Almost Disaster

The trip out to set up the caravan almost ended in disaster. The thing towed beautifully, notwithstanding the load in the truck. Unfortunately, Bell had been hit by a massive storm the night before and there were trees down all along the last 10k of road into town. The block had not been mown in years, and the native grass was about shoulder high, and now thoroughly saturated. We got there quite late in the day – misjudging the time involved. We learnt a lot, very quickly, about the quality of the clay soil of the block. The caravan slid, and skidded and bogged in the manoeuvring process. We dug the hell out of the neighbouring block and the corner of the pub land – and no doubt provided great entertainment for the locals drinking on the balcony of the pub, watching the mad antics of the city folk.

We had no way of anticipating, however, one very critical factor. As soon as we disturbed all that long damp grass, the mosquitoes came out with vigour. We had intended to sleep in the van that night, and by dark we were wondering whether we were going to be able to sleep anywhere. We had the whipper snipper with us and so Paul was desperately cutting a patch of grass down to put the van onto. The air was thick with both mosquitoes and bile as we struggled to get the van relatively level. It was a marathon job and by the time the van was actually reasonably in place, the next issue became the job of jacking it level. The jacks kept sinking into the saturated ground, as did the tyres.

Still – mission was accomplished, we had a dry bed to sleep in and after a bit of a punch up to clear the air, we settled down for the night. It was only a 2 night stay, power was supposed to be on to the building, but the storm had knocked the power out, so no lights.

Reminded me of the night we arrived in Raglan, me 7 months pregnant, to a rat and mosquito infested garage in somebody's backyard, with my former life packed in boxes around me and my future life asleep at my side. The adventures never end.