MONDAY 7 JUNE     GREENOUGH

John’s face was no better this morning. We decided to drive into Geraldton so he could go to Casualty and have the face checked out.

It was a long weekend, with less traffic in town, so finding the hospital was easier than it would have been on a normal day.

I am not a fan of emergency rooms, especially on a public holiday, so sent John off to wait and take his turn with the medico on duty, whilst I waited in the healthier environment of truck. No point in two of us being exposed to assorted, possibly contagious, ailments!

The diagnosis this time was an infected parotid gland. The remedy – a stronger anti-biotic.

We refuelled Truck – $1.04cpl.

Whilst in the town, we took the opportunity to check out a couple of the caravan parks there. John was looking ahead to when the Olympic Games would be on. He was determined that we should be somewhere, then, that had good TV reception. Whilst our park at Greenough was pleasant enough, the TV was pretty marginal, so it wouldn’t meet John’s expectations. This was a repeat of what happened in 2000, that saw us end up in hot, dusty, boring Karratha, for the Olympics then.

Either of the parks we checked out – one near the port area and one on the coast on the north side of town – would be alright to stay at, in terms of their apparent quality and surrounds, if their TV situation checked out.

In checking these out, we drove along the foreshore roads, just looking at the town in that area. Geraldton is a small city of some 30,000 people, so there was variety in both land uses and ages of the sections we passed through.

Neither of us was particularly cheerful today – John affected by his health, I was depressed about my daughter.