The weather was very cloudy when I woke up.
We set off for Brisbane after breakfast, stopped for morning tea at Helidon at half past ten after a hairy trip down the range with trucks I had to overtake and other trucks overtaking me! I got the genny on so that we could use the airconditioner but it sputtered to a halt after half an hour, I guess it is time to service the fuel system and maybe replace the spark plug.
We reached Lawnton at about two o'clock. I couldn't raise the Caretaker but we found a couple of workers who said they thought it would be OK and showed us to a site with power and water. There was evidence of another motorhome parked nearby but we were told that it is away being repaired. I selected a site that would not be in their way assuming they will be back before we leave next Tuesday.
We were told that Wyllie Park has been closed by the Shire Council because, they say, the place was being trashed by unruly campers. I'll have to find out if it is open during the day because I need to use the dump point before we go to Caloundra.
We settled in and had lunch while the airconditioner was bringing the temperature down.
In the late afternoon, I caught up with the caretaker and confirmed our stay.
I had a long chat with the motorhomers from the neighbouring motorhome which had returned during the afternoon. They had been staying in Wyllie Park when the council closed it to all overnight use. It is locked from 6pm to 8am every day. Apparently there had been much trouble there with even a threat to set fire to the motorhomes! There certainly is no accounting for the behaviour of some of our fellow travellers. I think that there are so many examples of "official" violence in the world today, the war in Iraq being one example, that some people think that violence is an acceptable way of dealing with people with whom you have some kind of disagreement!
It started out another overcast day with a hint of sunshine. The temperature was OK but the humidity was too high for comfort. I tried the generator again. It still wouldn't start. I made a booking with a local generator repair shop, the earliest available date being 18th Feb. I fitted a new air filter I had been carrying and a new spark plug I purchased from Supercheap Auto next door to the showground. The generator did fire up but stopped almost immediately so I will have to rely on the professionals to get it working again.
Jean had a hair appointment in Mitchelton at two o'clock so we went out for lunch, went to the hairdresser, and did a bit of shopping before returning to Lawnton to veg out in the airconditioned comfort of the Motley.
We tried to do some business at the Bendigo Bank but they weren't able to help us so we decided to give them the flick. I will have to go through the complicated process of changing all the standing orders on the account before we close it but things will be a bit simpler when that is done. The Manly Warringah Credit Union has stood by us for many, many years and will have all our business.
Another overcast morning with glimpses of the sun. I was up early and went to Kalangur to do the laundry.
We went to Aspley to have coffee with Al but that had a blackout so there was no way of making coffee. Al was having trouble getting all the local TV channels on his new TVMini USB TV tuner. We went to Jaycar to sus out potential solutions but the cheapest potential solution was a bit too expensive to buy on spec so I agreed to try the tuner on my MacBook using the Motley TV antenna. When I tried to install the software all I got was a weblock which wanted to download 104MB of software so I didn't do that. I will try and load the software at Al's tomorrow and then do the tests in the Motley tomorrow afternoon.
We went to Patricks Rd to visit with Ross. I gave him a new set of junior engineers screwdrivers which he much appreciated. Sarah and Kelly were out having hairdos but they were back before lunch. We spent the afternoon with the family. I helped Ross to design a new table for him to use to eat his meals when siting on the sofa. We dropped in to the Oriental Bangkok takeaway on the way back to Lawnton and bought enough yummy stuff to last us two or three days.
We went to Al's place planning to do some software work but I forgot to take the computer! We went to Ascot for coffee and found most of the cafes were full so we finished up going to the Coffee Club. It was OK and we were surprised to find that they offer a free one hour internet connection which might be useful and is certainly better that the $5 per hour at the DiBella place down the road.
We went back to the Motley and I went to Bunnings the get some prices for timber for Ross's project. We dined on yummy Oriental Bangkok food.
The rain hadn't eased up overnight. The weather forecast doesn't look good for The Fitzhardinges' holiday. It seems like the opportunities for lying on the beach will be limited or maybe non-existent. It will be good to catch up with them anyway.
Reading the Australian IT news I uncovered another example of the lack of redundancy in the internet. A pair of cables in the Mediterranean broke and cause havoc in Asia and the Middle East. India was badly hit and this rebounded on all those countries that have outsources their call centres to India. The report says that "Engineers were scrambling to re-route traffic to satellites or other cables"; so much for "immune to single point failures" and it seems that the routers no longer automatically finds ways round outages.
We went to Al's to use his internet connection to do Software Update and to download some other software. He had got two new 1GB RAM modules su that we could upgrade the MacBook to 2GB. It now works as you would expect and i don't have to wait an unreasonable time for things to happen.
We went to Nundah Village to buy books from the Brisbane Libraries book disposal shop. We went to the Coffee Club for coffee and did a little shopping before returning to Lawnton.
I had downloaded the software which runs Al's new TV module so that I could do some tests using the Motley big antenna with its masthead amplifier. Al had only been able to get SBS using his rabbit ears antenna at Nundah. I was able to pull in 4 SBS channels and 4 TEN channels. The other three free to air stations were not found. I determined that the module was looking specifically for digital TV signals and even our TEAC receiver had trouble pulling in all eleven digital channels so I wasn't surprised that the little USB module had trouble. I did a test for the effectiveness of the little antenna supplied with the module. Having tuned the channels using the Motley antenna, I connected to the little antenna and got similar performance. It is true that the module didn't find anything with the little antenna but having found the signals with the Motley antenna, the module was able to receive the channels that were set in the module database.
Having had rain overnight and a fairly dry and warm day, the rain set in again in the evening. The weather forecast predicts that the rain will clear early on Thursday and the weekend will be fine so perhaps the Fitzhardinges will have the holiday they were looking forward to.