BOONOOROO

As we had arrived in Boonooroo after nightfall obviously we had to pitch the tent in the dark. In fact I wasn't even sure we had arrived in this small town and never did see any habitation beyond the few dwellings next to the campsite. It was dusk when we arrived but by the time the owner had finished chatting to her mum on the phone and booked us in the light was fading fast. I thought the husband was gong to help us pitch the tent but he only stood around and took good advantage of his opportunity to take the rise out of a Pom.

That's not being quite fair as he did explain that to use the powered site we had paid for, we would need an extension lead; that is we would need our own extension lead as they don't come with the site. Unfortunately none of the detailed investigation I had done before we left Brazil had revealed this little detail, and it is such common knowledge to Aussies that they didn't think they needed to mention it to us. So he kindly liaised with one of our fellow campers who kindly came up with a lead and a fluorescent light.

I thought that one of the more useful things I had bought before leaving Brisbane was a fluorescent light which I could either plug into the cars cigarette lighter or clip to the battery terminals. I had duly rigged it up in Maroochydore so Ale could get into her PJ's in comfort. Being a bit of a meddler i moved it a couple of times to get the best lighting effect. The second time, I noticed it was giving out more heat than light and shortly after this it expired completely. I carefully wrapped it and put it in its original packaging for attention further down the road.

I fact the lead was more useful for charging camera batteries than light so we did this. There is not much to do after dark on camp sites so we tended to try and prepare our meal as late as possible and then lay down to sleep. It was getting dark by 6pm and we considered it a late night if we wriggled into our sleeping bags after nine o'clock.

Knowing that we were going to be moving on the next morning to be prepared I wanted us to have our bottle of drinking water topped before we slept. I asked the camp site attendant to point out the potable water tanks and he said they all were but it was bore water. Being accustomed to sparkling clear water coming out of bores I was somewhat surprised by the dark brown turbid mixture I had in my water bottle. I pointed this out to the attendant and ne replied that he drunk it all the time and it didn't do him any harm. It didn't do us any harm either; we didn't drink it.