7 June 2013 - Advent Park, Maida Vale, Perth, Western Australia

The best laid plans are for mice and men? Is that how it goes?  They certainly were not for us today. In fact our plans for today were abandoned even before bedtime last night. We were puzzled as to why the lights, all 12 volt in the caravan, seemed so awfully dim. Chris checked the charger and lo and behold, the indicator was flashing red and the voltage was so very low. We had a problem. Mains power was coming into the caravan and the fridge, heater, television, microwave were all functioning perfectly but we were otherwise in the dark; both physically and as far as figuring out what the problem was. In the absence of any interesting television programmes, our evening was spent playing scrabble peering at the tiles with lantern light and checking the dictionary for Chris’s imaginative spelling with the more direct beam of the torch.

This morning Chris popped over to see Glenn as soon as the office was open for names of preferred service people. He gave us a business card for one in the area and also told us about Tony who is currently resident in one of the cabins, pending the next stage of his life. Tony came on over later in the morning and had a look at the problem, linked us up to his own CTeck charger and found the rest of the system was perfectly functional. He took ours back to his base to diagnose the problem, but was back almost before he was gone. Once the outer case was removed, it was evident that the circuit board had burnt out. Repair of this would probably work out more expensive than full replacement, which is quite expensive enough on its own. And that is the track we have gone down; he should have the new part early next week.

In the meantime we are planning to use the 12 volt lights as little as possible as the house batteries recharge on the reconditioning cycle Tony has them on. To facilitate this, we popped in to Midland and purchased a couple of desk lamps which are now temporarily hitched up to a web of extension cords; very chic indeed.

He popped back during the afternoon to check charging progress and caught me having a Nana Nap, very embarrassing for me; I do try to reserve sleep as a night time exercise.

And so the day has not gone to plan at all except for one big plus. This morning we were able to contact Larissa on Skype even before our breakfast, to wish her “Happy Birthday”. She was about to head out for lunch with her mother. Such are the wonders of time zones.