Silver Schoolies No More - Chapter 4 - Carnarvon Day 3

What greets us this morning is a much nicer version of the day. The wind and rain have gone for now. The freshness that rain brings to a parched earth is much more evident than simply the dust reducing spray of the water truck.

Next door’s construction site has not been decimated either. What rain there was, pooled like there had been torrents falling in the caravan park, is non evident on the construction site. Work continues as if it was a normal day. Apparently the torrents that appeared to fall were simply a brief shower and now, with the sun out everything returns to normal.

So normal in fact, I pull out the awning and secure it. It is wet and the sun will dry it, with no chance of mould building up while it is in the closed position.

There are places to go and people to see this morning. My wife being a self professed Mango Smoothie Indulger wants to hit Bumbak’s for their attempts at becoming her “most preferred supplier” of the golden libation, presently held by a business in the Paspaley Arcade in Broome. 

The rain has not filled the river, where we cross it. It hasn’t even left any pools of water. Its still a large expanse of dry sand as we traverse it on the way to our destination. 

For me Bumbaks provides nothing of joy, their adherence to items containing mango, passionfruit and mashed bananas (I don’t mind bananas in their skins) is less than inspirational. I do not imbibe in any of their wares, happy to sit and watch Robyn enjoy. What I do, is to photograph and post the incident.

The verdict on the mango smoothie, up there, but not quite the same league as Broome.

With the smoothie totally completed, its back into town. There are Growers Markets to be checked out. We are too late, everyone is packing up. But from what we can see of the numbers of stalls, it would have been just as quick a visit as our reconnoitre now.

Woolworths is adjacent. Might as well do the shopping here and now. The only trolley available has a frozen wheel. Thankfully it’s a rear wheel, so I can, until the weight of the wares becomes overwhelming, carry the trolley on the front wheels. Once the weight becomes too much there will be tyre marks in the aisles should I not be able to relieve the frozen corner of some weight.

We have not shopped for a while – need I say any more. I do my best to mitigate the black lines in the aisles. When we get to the cashier, she laughs and suggests that if they took out all the trolleys with frozen wheels from operations they would only have 5 available on any given day. 

We pay for our purchases and head out into the car park. The frozen wheel here creates much more difficulty on the uneven surface. Thankfully I have been able to park close to the front door. There is a trolley attendant collecting the conveyances as I take mine back to the collection area. I inform him of the issue and he looks to free the wheel. It dislodges for a moment and freezes again. There is silicon lubrication spray in the Cruiser, I will get it for him and we will see if we can make it work a little better.

The spray works well and the wheel is freed (at least for now). The young staffer is amazed and suggests he will enquire of management for the acquisition of a can for maintenance purposes. His enthusiasm is infectious but I suspect this request will fall on deaf ears. In big business its all about the numbers and so many of them employ the Henry Ford edict – look after the cents and the dollars will look after themselves. The customer, their source of their bread and butter, is so often ignored when it comes to the “little things” in life.

You think I jest, then I would proffer the reaction from the cashier. They know the problem, in fact the problem has spread like a cancer but was anyone going to do something about it – no – they are too focussed on their “one cent”.

There is an interesting looking bakery in eyesight. Best we check it out and once inside we are glad we checked it out. For a Saturday morning there appears to be no holding back on stock output. Not one shelf is looking bare and the enticing delicacies are more to my liking.

Lunch is upon us (regardless of the time of day). We select pies and only one delacy each. I opt for the cupcake with lashings of cream. Robyn, on another quest, chooses a vanilla slice. We will consume these back at the park and put away the shopping. Unfortunately the cupcake didn’t make it. Someone picked at it and it disappeared. No arrests have ever been made but we have suspects – well one really, and of course, its me. 

My sweet tooth got the getter of me.

The shopping requires some vacuum packing and whilst this is going one and in between the crunching of teeth through delicious pies, spray from next door hits the van. Our neighbour is cleaning his van and now and again the hose ends up pointing in our direction. I open the window and berate him suggesting he should do a much better job of cleaning our van than that. He laughs and invites us for drinks later in the day.

The shopping, we settle into business dealings for the afternoon. Robyn, although having terminated a contract with a German company, still has carry over assignments to complete. Its tax season so I have returns to prepare for those clients eagerly wanting refunds. Before we get too involved, the wind has returned and I take down the now dry awning and secure it.

Soon enough our neighbours yell in our general direction that its that time of the day. Contributions to the nibbles table, the outdoor chairs and libations in hand we make the 20 step trek to the grassed area between  the vans.

Our neighbours and the next door van are travelling together. They originate from Victoria and like us are not looking to return home soon while the pandemic rages. I notice they have exactly the same set ups, cars and vans. This is by design, they are good mates and have travelled extensively together for many years.

They talk of their travels and how one member of the quartet cooks each night. Our male neighbour is notorious evidently for things like baked beans on toast as unlike his makle counterpart in the adjoining van, is not a cordon bleu chef.

Whilst we sit, drink and talk, he is preparing all sorts of things on his barbeque, returning to the discussion from time to time to refill the ladies’ glasses or hand his mate another beer. They, like me, are keen fishermen. The girls guffaw at some of the discussions, noting their exploits are legendary in their “expanded” recollection of the recounts of them.

True fisherman – the fish was this big, holding out only one hand to show the start of the size and no hand to describe the end length. Imagination and passion – the true ingredients of the fisherman.

Its a fun night, as well as the fishing there are other exploits the pair want to relate. The girls in their own way are just as adventurous as the boys. They are more than interested in our exploits and the potential spots for them to visit. They are off to Quobba next, and although they have been there before are keen to hear what we got up to and the fishing spots I failed at.

Meandering around the country, starting early. Just what we are trying to catch up on now.

The conversation goes well into the night. The table containing the nibbles gets demolished, restacked and demolished again. There is no need for a formal dinner. I had sneakily not used bourbon in the Pardoo Bucket so I am not as inebriated as I could have been, that doesn’t mean sleep does not come easily. We are quickly laying in bed and snoring the night away.