Day 14 to 16. July 3 to 5 2022. Brisbane Caravan Park. Reality bites

Nothing else for it now, with the rule on houseguests having to leave before the fish start smelling, we head to the van after some more shopping to set up for the night. The rain comes and goes, but mainly comes. It isn’t torrential, it is just consistently wet. There is no wind, but it is very cool by Brisbane standards. The van is coming together, but with the kitchen door open at the back we have leaks which make everything wet in kitchen. What do we do with our wet shoes? Getting changed and back and forth to the bathroom is a wet and cold experience.

Night time comes and we have successfully fed ourselves, but with the cold, we retire early. There are doubts. What are we doing? Have we bitten off more than we can chew? The strategy of spending time in one place before going off for another few months is a good idea, but maybe we should have tried a weekend first? We wanted to shake things up, but maybe we should have stirred them a little first. We are snug in the van, the rain continues outside but we both go to sleep thinking “what have we done”.

The night is OK, we are not cold other than for a trip to the facilities which the management have conveniently placed next to where were parked. The rain would be described by Rob McKenna as type 47, vertical light drizzle (See So Long, and thanks for all the fish). It could be worse. It was imagined to be better. More shopping and finalisation. The next day we get caught in the gravitational pull of Westfield that was almost impossible to escape once entered. The shopping centre wasn’t quite Chadstone, but was probably Highpoint, and the information lady pointed to the shops we needed by saying one was 350m that way, and the other was 407m the other way. The step count on the Apple Watch did indeed manage to get to its 10,000 steps. Due to the type 47 rain, everyone from Brisbane decided to be there and this made things even more uncomfortable. Writing this a few days after the event, I can’t even remember what we went there for. Conspiracy theorists should be looking into black holes of commercialism rather than flat earths.

What is nice though is the people. The van is so different to most of the other mobile homes being carted by tanks that you either get a comment of “cosy….” or others are genuinely interested in what you are doing and why the hell are you doing it. A nice experienced couple of grey nomads stopped for a chat and eased our minds on a few of the worries, and helped us out with doing a test circuit with the van in the park. Nah, don’t worry about that noise, do this in the NT, watch out for that…..I have been worried about the human condition for a while, but it seems that we don’t have enough people living in caravan parks.

Tuesday is easier as the rain goes to Type 33, light prickling drizzle which makes the roads slippery. We have figured out the awnings, the locks, the cooking, and are confident enough to just do something different and head into town. Linda checks out the museum and library, I contribute to the cost of my heating and shelter at the lovely Treasury Building that they have set up to take your money quite efficiently. Somewhere dry, somewhere warm, somewhere not in the caravan park and starting to do what we wanted to do. It has taken a lot to set up and get ready, but we realise that the van and the camping is not the experience. The WTF moment from Sunday night is valid, as others have told us as well. But we are not doing a trip to camp, we are camping to be able to do a trip. We want to see things, do things, break the cycle of what is happening every day. The van isn’t the experience. The van is the enabler of being able to experience. Tomorrow, we leave for Maroochydore. We are set up and pretty ready. This is where the rubber literally hits the road. The forecast is set to clear in the morning. Just some Type 39 rain to put up with tonight.