Caravan maintenance and the art of journaling

No 6 in a six-part travelogue.

As we start out on the last six days of a six-week caravan adventure, now is the time to dig into my journal for publishable insights and ironies. We found quite by accident an oasis in the outback called Theresa Creek Dam, 22km south west of Clermont. The dam was built here in 1985 by Blair Athol Coal to supply Clermont with drinking water.

It’s a tranquil lake spanning some 8,100 acres with abundant birdlife and a special kind of light. The dam is also an angler’s paradise, stocked quite recently (2015-16) with 14,200 barramundi and 34,147 golden perch. There’s also jewfish, saratoga and red claw. All kinds of boating is allowed, but you must have a licence to go fishing.

So after some hard driving across the flatlands of central Queensland, known for beef cattle and abundant reserves of coal, we took time to sit by the cool waters and reflect on the journey. We also did some running repairs on car and caravan. I say ‘we’ advisedly, as I am the sort of impractical bloke who will try three ways of doing something before the fourth and correct way.

This trip has not been without its mishaps, starting with the realisation, three days out, that the three-way caravan fridge wasn’t working. It cost $230 for a fridge mechanic in Charleville to tell us the bad news, that the fridge, given its age and resale value (nil), was not worth fixing.

So it’s had a good innings, this fridge, which the mechanic said was still working on gas, or at least it was until we took the van on dirt roads. She Who Plans Ahead Even When Being In The Moment reckoned it would cost $500 just to get the old fridge removed and a new three-way fridge (about $1200) installed.

The alternative, we figure, is an upright 12-volt fridge which will also cost about $1,100 but the installation will be a piece of cake. It can then run off the car battery when driving, the van battery when camped and the solar panel can keep the latter topped up. (Meanwhile, we pretend we’re in the 1920’s and use the fridge as an icebox, replenishing ice every couple of days. Ed)

In other on-road adventures, we bought a new car battery in Clermont. The old on failed once at Mt Surprise for no real reason other than to suspect the original Ford battery (four years old) was about to cark it. We got a ‘low battery’ warning a few days ago when starting the car, so got it tested in Clermont by the local RACQ approved repairer.

The other challenge was the caravan wardrobe door, which fell off while we were bouncing our way across the dirt road shortcut between Hughenden and The Lynd. Fortunately, the mirror on the inside of the door remained intact. Not so the hinges, which apart from matching all other hinges in the van, proved a curse to replace. Uncle John, who is possibly more handy than She Who Screws With her Left Hand (make of that what you will), tried three different hardware stores on the Atherton Tablelands and came up empty. He suggested a hardware store in Cairns which (a) was hard to find) and (b) couldn’t help us anyway. Persistent as always, SWSWHLH found a set of offset hinges in a caravan supplies shop in Townsville. But there were only two to (the only) packet. Not to be deterred, SWSWHLH took a hinge off a back cupboard, replacing it with the damaged one off the wardrobe, figuring that it ‘would do’ as it is not load bearing. So yesterday, with my assistance, She hung the wardrobe door and what do you know, it closes and locks. Yay. Estimated cost $4.86.

Anais Nin and my 40-year journaling habit

All of these little challenges are detailed in my journal, a long-running series of notebooks which contain not only factual observations, but also fiction and my interpretations of life as it progresses. It’s hardly the erotic adventures of Anais Nin, but as any good psychologist could tell you, it can be cathartic and even helpful to pour one’s feelings out in a journal that will hopefully never be read by anyone else. My executors have their instructions.

My journal contains sentiments which could be misinterpreted in the context of a loving relationship spanning many years. For example, Ms Acronym is apt to interrupt my sudden brilliant flashes of creativity, encouraging me to go birding, walking, do the laundry, work out what we’re doing tomorrow etc just when the small kernel of a new song has started rattling around in my head.

And as she no doubt caustically observes when scribbling in her own book, when travelling I tend to get dazed and confused in the late afternoon, readily confusing left and right and north and south. I grant that one’s spouse could find that exasperating, as I so often insist my way is the right way (when it is abundantly clear it is not).

She Who Keeps A Journal While Travelling has another writing exercise where she is supposed to spend 10 minutes writing down her feelings and then burn the paper. I apparently blundered into this exercise, rummaging around in the fridge (kept cool with ice boxes), saying “Honey, where are the carrots?” (My riposte was milder than you might suspect. Ed.)

Other minor mishaps on this escapade were usually due to somehow getting lost, which we either found amusing (or not). On leaving Glenmorgan for Surat (we’d been at Myall Park, a fascinating botanic garden in the bush), our GPS told us to turn left and continue down a corrugated dirt road which, half an hour later, had not yet met a bend. As my journal now tells me, some weeks after we stopped being annoyed about it, if we had not taken this road less travelled we would not have seen a mob of wallabies, a Bustard, a feral cat, four dead dingos hanging from a tree and a drover on a horse, durrie hanging from the corner of his mouth, who gave us a puzzled look and a laconic wave as if to say ‘are youse lost or something’. Later we deduced we had taken a local access road through various pastoral properties, emerging some 120 kms later at Surat.

We share equal blame for mishaps and forgetfulness. Someone left the van step on the footpath in Augathella while we went to take photos of murals. “Maybe someone nicked it,” I said, in an attempt to be charitable.

We drove on to Morven, planning to have a leisurely meal at the pub then watch State of Origin II. Alas, the pub burned down two years earlier so we ate canned stew and watched the game on the Ipad. I believe it is called finding strength in adversity.

My best act of dazed and confused was going into the ladies loo at Morven Recreation Ground. I came out of the shower wearing only a towel to find a woman about my own age looking less than excited to find a paunchy, near-naked old man in the ladies’ loo. “I think you’re in the wrong place, mate,” she said, in that charming understated outback way, adding “Ewes means girls, mate.”

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