Committed Travellers

The rocks here are seriously red. We drove to the carpark for Little Beach and walked through to the southern side of Corindi River, where Bluey was allowed. He didn’t want to go swimming!

I tackled the minor leak we have around the toilet housing, which allows rain water to end up on the bathroom floor. I have pulled this out before and replaced the silicone, but it ends up being a very thin seal when the housing is screwed back in. This time, I left it in place and put a narrow bead of silicone over the housing and the checkerplate aluminium.

I took Bluey for a walk on the Big Beach where we passed on the challenging walk up the steps to the Red Rock Headland lookout – perhaps we will do that tomorrow.

Tilly has had lots of walks and time outside fantasising about catching a bush turkey, so she needed to have a nap inside the van.

Today we had a repeat of threatening rain and risk of an afternoon thunderstorm, but again the system fizzled out.

I threw a line into the river but kept losing my bait to hungry crabs. Tomorrow I will put a cork on my line to keep the bait off the bottom.

I drove around the block this morning to KK’s Coffee Kart beside the Tweed River. The caravan parks close to the river are a lot nicer than the Ingenia, but they don’t allow pets.

We were booked into the Red Rock caravan park, but diverted to Ballina to see our friend who is unwell. The rest of our drive was uneventful except for multiple idiots travelling too close to the vehicle ahead.

The caravan park is on the southern side of Corindi Creek, and there is no other facility here apart from a kiosk. We plan to have a couple of quiet days, catching up with caravan maintenance. Once we were set up, I put out the awning and watched lots of water flow off. This must have accumulated over the days of heavy rain while the van was in storage.

A major drawback of these more remote parks is often a poor quality internet connection. The park wifi is next to useless, and my Telstra connection is struggling, limiting the photos I can post.

We drove to the Kingscliff market to buy a soughdough fruitloaf and some fruit and vegetables. For breakfast, we tried the Choux Box on Marine Parade. The coffee was good, as was the Bread Social sourdough toast.

I hadn’t packed spare shorts, so stopped at Vinnies to buy something to tide me over. A pair of red and white striped trousers caught my attention. I searched the brand name and found this photo. I cut them down to shorts.

Our friends live at Banora Point, a short drive from our caravan park. Their driveway is the steepest I have ever seen! To safely climb the concrete, I put the Toyota in 4WD low range! Walking the final few metres was awkward!

Our friends have challenging steep gardens but have created some attractive areas stabilising the slopes.

Lunch on the balcony was delightful. Bluey made himself at home and enjoyed a couple of tidbits after we had finished eating.

Back at camp, I topped up the water tanks. It takes a very long time to fill the potable tank, so I need to research the reason for this new problem. Tap water passes through two filters and an electronic sterilisation device, but filling should not take an hour or more.

We are surrounded by several large dogs, so Tilly has only had a couple of short periods outside on her lead. She has been very placid, enjoying some sun in the van.

I worked out why our our site was so cramped – the two women at the adjacent site have parked their van on the concrete slab intended to be the floor of their annex. Their car is parked where our van should be. When I pointed this out to them, they decided they would move their van on Monday as they will be here for four weeks. We are leaving tomorrow, so were definitely not moving earlier! The site markings need to be improved.

We are on the road again! I picked up the Bushtracker, parked it out the front of our house, carried out the last of the food, and Anita packed it away. Bluey and Tilly were ever so anxious they would be left behind, loitering at the front door all morning.

Bluey’s day started badly as he had to go to the vet at 8am for his vaccinations. He was trembling before I even lifted him out of the car!

Yesterday, he endured 3 hours of grooming as I was being taught how to do it myself by Tammy of the Dog Collective. It was amazing to use good grooming equipment! She demonstrated the technique on one side of Bluey, then I did my best to trim his other side to look the same. Tammy looks a bit like Beccy Cole, and even talks like Beccy, but the resemblance is not demonstrated very well in my photographs.

Tilly had her vaccination the previous day. I couldn’t save money taking them together as our regular vet was rationing cat vaccinations. I found another vet with a good supply. After such a stressful time, both critters are zonked!

We only drove 40kms to get to Kingscliff. We are visiting some old friends from when we lived near Yamba. They live nearby and we haven’t seen them since before Covid!

It was a busy week, complicated by me losing a filling and having a second unscheduled trip to the dentist. At least I did manage to paint the carport beam to hopefully stop further rust.

Our caravan park site is not very well laid out as there is a steep rise over grass to the concrete slab where the van is meant to be parked. Instead, we parked the van on the concrete slab where an annex could go. We are only here for two nights, so can put up with this unusual arrangement. This is not the best caravan park in the area, but is the only one that takes dogs – lots of big dogs! Tilly won’t be doing any walks around this park!

We drove to the beach and had a short walk along the foreshore. Kingscliff is not the best beach we have ever seen. Bluey didn’t notice the big bird behind him!

We had early dinner at the Kingscliff Hotel which allows dogs in the large outdoor dining area. The food it typical pub fare to suit drinkers and families with little kids, but my beef nachos were very tasty.

These toy poodle brothers on their leads would not leave Bluey alone, and he loved the attention!

