4th, 5th, 6th and 7th September

We pulled up at the Sawpit camp area, a free site amongst big eucalypts, with set up areas that included tables, fire pits, and day areas. Though we would stay for a day and still here 4 days later – and could easily stayed longer just outside the small town (10000 people) of Portland. People came and went but two other rigs stayed on a similar time. One was a local who came up and camped here from time to time. He spent the time in this bush camp with his family, some coming up for a quick visit and others staying longer, especial today for father’s day. The other crew, John and Dianne had come from WA just outside of Perth, and had been on the road for a couple of months. They were all nice, friendly people who made the stay here very pleasant. We shared travel tips with John and Dianne as we had both just come the way the other was heading.

This time we cooked some scones in the camp oven on the coals – Hmmm Hmm!! The camp had supplied fire pits, concrete, about a meter square, and we had a fire most days and night. The wood was scrounged from the adjacent bush and the maintenance guys (DEPI – Department of Environment & Primary Industries) cut some fallen trees up which helped, drove down with the Ute and picked a few up. Ole mate in the camp next door showed me where and gave me a hand.

John had been roped in to giving a couple of mountain bike riders a hand as a stick had busted one of the bikes derailleurs and chain. John had a lot of gear in his rig, and when I rolled in to help he was banging together a link with a lump hammer and vice. I supplied a couple of screws to use as link pins, and John filed em down, riveted the other end and the bikers no doubt limped back the 20km they had come.

Parked under the trees only gives us filtered sun so the solar panels are a bit slow on charging up the batteries so I need to run the fridge on gas. The electric start on the gas started playing up, doesn’t seem to spark enough. I had to remove the panel on the outside of the van, about 12 screws in the cover, so I could light the gas manually. Once done it works fine. I’m reluctant to pull it apart at the moment until I get to a location where parts are accessible, which probably won’t be for another week or so, so I will just screw an unscrew the panel until then, but if that’s all I have to do then I suppose I can manage.

Lighting the gas on the fridge seems to be more difficult than needs be. The hassle with the lighting of the gas on the fridge is that it’s very hard to see the pilot light. To view the light you have to crouch down, pull stuff out of the fridge to see the viewing porthole, about a 25mm diameter glass, which is at the back of the fridge in the bottom left corner, which makes it near impossible for someone with crook knees and poor eyesight to know whether it has been lit or not. I think this is causing a bit of the problem as I just can’t tell, especially when there is too much light about, weather the dam thing has been lit.