WEDNESDAY MAY 20

The day began warm and sunny.

It was the usual start to the day, though John was up earlier than usual. He went off to the Bowls Club where he listed his name for a game tomorrow afternoon. Then he went on to the Chambers of the Black Hand, whose literature says they have rolling tours throughout the morning. Not so. They told him to do the afternoon tour. This was arranged, with pick up from the caravan park at 2.30pm, for $35.

There were a couple of local tour operators who came to the park to pick up customers. They did a steady trade. Coaster buses were their vehicle of choice. Every time one of them came past, Couey would jump up to look, but she ignored the others. I thought that one must be a similar model to ours, and sounded the same.

Couey was not happy when John walked off and away to the pick up point by the office. I had to put her inside Bus, where she sat for a while with her nose plastered to the window.

While John was away, I read, spent time on laptop, and took Couey across to the area where she could run after the thrown ball. She regularly amused some of the neighbours who watched us come and go: when we set off, she must carry the ball and was out front, pulling on the lead. When we returned, she was docilely at heel and I was carrying the ball.

Cloud was building up through the afternoon. By about 4pm it was particularly dark in the north and northwest.

Skies becoming threatening

Then there was a series of rally strong wind gusts, on a day that had hitherto been quite still. Fortunately, the body of Bus blocked most of that wind from affecting the awning. There was dust in the wind too. For a little while, I thought that I’d be trying to do a solo drop of the awning in high wind, as John was still away. Then the wind dropped a bit and rain came. It was fairly heavy at times, and continued on and off, through the rest of the afternoon and night.

Storm looming over the park

I dropped one corner of the awning a couple of notches, to prevent water from pooling and to encourage the run off at the end away from the route to the en suite.

The rain was good for the region, in general, and there was a fair total overall.

John said the tour was very good. He was really impressed with the sculptures. They went down about sixty feet, which he did say he didn’t feel very comfortable about. Part of the tour was, of course, to look as a display of opal and jewellery they had for sale. John said there were some really nice things there. The problem was that I did not want to go down to see same. Down being the operative word. He thought they might be persuaded to bring some items to the surface for me to look at, but I was reluctant to make that sort of fuss.

Tea was hamburgers on a slice of toast.