The weather was still inclement so we spent the day indoors watching the cricket.
I worked on a map of the public big rig accessible dump points around Australia. Click on the thumbnail for a bigger version.
We needed to go to Tamworth sometime and this seemed like a good day to go.
We visited several places including Swans, the plumbing supplier, who will deliver all the stuff we bought from them on Friday. I haven't worked out where to store all of this stuff but I guess a solution will reveal itself when the time comes.
We had lunch at the Homestead and I took advantage of the wireless hotspot to upload the Motley website and download some software updates. My attempts to get some useful information out of the Telstra website were, as usual, a dismal failure. If I was a cynic rather than a skeptic, I would probably conclude that the Telstra marketing department has a plan to make people spend more time on the site racking up more revenue for Telstra.
Early to bed, early to rise. I'm caught in a cycle which makes several hours before breakfast available for work on the computer. This is good when I have work to do but makes for some futzing when I don't.
Now that I have reset the clock on the Minimax account, I'll be able to do my email, uploading, and surfing while Jean is still asleep. That is, if Telstra actually gives me a good connection. With the 15 minute blocks rule, I am wary of connecting when the service is unreliable as I have to count the blocks even if I don't get a genuine 15 minutes worth. I will have to find out why I can sometimes get a full speed 1X connection, even in the house while at other times the connection actually stalls. Driving to the water tower to get a decent 1X connection is a bit unsatisfactory. Driving to Moree to get an EVDO connection seems a bit over the top.
Tony came early and mowed the front and back lawns. I told him to leave the back paddock as the growth was too high for his mower. The place looks a lot better now. It surprised e that there is a lot of grass under the clover. When we left to go to Queensland the whole lawn was brown, the only green being the broad-leaved weeds and I assumed that the grass had succumbed to the drought. In fact it now looks like a proper lawn.
I arranged for him to mow while we are away to avoid another ankle deep lawn.
Although rain had been forecast locally, the day dawned with only light clouds.
I bought a large diameter hose to deal with the transfer of water from the old rain water tank to the new one.
In the afternoon, the new tank was delivered. The guy from Clark Tanks was very good. The whole thing was done in a hour. I think he appreciated help from someone who understood what he was doing.
I rigged the new pump to transfer water from the old tank to the new one. I moved 2500 litres which is more than enough to stop the tank blowing away in a gale.
Jean remarked that the tap in the kitchen wasn't working. I realised that the tap is 450mm above the level of the bottom of the tank and I had only left 450 mm of water in the tank. I will try to jury rig the pump so that we won't be forced to use town water in the kitchen.
I bought some PVC pipe and fittings to modify the down pipes to take the rain water off the roof into the new tank. I hope to get it all installed before the next rain comes. The job will be pretty easy except for the rehanging of the gutter to make the outlet come out in the right place.
I had to drive up to the water tower to get a decent internet connection. I am puzzled that the CDMA service at home is sometime absolutely first class and at other times it is useless. I find it hard to believe that there is a propagation problem which comes and goes. The coverage map seems to show a base station in Barraba. On the other hand, I wouldn't have thought that there are enough people living in the area to overload a base station.
I had revised the Highway Wanderers website to get rid of all the scribble generated by Robin Wood's Microsoft programmes so I uploaded that and I collected the emails. All this took more than 15 minutes so I had to use two blocks. Doing some surfing with the spare time, the server disconnected me for some reason, possibly a lack of traffic or a lack of signal. I get pretty fraught with Telstra when they charge in 15 minute blocks and then operate a service which isn't robust enough to let you get organised to use the time in an orderly way.
In the afternoon, I got the plumbing for the new tank done. It's still a bit of a jury rig but, if it rains while we're away, the new tank will get all the run off.
The shower, vanity, toilet, laundry sink and kitchen sink were delivered. It all fitted easily in the store room. I hope one day to be able to empty the store room so that we can use it as an office/sewing room but that will have to wait until the major renovations are complete.
After a few days of cloudy weather, the day dawned sunny with a beautiful blue sky. It got cloudy during the morning but by the time I got to do the last bit of tidying up on yesterdays work I was hot. The feed to the new tank is now in good order. I intend to make some more changes sometime to improve the flow but it be OK the way it is except in the heaviest rain storms.
I felt pretty second hand with all the ladder climbing I have been doing recently so I planned to spend the afternoon watching the motor racing.
While I was watching, we got a phone call from some motorhoming friends who had booked into the Barraba Showground for the night. We invited them round for afternoon tea and a chat which was very pleasant. We caught up with some recent happenings on the road and solved some of the problems of the day.
In the evening we had a Wine Club meeting which was pretty interesting. Some of the wine was so good that I offered to buy the remaining bottle of the one I like best.