SUNDAY 22 MARCH     QUEANBEYAN

Today was even hotter – about 35. Another Total Fire Ban Day.

John bowled in the morning – a fairly early start, which was good, given the heat.

While he was gone, I researched distances and routes north and caravan parks.

We are starting to feel that, with all our delays since departure in January, we need to really focus on getting to Qld, if we are serious about getting up to Cape York in the dry season. Will have to “save” much of the NSW coast for later.

I eventually made some phone calls and got us booked into the place that was my first choice, at Tewantin, near Noosa, in Qld, for Easter. So at least we are secure in knowing we have a place to be, over that normally busy period. That will allow us to spend a week near Kempsey, visiting with John’s much older brother whose health is poor, but we will need to be fast moving, before and after that. It will probably mean only two nights to stay at the Gold Coast, where I want to visit a close friend.

After bowls, John word processed the work he’d done at the War Museum. It was too hot to go anywhere. I read and sewed and just generally relaxed.

During the afternoon, a bushfire developed near Red Hill, which is between here and the Capitol part of Canberra. Lots more regular siren noises. With all the open space and bushland between the clusters of Canberra suburbs, it seems quite fire prone, especially as dry as it is now.

A young guy came up to ask us about the Defender – what we thought of it. He stayed around for quite a chat. He is working for the National Parks and staying in one of the cabins towards the back of the park. He told us that one of the other cabin tenants, a couple of rows down from us, had – on Friday about 6pm – gotten into his car and driven it hard across into the opposite row, damaging two cabins quite badly, including this man’s. He wasn’t home at the time. The offender was blind drunk; he had earlier come into the park the worse for wear and driven into the barrier at the park entrance. The police had come – several of them – and arrested him. He has a drink/drive history, apparently. We had not heard a thing!

About 6pm, when it was getting a little cooler, we went for a walk, around the streets in the vicinity of the caravan park. It seems to be a fairly rough area and rather depressing. I did not feel all that secure.

Tea was leftovers from last night.