Day 3

Tue 9th June 2009

Caught up with Spida and Sheree Everitt at the Pembroke Caravan Park in Armidale.

Found the Spida was heading off to Melbourne for practice for "Dancing with the Stars" on the television and the Sheree was flat out with filming the series.

We decided to head off out of town and look for a good campsite for a couple of days.

Picked the Dangars Falls and Dangars Gorge as the spot.
It is a campground in part of the Oxley Wild Rivers National Park.

We arrived, setup camp and then I took a look at where the petrol was leaking on the car.

As the tank was near empty, there was little to find and I decided to focuas on other things until we had more time and a better chance to examine what was wrong.

The gas mixer was found to be loose on the carby and needed to be reseated.
It is held by tiny grubscrews that defied being tightened suitably to stay firmly fixed.

I had no power for tools and used a screw driver and metal screw to bore a hole through the aluminium throttle body of the air intake of the Magnas intake manifold.

It took ages to get a hole through, but I managed to self tap a screw to better hold the mixer in place to avoid it leaking air and backfiring fiurther on gas.

After the mixer was in place, I set about getting my trailer power into the van from a battery that was secured into a box on the front of the Camper Trailer.

This battery was to supply our 12 volt power in the tent and is charged by a cable that I set up earlier running from the alternator and battery in the car.

Thankfully, I found that the battery in the Camper Trailer had not been charging as we were travelling and I was able to work out why and fix it so we could use some 12 volt power on our travels.

After sorting out the power stuff, I set off to photograph the falls whilst Jennifer prepared our evening meal of steak and hot vegies.

It was starting to rain off and on and the weather was really freezing....

I managed to get a few shots in from the falls and river rock pools before the dark of night and the continuing bad weather really set in...

Jennifer had prepared a full meal as a MasterChef using just the open fire and the simple facilities that were at the campsite..

The people at the National Parks have done a great job of providing toilets and camp fire spots that include steel stands for balancing pots, billies and hotplates for grilling meat and fish.

They even supplied an ample supply of freshly cut firewood for use as well..
I commend them on their efforts in making the camping activity and enjoyable one...

We ate our tea under flood light from our tiny $5 LED ring light that runs on AA batteries and a little after 7.30pm, we hit the sack....

End of day 3...