SUNDAY 28 MARCH     MILDURA

After breakfast, we went shopping again. Most places were open on the Sunday. Bought John some trousers and walking boots, and some walking boots for me. We were browsing about in a Rays Tent City shop and saw these Land Rover boots that were 20% off. They seemed very comfortable, hence our unplanned boot purchase.

At Spotlight, I bought three lots of wool, to knit each of the grandchildren a jumper. That should keep the hands occupied whilst I was a passenger on long driving stages.

Back at the van, John worked on the computer. Before we left home, he’d made a batch of 25 wooden pens, using woods found in the Qld Gulf country. These were to be sold at the Reception desk at Adels Grove, as tourist souvenirs. He’d also made a display presentation box to hold some at a time. He had still to prepare a price list and a description of each type of wood, to go with each pen sold. Hence the computing.

Getting the pens finalized and mailed off was the main reason we were staying more than a night in Mildura.

Since we were here, John drove off, after lunch, to suss out about any bowls games.

It was a hot day – 35 degrees. I went for a swim in the Park pool – very pleasant.

John came back with the news that the annual bowls Smith Cup event was played yesterday. This was the event that we surprised ourselves by winning, in 1999. If only we’d known, we might have managed to depart home a couple of days earlier, and played again in it.

John phoned his cousin M, to find out where they might be travelling, and found they were currently on the Eyre Peninsula.

I thought that we needed to plan ahead, for Easter, and discussed this with John. It seemed prudent to make a definite booking somewhere, and we decided that Ceduna would be a safe bet – in terms of being there by then. I phoned a caravan park there and booked us in.

John still had pen things to finish, so I extended our stay here by another two nights.