Does electrical trouble come in threes?

We hope it does, as we have had some trouble this week. A couple of days ago John turned the tv on for the first day of the cricket, well he tried to anyway. No response. We flashed back to a couple of years ago when we had huge problems with our then tv in the van. Not so bad this time, we found a tv repairman locally and he was able to fix it that day, costing us around $100 (slightly less for cash). Last night Wendy turned on the microwave and phhhtt - it sounded just like a light globe does when it goes, turn on and less than a second later, ping! No microwave, no clock, no power, no nothing. While we were eating dinner only 10 minutes later (including raw beans, it was way too late to cook them in a pot) - beep! short pause - beep! The smoke alarm decided that its battery needed replacing. At least it wasn't at 2 am, which seems to be the normal time that smoke alarms do their thing. After dinner we hunted around for a replacement battery, but couldn't find one so had to get one at the supermarket today. Today we also figured out how to get the microwave out of its bracket, which wasn't easy. We measured it up and headed off to Harvey Norman (which was open despite the Australia Day public holiday), they had nothing even vaguely similar, we needed to get one the same size so it would fit snugly back in the bracket. We came home and had a look on the net, then off to Big W for a replacement. Not quite as good as the one that has gone, but at least it is the right size. We considered waiting until tomorrow and going off to the repairman again, but at less than $150 for new it didn't seem worthwhile.

So our 3 electrical failures have cost us rather more than we would have liked, but at least they have all been overcome quickly.

New Year with Family

A few days after Christmas we put the van into storage in Armidale and drove down to Sydney to visit family. Once again John's sister and her husband kindly opened their home to us, we used this as a base to visit his children and grandchildren. We really enjoyed a Christmas visit with the kids for the first time in a few years, how do they get so big so fast? We also played golf with John's son and brother, the family competition was taken very seriously.

Over the New Year weekend we headed down to Jervis Bay for a few days, to visit Wendy's sister and her partner who are currently staying there. We hadn't seen them for about 18 months, so it was great to get together. We went to the fireworks at Huskisson on NYE, along with thousands of other holiday makers, luckily for us old fogeys these were at 9:00 so we were all tucked up in bed well before the magic hour.

Jervis Bay has many miles of beaches and bush, we went for several long walks while we were there. In Booderee National Park we visited the ruins of the Cape St George lighthouse. This was built to warn ships about the aptly named Wreck Bay, but the surveyor was more concerned in finding a site easy to build on rather than the most suitable position. Thirty-eight years later a replacement lighthouse was built on the other side of Jervis Bay, but even then the original lighthouse caused confusion to passing ships, particularly on moonlit nights when the sandstone glowed, so eventually explosives were used to reduce it to rubble.

We had a wonderful time on our 'holiday' away from the van, and once again thank everyone who provided hospitality.