THURSDAY 23 MARCH   STANLEY TO WYNYARD   68kms

We had an uneventful pack up and move to Wynyard. After, all, it was not very far!

I felt rather sad to be leaving Stanley – it had such a lovely atmosphere.

We found that Wynyard needed better directional signs to the caravan parks! We booked into the Wynyard Caravan Park, for a week. $14 a night and the seventh night free. This caravan park appeared to be a little less upmarket than the other one. However, it had a long beach frontage and pleasant outlook, and it was clean enough, if not very modern. It would do us fine.

Our site at Wynyard. The sea is at rear as is corner of Table Cape

After setting up, and lunch, John went off to practice bowls at the Wynyard club.

I walked the couple of blocks to the shopping centre – very pleasant walking, with the sea and the Inglis River outlooks. Wynyard is located at the mouth of the Inglis River. I explored the shopping precinct and bought a bottle of wine and some chocolates, for tonight’s outing.

We drove and A and K’s place at 6pm, finding it out on the Old Bass Highway without any problems. They had a rather unique location, on a long, narrow piece of land between the sea and the railway line. They told us there were only a couple of trains a week, so that did not bother them. There is a beach frontage and lots of fairy penguins living in their gardens, which I thought was just wonderful.

Their house was large, spectacular, airy, designed to take advantage of the sea views, and used timber extensively – Tasmanian hardwood and macrocarpa – cypress. There were beautiful stained glass lampshades that A had designed and made. The huge stone fireplace in the lounge was made from stone from Mt Cameron West, out near Marrawah.

S and M were there too and over dinner there was much house and travel talk. We looked over A and K’s new (used) Jayco Westport van. They were obviously really pleased with it, so we did not express any reservations about how it might handle rough roads. They intend to head off on a long trip, sometime next year. There is a station with a reef and surfing area, south of Coral Bay in WA that K once went to with one of his sons on a surfing trip, and he wants to take A there.

It occurred to me that we might be able to meet up in WA in early 2001 and maybe even travel the Canning Stock Route together. That is a trek we found we all wanted to do.

We arranged to go visit my aunt – K’s mother – tomorrow.

After nibbles, tea was tuna, potato,  salad, followed by Xmas pudding, that K had made when he still ran  the family  bakery, until recently.

In all, it was a really pleasant evening.

When we got back to the caravan park, about 12.15am, the gates were locked! That caused us much consternation. A caravan park with a curfew? Moreover, a caravan park that said nothing about such a thing to its guests, at time of check in?

Eventually, we thought to go and get the key to the amenities that we had been given, and try that. It worked – whew! We certainly would not have left Truck outside the park, very distant from the van, in that area!