8 July 2012 - Taree Showgrounds, Taree, Manning Valley, NSW

Today dawned bright and sunny, not a cloud in the sky. After so many rainy or bleak days over the past week or so, it was a wonderful tonic for the soul, and might have otherwise offered the very best weather to venture up to the famous Barrington Tops National Park. We decided however to stay about camp, to deal with the copious sacks of dirty laundry and to catch up on a few housekeeping matters. All of this was achieved in a straight forward manner including the installation of new carpet in the caravan,  that purchased way back in Ballarat in early February. Needless to say the rolled carpet strips had taken on their own form and have been reluctant to lie flat. For now we have adhesive strips everywhere holding the edges flush against the floor. The delay is partly due to the fact that the rubber backing was quite pungent and Chris had little desire to live with that in the van.

We relaxed over lunch reading yesterday’s newspaper, screened by the sheets drying in the bright sunshine and listening to the wonderful melodic birdsong from across the park. To relax in such a fashion is a rarity; we are normally too busy touring. 

Today we made acquaintance with a chap camped nearby whom we had dubbed “The Madman” due to the fact that he seems prone to yelling out aloud for no reason and other rather random behaviour. It is actually unfair of me to consider anyone who speaks to themselves as insane; I have been doing it for years and I am totally sane. Well, aren’t I? He is living as simply as he could in an old caravan and today had his dinner slow cooking in an electric frypan sitting on a chair beside a power box some distance from his camp. He showers late each afternoon in the concrete amenities block, singing at the top of his voice and then returns to his base with little on but a towel about his slim body and his long greying hair hanging wet down his back. We suspect he is on a benefit of some kind however he speaks of picking up work in vineyards sometime soon. We wrote the details of Camp Elim down for him as a possible next camping spot; perhaps I should not be confessing to being instrumental in his future harassment of the very nice Christians who run that camp? It was given in the best spirit.

And thinking of the craziness of mankind; tonight the local television news was again about the protests against the imminent closure of the prison in Grafton, just up the coast from us here. There is a concern that too many jobs will go and without the prison the town will die. So strange to hear this when the normal protests about prisons are that no one wants one in their backyard. The perversity of people!