I had a restful night’s sleep, but my body clock still woke
me up at 615am. But at least with no
more mozzie bites apparent than the night before AND I wasn’t awake due to the
heat!
We took our time getting our ‘continental’ (cereal and
toast) breakfast but, to be fair, we spoke to our host about checking out later
and he was totally relaxed about it, so this motel has been just what we
needed. We were due to collect our new
camper van at 10am but thought we’d turn up a little early to speed things
along. I refused to call a cab for the
half a mile walk to Britz from our motel but the air con really makes you
forget how intense the heat is outside.
We arrived at Britz hot and bothered to find they didn’t open until 10am
anyway. But we weren’t the only ones.
When the doors opened the member of staff started making
excuses about our vans not being ready because they’d arrived so late last
night etc, etc. I was worried we’d have
to wait hours but in fact, by the time we’d filled in the relevant paperwork
and watched our ‘how to’ video, the van was ready.
Meet Lizzie – only because the Britz logo is
a lizard and we felt it was time we had a female camper! So, this is the van we are relocating for
Britz down to Adelaide in eight days. We
are paying $5 a day for the pleasure, plus $75 for an extra day to slow things
down a little. Out of choice we are
paying a $20 per day fee to reduce the excess due should we have an accident
(anyone’s fault) from $1000 to a more reasonable $250. Then today we discovered that we had to pay
an extra $10 per day for a second driver so we can share the workload. In total we are paying $280 (about
£170?) for having their van for 8 days
as they are also giving us $80 towards a tank of fuel. Putting this in perspective against the cost
of hiring Ozzie for the last 4 weeks, it is peanuts! AND it is a big step up in terms of comfort –
more space, a bathroom with a shower and the all-important air conditioning
unit. The only thing with that being
that we will have to pay for a powered site for the air con to work, so no
freebies whilst we’re in the heat. As
before, we took photos and video of the condition of the van. It is much more modern than Ozzie, with less
than half the mileage on the clock. We
had to sign a couple of extra agreements this time – that we would not drive at
night OR go over 110kph (that might be hard to stick to with so many miles to
cover!)
We drove back to our motel and did a few trips loading our
belongings before sneaking back into our room to use the shower to freshen up
before hitting the road. Heading out of
Darwin it felt like we were in a completely different place again. A fresh start on the road again in a new
month. Next stop, Coles supermarket to
select groceries for the week, which was heavily influenced by the fact that we
now have a gas barbecue attached to our van!
There are few attractions that we plan to visit between
Darwin and Adelaide, hence the intended speed of the journey. However, whilst in Katherine a few days ago,
I had noticed the Mataranka Thermal Pools being advertised so thought they may
be worth a look. Our new camper even has
an inbuilt satnav and putting the location of the pools in, we were informed
they were about 4 hours away. It was 2pm
by this time so we would not be able to experience the pools in daylight today,
but Simon found a camping site at Bitter Springs which would be a perfect stop
to be able to get our morning swim that we are becoming accustomed to!
We hit the road, each driving for two hours to reach the
site. Another couple of pluses about the
new van – cruise control is very helpful and having a temperature gauge is
helpful to not get blasé about the heat outside. When the dashboard is reminding you that it’s
still 39°C
outside, despite the fact that its cloudy, you are reminded of the wonder of
air con!
We rolled up to the campsite just in time before
sunset. I think we are the only people
here!? The looming clouds treated us to
a fantastic light show but this meant that the cheap burgers we’d grabbed for
our first barbecue experience on the van ended up being cooked on the stove
instead. But they still tasted as good. It seems a shame to shut ourselves away from
the outside world but that consisted of thunder storms, bugs and heat tonight,
so the cosy but cool new van will suit me just fine thanks!
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