We recently had a lovely time camping in the flinders
rangers with the Rowlands and the Haines. All seemed to be going somewhat
loosely according to plan. After failing on the ‘pack Saturday night after our
sport’ plan, we managed to get everything loaded and stored on Sunday morning
and were off before lunch. The drive went well and we arrived at Rawnsley Park
Station in time to set up for dinner.
One of the issues that we had was that in planning to sell
the caravan, we’d started to strip things out which meant that the stuff that
we normally just assumed was already packed had to be considered, found and
stored in the van again. Apparently at the end of our last camping trip I
failed to pack the tap connection for the hose. We had one part, but not all
the parts … so no running water.
It was getting rather cold with night time temperatures
expecting to hit -2C though we weren’t overly concerned as we had the heater in
the caravan (though Michael, Sam and Thomas were all outside in tents/annexes
and the like and were going to have to deal with sleeping bags, blanket and
good old body warmth.
All was good until about midnight when the heating seemed to
cut out in the caravan. That meant that someone had to get out of bed and face
the cold to work out what was going on. There was only ever going to be one
person doing that. Caroline noticed (from bed) that the microwave was off and
that led me to believe that we’d likely tripped the circuit breaker (especially
given the fact that we’d had the a/c and a fan heater
running at the same time. I went out side, checked the box that we were plugged
into … no good. I explored the van, pulling fuses, all good. I pulled cords and
reinserted them changed points at the box … still nothing).
Finally, lost for any other potential cause, I pulled the
connection between the cord and the van. I’m not quite sure what made me do it,
but I gave it a sniff. Something smelt burnt. Clearly not a good sign and given
it was now about 1am and bloody cold, I simply dropped the cord in the dirt and
went back to bed thinking about how this was suddenly starting to look like it
was going to be one of those trips.
We decided that in the morning we’d drive the 30kms or so
back to Hawker, the nearest town to pick up a new cord and a connection for the
tap. We drove all over town (took about 5 mins) and found the one store that
was likely to have what we needed. Despite having a reasonable amount of
camping equipment, they didn’t have the electrical part that we needed for me
to fix the cord. We tried the garage down the road that had an auto electrician
on hand but they didn’t have it either.
In a fit of desperation, we walked across to the service
station and huzzah! Where I least expected it they had a nice new caravan
extension cord of the right amps. We were saved. So we trekked back, set
everything up and didn’t face any further dramas with our set up! Griswalds
evaded
The rest of the trip was great fun. We climbed Rawnsley’s
Bluff (even with Thomas sick as a dog) and drove up to Blinman and back through
Parachilna and Brachina gorges. A great trip indeed that left us with a desire
to go back and further explore the Flinders when we next manage to find the
opportunity.
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