Pulled into Wintersun Caravan Park just after noon. Quite a nice park with clean amenities and our site has lots of shade. Quite crowded sites and I wouldn't want to try and back my caravan in during the busy season. Our hitch is barely off the road and don't think I could have got near our concrete pad if site opposite was occupied. The Ransleys and Butlers have moved to a Park area near Quobba for some free camping. We had planned to join them but given our fridge situation decided to stay at Caravan park.
We ran into quite a few people we knew from previous stays at Exmouth, Coral Bay, Eighty Mile Beach etc. One couple Phil and Donna we have met up with several times and are really nice.
Relaxed during the afternoon and Sandra talked to Carol and Maureen on the mobile.
Monday morning we hunted down the Dometic/Waeco agent in Carnarvon to pick up our new CF 50 portable fridge/freezer. A bit of a pain as the Dometic Service Manager had not told us where to go or made firm arrangements with local agent, Norwest Refrigeration. All got sorted out with a number of phone calls and we returned home and setup fridge to cool while we went grocery shopping at Woolies. We will use new Waeco as fridge and our existing Bushman as our freezer until fridge is finally replaced.
Arrived home just after lunch to see that new Waeco had only dropped 2 degrees to 22 degrees. I'll let each of you fill in your own words for what was uttered at this point! Back it went in the car and off we went to the Waeco dealer. Thank Goodness they had another new one in stock. They confirmed original was defective and offered to fire up the other new one to make sure it was working. We got some more ice to keep our recent grocery purchases cold while they carried out the testing. All was good with second one and we picked up around 3pm. Got everything sorted into the two fridges before joining Phil and Donna for Happy Hour with 3 other couples. Well happy hour started at 4PM and we didn't make it back to the caravan until 7:30PM. I can't speak for Sandra but I was definitely much happier. She must have been too as we decided that the steak we had out for dinner could wait until Tuesday night. We quickly threw an omelette together for tea.
One last note on the day was the lid latch of the Waeco flying off when I closed the lid after tea. All Sandra heard was "Whoops!". She naturally says "what did you do now?" Can you believe she would blame me after all the crap we have been through? We managed to get it clipped back on.
Tuesday morning we took a day trip out to visit the Ransleys and Butlers at Quobba. Unfortunately due to lack of communication (no mobile coverage at Quobba) we met them half way as they were returning to Carnarvon. Sandra and I carried on to see the lighthouse and Blowholes at Quobba. The coast was very rugged and beautiful. We also checked out the camp area and went to the HMAS Sydney memorial. Got some nice pictures before returning home to Carnarvon. Stopped at the Coral Coast Strawberry farm on the way back which has been highly recommended by our happy hour crew. Almost got steak dinner on way home as a couple of cows didn't think they needed to mooove off the road.
Found out that the Ransleys are moving on tomorrow. They have already explored the areas between here and Perth so will spend some extra time with Carol's (and Sandra's) cousin Karen in Perth. We had a beautiful Christmas meal together as we probably won't be back together until after our Christmas breaks.
Wednesday morning, the Ransleys were off by 5:30am as travelling as far as Kalbarri. Long day for them but got message by early afternoon that they had made it safely. Happy travels until we meet again! The remaining four of us did some touring around Carnarvon. Quite a pretty area around downtown port but much of the town is quite run down. Much of the tourist stuff is closed and not well maintained. We took a walk out the 1 mile jetty but could only go so far due to fire damage. Second fire in a year. Shame! The rest of the jetty is in very poor condition and wouldn't recommend for small kids or elderly people. It was a stinking hot day (39) and the flies were shocking as well! Toured a bit more downtown and bought some fish and seafood for a big meal Thursday.
The lid latch has flown off another couple of times so back we went to Waeco to get a replacement lid. This one feels more sturdy. Everyone cross your fingers for us! Really have to question quality control for Dometic/Waeco products don't you? We thanked the lady at Norwest and told her while it wasn't personal we really hoped we wouldn't be seeing her again.
Had numerous contacts with our new Dometic Service representative, Nick. Aren't we important? He was given very specific instructions from the National Service Manager that everything needs to go smoothly with our third fridge. They are fully testing it in Perth before shipping to Geraldton. They are then having the Dometic Service Agent there test it again on 12v, Gas, and 240v before we arrive for our appointment December 7th. Nick also was very concerned about our awning problem and is shipping a full replacement from Victoria to have there as well for our appointment. The awning problems were relatively minor but we wanted them to look at while still in warranty. That being said we are not turning anything down at this point as Dometic has certainly inconvienced us more than enough.
We had a short afternoon happy hour with Di and Terry before returning to our respective caravans for Tea.
Thursday was our usual preparation day for moving on to Denham tomorrow morning. Lots of cleaning and organizing. I've been busy blogging. We did a shop for groceries and filled up with diesel. Had our big seafood dinner with Di and Terry tonight. We had Rankin Cod which we had never heard about but was beautiful. We also had some scallops and prawns. Yum!
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