At some point between 3 and 4am I was woken by a rooster in
full flight, and I realised I was in a half frozen state. After some
consideration, about ½ a millisecond, I rustled around in the drawer pulling
out the remote control and setting it to 27 degrees. The unit has a temperature
gauge which read 8 oC which to those in the southern states doesn’t sound too
cold but when you are used to minimum overnight temperatures plummeting to the
mid to high teens you will understand that 8 is bloooody cold for us. It took
about 15 minutes to permate the van and under the doona at which stage I fell
back into a deep sleep.
At 8 something o’clock
De and I pried our eyes open and were happy that the boys had had such a
massive sleep in. Err the only problem was that they weren’t in bed. They had
been up since 6:30 ish, we never managed to get the real time, playing and
feeding the animals as well as getting the fire going. We dragged them back in
for breakfast on the condition that they could cook some toast over the fire,
which is all they wanted to have!
We did a bit of school work, desperate to get it all
finished before the last week of the trip and then, after saying goodbye to our
wonderful, and somewhat unique, hosts we rolled out...only slowed by the fact
that the battery on Izzy was flat due to the ACC having been left on all night
so the boys could use the UHF.
We rolled across parched plains where even the trees were dying through to Richmond.
As we pulled into town the Rentco V8 Ute truck had set its self up so we pulled
over for a look. Sharon who was looking after the truck was wonderful and
looked after the boys as if they were her own, even giving them each fancy
caps. She also managed to track us down to let us know that Jack had left his
jumper there when we had left!
 |
| We knew Richmond is famous for its dinosaurs but this is ridiculous! |
It’s De’s birthday tomorrow so I had to make sure there was
a bakery in town, so I could get essential supplies for tomorrow’s lunch,
before confirming we could set up. I was in luck and Deb at the bakery went one
step further but the details will have to wait until tomorrow!
We set up at the local van park, which was only $33/night, and
after lunch had a bit of a nana nap before walking down town to check out the big attraction in town Kronosaurus Corner. We
bought our Dinosaur Trail ticket, $130 worth, that gets us into the centres in
Richmond, Hughenden and Winton and had a look around before stopping in at the
butchers and picking up some lamb shanks before heading back. Now a lot of
things in this part of the world are more expensive than in the city but the
lamb shanks were only $5.99/kg so I got 6!
Beside the park was a big lake so the boys disappeared for
the afternoon exploring around it, watching people fish and swim their horses
while I baked a cake for tomorrow and De had some quite time. After dinner the boys and I prepared De’s ‘presents’
for the big day tomorrow. One of the big challenges of having birthdays or the
like on the road is finding presents in small country towns, but more about that tomorrow!
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