Day 13 - Cobboboonee

Our campsite at Surrey Downs, Cobboboonee National Park, Vic

Well after such a night we weren't surprised to find ourselves half-surfacing about 10am, even the kids! It ended up a pretty nice and quiet day. We'd had a couple of neighbours over the past couple of days, which wasn't a problem particularly as it's a large area so there was no question of being in each others' pockets; but today we had the whole place to ourselves which was lovely!

Yes! The awning wall fits!

The first thing to do was check if the annexe wall we'd brought back actually did the job! We had decided not to bring the whole thing on account of the extra size and weight it would add, and not having had a chance to set it up before we left we'd had to, while in Adelaide yesterday, lay the different components out to try to work out how it went together and work out which bits we would need to take, as well as whether a single wall on its own would actually stay up without its neighbouring parts. Fortunately we'd followed the logic correctly and it all went together fine.


The big highlight of the day, believe it or not, was having a shower! The van has a hot water service, a water pump and an external shower point, so it was just a matter of setting up a shower tent and we could enjoy a hot shower while admiring the gorgeous scenery of the surrounding National Park.

The van has 2x 83L water tanks, where our last van only had one, so there was enough water for us to each (sparingly) get thoroughly clean and freshened up.

While we had the hot water service running, we figured it was a good opportunity to do some washing. This was a simple hand washing operation, but we discovered this handy machine for spinning the clothes out afterwards - it's a very high-powered model and was pretty effective! :)

The rest of the day was pretty quiet. We had a late lunch; the boys and I played some cricket on one of the driveways in the park; and I started reading Agatha Christie's "The Mysterious Affair At Styles" aloud to Mim and the kids. I love reading stories - I have always liked reading but have had less and less time to do so as I've gotten older. But I've been able to revisit this a little over the years through reading stories out to the kids, and while it's not quite the same as taking it at your own pace you still get to enjoy the story again yourself.

We also went for a bit of an explore around the nearby forests and found some edible berries (well we think they're edible - we ate them and we didn't die :))

In the evening I got onto a job that had become unfortunately necessary.

Pretty uncomfortable centre seat!

The middle rear seat on the Pajero is pretty uncomfortable for sitting in. It appears as though Mitsubishi's designers designed two rear sets with a centre armrest, and, as an afterthought, decided to turn the armrest into a middle seat when not being used, just on the off-chance you happened to need to take five people in the car. That all is to say, it seems the seating function and comfort is secondary to that of the arm-rest. Not only is the seat back firmer than than of its neighbours, but the back isn't smooth where the armrest portion folds out. This odd shape was compounded by the fact I hadn't realised the rear seat backs reclined, and when installing the rear cargo space drawers I had unknowingly set the seats for their most upright (almost vertical!) position. All in all, sitting in the back seat, particularly in the middle position, was an altogether uncomfortable proposition under this setup, but unfortunately the seats could no longer be reclined any further as I had pushed the drawer unit back up against the rear seats to maximise cargo space.



So we unpacked the back of the car and spent a couple of hours reconfiguring how to mount the drawers so the seats could recline while still retaining as much cargo space as possible.








We finally got to bed about 9:30pm, at which time Ailment Hour struck. I'll let you watch the video below to understand this phenomenon a little more! :)

--Greg