269881kms, 12:00, 16°C and sunny. Maggie has new back “feet”! – and we’ve already noticed a difference driving into the driveway – she doesn’t “rock and roll" – particularly the "roll” nearly as much, so it’ll be interesting to see what it’s like today as we are off to Poolburn for a couple of nights. The weather forecast is for hot weather (finally!) for the next 2 days. Got to the “rock spot” at 13:37 after stopping for a feed of chips and sausages from Muddy Creek Café – usually the food here is really good, but today the chips were yuck – soggy and greasy! Tried our luck at fishing but none to be had. A large crowd of people arrived from Alexandra Backpackers – watched 2 of them swim across to the island!!! Brrr – idiots. They moved to round by Whippy’s hut to try and catch some freshwater crays (we’d told them that’s where they might be as they were all foreigners and keen to try them and there are no rocks here). 
Pretty much just as they left the wind got up so that even Maggie didn’t provide any shelter, so when they left we moved round, just in time to watch the news on the old “bus” 12V TV – which works perfectly! Thought we’d try it as it weighs half of the other black and white TV we’ve had ‘til now, and it actually gives a better picture. So bonus all round – we don’t have to start the gennie to watch TV, just run it off the cigarette lighter. Oh, and Maggie’s new back tyres have made a huge difference – all the glasses were still upright when we got to Poolburn. Up to now, the unevenness of the road has always meant we would roll so badly that everything upright in the cupboards would be on its side – the old tyres must have had very soft walls from day dot. We had often thought we needed to upgrade the shockies to heavy duty – turns out it was just the tyres! So much more comfortable ride. We had left over pizza for tea, and seeing as Mike was still recovering from a bad shift run, we were in bed really early – 20:00!!
28 December 2009 Alternately hot and no wind to windy. Up at 6:30, tried fishing all morning. Mike caught a beautiful fish, about 3-3.5lb on the worm. At that point Marielle had tried everything on the fly without any success, so threw a worm in and proceeded to catch 2 fish in the space of an hour – both not legal, but still 2 fish. Both got burnt despite plenty of high cloud – quite hot at times (T shirt and shorts weather). Bed at 21:30 after tea of Xmas ham and salad.
29 December 2009
29 December 2009
Up at 07:00 – tried fishing, again nothing. Sunny and flat calm and hot until midday when the forecast wind arrived and we decided that, seeing as the forecast is not good, we would head home. Howling wind on way home, 19°C when we left, 29°C when we got home at 13:09. 269998kms (117kms this trip).