APRIL AND INTO NEW SOUTH WALES
4 – 13 APRIL
We sadly said goodbye to Mallacoota and our lovely new friends this morning and headed for the border and a town we’ve visited before, Eden. We’d been told about a caravan park called The Garden of Eden by the owner of the Cavaliers, who recommended it highly. So, after having a fishy lunch down by the jetty and then doing a bit of shopping we headed a little bit out of town to the park. And a very nice park it is too – part of the Top Tourist chain, the facilities are extremely good. It has WiFi Internet and as we were going to be here for several days I decided to sign up for their 7-day package for $35, very reasonable when some parks charge $10 for just an hour. The first two days it was fine and worked a treat. The for some reason I couldn’t get online in the bus, so I took my laptop to the park office and asked if I could try there – no problem. Back to Betty G – no access. Tried all sorts of things, including the manager sawing off a couple of tree branches that he though might have been in the way of the booster signal from the office area. Sometimes it would connect, sometimes it wouldn’t. I reckon there was a problem somewhere, but apparently other people in the park were getting online OK. Oh well, never mind, we’re leaving on Tuesday morning.
Something really strange happened on Saturday. We had parked in the main street and I was getting a bit of shopping. Jeff was waiting in Betty G minding his own business when a big coach caught our bullbar. No damage to us, but a dirty great deep scratch on the coach. A gentleman walking by looked to see if we had suffered any damage, and spotted out IGKT sticker on the windscreen. “Are you a member of the International Guild of Knot Tyers?” And so we met IGKT member John, who lives very near Eden. “Come into the bus and have a chat” says Jeff. So there they are chatting about knots whilst I carry on with my shopping. After a while John said that he’d better get going but arranged to visit us at the caravan park on Monday. When I finished my shopping we headed off down to the jetty for Jeff to do some fishing – and who should turn up alongside Jeff but John with his family who were visiting for Easter. Two of our neighbours in the park have expressed interest in knots so Jeff has already been giving lessons.
On Monday John and his wife Sue, paid us a visit and Jeff had a great knotting session with John. Sue and I watched and chatted for the couple of hours of their visit. It was really great to meet them – even if if was purely by chance.
14 APRIL
Well we’re still in Eden. It absolutely chucked it down all night and at least until 11:30 this morning, so we decided to stay another day. Apparently we had about 2” of rain last night – it was just a steady fall all night, but then in the morning it changed to a flippin’ great downpour. A lot of people left this this morning, so I expect the roads would be pretty crowded with families going home after the Easter Holiday, and with the heavy rain we decided that we didn’t fancy being on the road today. We needed to dry out a bit and Jeff wanted to deal with the one of two leaks we still have. All down now, and we’re ready to move on. Let’s hope we have a dry night.