June 9-11 (Day 130-132) - Mackay

After a fairly slow morning we headed out from Finch Hatton Showgrounds and back to Mackay. This time we were going to a caravan park. We'd been getting a few clunks from the front end of the Pajero so I had it booked in at Pedders to get a check-over, so we needed to be based somewhere central. Plus, this caravan park had a pool which is always a favourite with the kids!

We didn't arrive until about lunchtime so spent the rest of the day at the caravan park, and the kids had a swim while I did some work.

The next day was pretty similar - we stayed around for the whole day at the caravan park. If you have to pay $40-something per night you want to make sure you get the best value out of it!

On the 11th I went into town to get some work done at a cafe. It's sometimes difficult to get focused time to plough through work when you're all in the same space, as the kids sometimes need help with schoolwork, and even without that there are numerous distractions. I'm intending to do a progress report on what it's like to travel full-time once the blog's up to date (writing this from Townsville on June 22).

The rest of the day we did work or swam in the pool. The kids had invented a game called 'Assassin', where you drew lots to choose someone to be 'it', and then everyone had to walk four laps around the edge of the pool in opposite directions. When you walked past someone else, if they were the 'assassin' they had to gently touch you twice to indicate you'd been 'assassinated', but they had to try to do it without the others seeing and working out who was the assassin. If you suspected the person you were about to walk past was the assassin you could jump into the water to escape, but you could only do this three times per game; so given there were 3-4 other players and 4 laps of the pool to do, one had to use one's pool jumps wisely!

-- Greg