as well.

Meanwhile, I think I spoke up too much in the meeting of Emergency Control Wardens at work, and was later tapped on the shoulder to take on the job of Chief Warden for the whole building, That's a big step from clearing out my own area in an emergency to taking charge of the evacuation of an entire building. Guess I'm up for a new challenge then, huh?

The bus has had a visit from the mobile Auto Electrician several times & we are still trying to find the cause of the over-charging. We still think it's the regulator, but the one in there is imported from Japan, like the rest of the bus chassis, & it shorts to earth instead of shorting the power like the ones from here. Or something like that. Meanwhile the 24V/12V charger has been replaced & we are at least charging the house (12V) batteries while we are driving. After we arrived at the farm hosting us for the Binda Picnic Races, we discovered that the funny baking smell that we had on the way home last time is actually the bus (24V) batteries overheating. Ugh! So we moved away from the other motorhomes so that we can use our generator as much as we need to.

Eemeli is now sleeping in a satin sleeping bag thingy. Hopefully he won't slide out the door overnight. We have also decided that we really need to do our packing the night before we take off, not on that morning. I forgot my socks & jocks, & Eemeli forgot his toothbrush. He ended up using the one that Duncan had left behind. Thank you, Duncan. I ended up just being smelly. So what's new, I hear you say.

Race Day. Eemeli much prefers the regular sheets! We woke to find sheep grazing all around, magpies carolling in the trees, & in the higher trees over the fence, kookaburras laughing. Colin (our host) & Robyn took Julie down to the dam to set some traps for yabbies, she calls crawfish. We made our way down to the racecourse in the Suzuki, leaving Eemeli to get a lift with other people. We finally caught up with him about an hour later & he was quite happy to hang out with the motorhome group. The course is as it is on the satellite photos, with an airstrip running through the middle of it. They put the starting gates over on the eastern side & the horses run around the northern end to the finish line on the western side, & they run on up & over the end of the airstrip to slow down. We left after about the 4th race, to return to the farm & relax. 

The traps yielded 3 yabbies, which were duly cooked for dinner. We eventually lit the bonfire to get some coals to cook things in camp ovens & also to cook damper. Just before dinner, we got a phone call from a lady who had picked Angel up, wandering around in the middle of Dixon Drive. We eventually got Tim's number through to her (the mobile reception is right on the edge out here) & he went round & collected her. Turns out the lady is the one who walks her dogs up the side lane & often grabs a few herbs as she goes past, with our permission of course. We never did get around to cooking the damper, although we might try to make it into pancakes on the BBQ. Update: It made up into a very nice (large) pancake. The over-charging battery just stank all the way home & we arrived feeling cranky & nauseous. We found out later, when we got a call from the ACT Police, that Julie hadn't been concentrating on what I was doing, which was filling up the Suzuki with petrol & the bus with diesel, & she only paid for the diesel. Of course, the staff can't have been all that sharp either!

I am now on first name terms with the mobile auto electrician, who has had several attempts to diagnose the over-charging problem, mostly because it's really intermittent. He has discovered that the regulator switches to earth instead of switching the power, as the locally made ones do. So his next attempt will be to change a couple of wires in the alternator & install a new regulator. Meanwhile, we have hired the bus out to a work colleague who has 2 daughters coming from New York with their partners, & they needed the extra accommodation. So it's now parked proudly in their driveway for a couple of weeks, which also makes it easier for the sparky to get to it, because he works mostly on that side of town.

We also did a major house clean, because it's been waaaay too long. Eemeli interrupted the cleaning of his room to come out to the kitchen & hand Julie a diamond earring. She almost kissed him on the spot! It was one that we had lost about a year ago & she had virtually given up ever finding it. It's amazing how many times we have vacuumed in there & never sucked it up.

Meanwhile, Eemeli's footy training is progressing. His team is now training at their home ground & starting at 4:30, which is much earlier & much further away. I spoke to the coach tonight & we will look at him getting to training with one of his team mates who drives.

My team at work is moving to Fyshwick, as early as next week, which means that I stand down as Chief Warden even before I have done anything. And we are just a few days away from the big flight trip over Easter, Thursday to Uluru, Friday to Cairns, Saturday up the hill to Kuranda & back, Sunday to visit a crocodile farm, Monday back home via Brisbane & hopefully see Dorothy & Pete at Brisbane airport for a little while. Life is certainly not dull around here!