2015/11 Australia trip - Mulgrave visits |
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Sunday November 22nd
It was a nicer day, warm and we were working out of the wind. We finished the cleanup of the Troopie; it looked clean but not shiny. It’s now 13 years old, but only has 167000K on the clock. This means that the basic Toyota bits are still working very well but the camper bits are suffering from plastic and fiberglass weathering.
We all went over to Robert and Amanda’s for the afternoon. They still live in the same house in Rowville, about 10K away. I spotted a new rocket launching console next to their swimming pool, but Robert explained that it’s actually a barbecue. Australians take barbecuing seriously.
Robert had just come back from a seminar at Mount Gambier, where we’d been a few days ago. As this was university business though, he got to fly back.
The girls, Caitlin and Hayley, kept us entertained. Amanda was suffering from what she thought was a spider bite, an enormous blister. We sympathized as we were still itching from our tick bites.
Monday November 23rd
We had an email from Sandie’s brother Bob to say that Hope had been hit by a massive windstorm. The roads had been closed for a couple of days by downed trees. When he could get to our place he found that our neighbour had lost a tree, snapped off at head height, and we had lost some shingles off the roof.
John and Edna were visiting her cousin Grace in hospital and we had some errands to run. First we went to the bank to close our Australian bank account. We created the account back in 2002 so we could pay Ballina Campers to build our Troopie, and since then it has been a convenient way to pay for our vacations without incurring credit card exchange fees. But, although we had a great time on this vacation it is very unlikely that we would be coming back in 2-3 years for a similar trip. This last trip had been cheaper than I’d expected, so we came away with a pile of Australian currency that we needed to convert to something else.
Our other stop was at Spotlight, Australia’s equivalent to Joann Fabrics. At least we stopped eventually after traversing every possible leg of a very complicated junction of three roads. While Sandie shopped I watched the traffic. Spotlight’s parking lot includes a tiny roundabout that must have been sponsored by Melbourne’s body repair shops.
John solved out currency problems. He still had Canadian and US dollars left over from their last trip in 202 so we were able to do a swap. We also sorted out what to do with the Troopie. At our ages we have to think about settling estates, and owning a vehicle in a foreign country would be a problem for everyone even if it isn’t worth much, so John now owns the Troopie. We rushed off to Vic Roads to get the ownership transferred. The place was a zoo; dozens of people waiting to see an array of agents. But it was well managed and the process only took a few minutes.