We have been busy with last-minute medical and dental appointments, Anita’s haircut, and seeing a movie. Later this week, both critters have appointments for their annual vaccinations, and I spend a morning learning how to groom Bluey.

I finished removing the silicone, scraped off flaking paint and rust from our carport beam, and applied a rust conversion product before an etch primer. I still have to apply a finishing enamel paint.

We treated ourselves to lunch at Edgewater on the Isle of Capri, sitting overlooking the canal and small battery-powered boats. Bluey enjoyed his outing but didn’t want to interact with the groodle.

Tilly tested limits by sitting at the dining table. She was on safer ground when on top of the critters’ crate.

We hope to head off on a caravan trip by the end of the week, so took out a load of food and other gear to the storage depot.

The asbestos has all been removed from the house up the street. Noisy demolition work will no doubt be next.

The oldest house in our street is being demolished. Specialist workers are removing the asbestos wall cladding and placing the sheets in a large bin lined with black plastic. In two days they appear to removed most of the wall cladding. The roof tiles are also asbestos.

We spent time today planning our stops for our caravanning trip starting next week. Our timing could have been better as we end up in NSW during school holidays. Some caravan parks require a minimum of seven day bookings, and some don’t allow pets during school holidays. We were lucky to book a park near Newcastle for four days as Easter didn’t coincide with the school holidays.

Poor Tilly spent a wet and rainy night locked out on our upstairs veranda – again!! The next night, I shut this ghecko between the window and flyscreen. We hear him at night when the windows are open, but haven’t seen him before.

After his morning walk, I gave Bluey a bath. He was relieved not to be getting groomed!

We visited our doctor to get our flu and shingles shots, rewarding ourselves with breakfast at Pearl and Ash at the Ferry Road Market. Bluey was outraged he had been left behind! He had run down the stairs, assuming he was going for a drive. Since he was downstairs, I made him stay there behind the baby gate. He quickly disappeared into my study.

Anita went to see Ghostbusters, while I spent part of the afternoon up on the scaffold platform scraping silicone off the carport support beam. I scraped off the worst of the silicone, then applied Diggers Wax and Grease Remover to soften the residue. I have never used this product before, and was impressed by how effective it was. Here is the before and after.

I didn’t quite get it finished as the rain started, and I had to get the scaffold back into the garage. Unusually, the rain came from the north, covering the veranda screen.

This morning, I was trying to take a photo of my neighbour’s dog Snowy. He would not keep his head still for me, so I was sent this lovely photo of him. He has different colour eyes.

Bluey had a good run on the beach, chasing a cavoodle chasing its ball. I must buy a shallow basin for Bluey to rinse off the sand from his paws.

Despite making a couple of mistakes when cutting the end panels, I managed to finish the cabinet. I changed the picture hanging on the wall.

I was up early enough today to catch this morning’s sunrise. A family of swans with four signets paddled along the beach as the sun was about to set.

Yesterday, a couple of people were learning how to row these racing boats. This woman fell out of her boat close to shore. She would have been cold with the wind on her during her paddle back to the shed.

We took Bluey to breakfast at Sens Cafe. He sat on the bench on his blanket, taking in his surroundings. We enjoyed our souffle pancakes, but I am not keen on the coffee served there.

Bluey thought I was ready to take him to the park, so started to walk down the stairs. He stopped when he realised he was on the same step as Tilly. She intimidates him on the steps and tries to trip him up. I had to walk down to assure him he would be safe.

I put aside the jobs I was doing to give Bluey a haircut. I didn’t want to use clippers as that means I have to bathe him with shampoo, then use conditioner, rinse him, before blow drying him. He hates every stage of this process, so I just used scissors to give him a bad haircut. He wasn’t happy but every time he objected, I pointed to the laundry sink!

The dispute with our rear neighbours about their hedge growing over our fence took an absurd turn. They cut the hedge back to the boundary, leaving bare tree trunks. We have gone from this …

to this …

They think this stupid action will end our application before the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal application for an order reducing the height of the hedge. However, I will contend that once jurisdiction is established by our application, it doesn’t end when the tree keepers act to create an ugly vista. The branches will grow again so the problem hasn’t gone away. The critical issue is that it can be unsafe to trim trees above 2.5m, which they are.

I have been working on the cabinet and managed to slide the heavy marble top off its temporary home onto the top of the cabinet. There is a step up from our garage into the house, and this was just the right height to allow me to push it from the table to the cabinet. I locked my apprentice in the laundry during this operation.

The doors have been fitted, the marble top secured in position, but I haven’t finished cutting and fitting the end panels. I am still researching options for screens to hide the hot water tank.

Despite a couple of setbacks, I have finished the basic cabinet. I made it exactly the same size as the old cabinet, but made it a lot stronger to take the weight of the marble top. Despite being exactly the same width as the original, I could not get both doors to close at the same time. There was a 5 to 6 mm overlap, so I shifted one side panel out by 7mm. Tedious, but it worked!

Most of my cutting was on the table saw, but I did have to drag out my home-made track for the circular saw to cut a couple of wide boards. I have leftover panels that match the door, which might be the right size to hide the hot water service. I fitted wheels to the base so the cabinet can be moved if necessary.

My next fun project will be to make better use of this mobile metal table.