No shoes on the doormat!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Ern never fails to get Daph flowers, even if they are stolen from someone’s garden.

We were feeling a bit “meh” this morning. Camping in the rain can be a little frustrating...

First-world camping problems when it’s raining:

•Your towel is always wet.

•Your shoes are always muddy.

•Your living space is markedly reduced.

Showering in a wet and muddy campground is always a challenge, too. You set out with good intentions of getting clean and dry, but it’s a futile exercise. And you end up just as wet and muddy walking back from the shower to your campsite.

Daph sets up a “no shoes on the doormat” area, a mud-free zone for ease of removing muddy shoes before entering the Kombi. In theory, it should work well...

•Remove one shoe.

•Place shoeless foot onto the dry, mud-free mat.

•Balance on this leg and remove the other shoe.

•Enter the Kombi.

But Ern struggles with the “no shoes on the doormat” area, and repeatedly stands on the dry, mud-free mat with his muddy shoes, making it wet and less than mud-free.

Daph: “NO SHOES ON THE DOORMAT!!”

Ern: “Oops.”

***

We have been playing the “Prosperity Game”...

Every day you get an imaginary amount of money that you MUST spend on yourself. Each consecutive day, your amount doubles. It fosters a feeling of abundance, imagining what to spend your money on.

Today we have $1600 each to spend, so we imagined checking into a luxury resort where it is warm and dry. We are going to shower often in our massive en-suite and use as many dry towels as we like. And we are going to have a seafood platter for dinner and drink every vintage wine in the house.

In reality, we have checked into the caravan park at St. Helens, where the sun is shining at last, albeit the odd glimpse now and again. We are drying our wet towels in the warm breeze, lazing around outdoors, enjoying doing nothing at all. And eating TimTams again. Luxurious dark chocolate orange TimTams. We may not really have $1600 to spend today, but we are still abundant.

***

Simple things please Daph when camping. Like a concrete slabbed site, so we don’t need the “no shoes on the doormat” system. And easy access amenity blocks...

Daph can’t understand the need to have a coded keypad or deadbolt on the toilets. How often is a passer-by going to nip into the caravan park for a quick wee or a shower? And who cares if they do?

It’s bad enough that you must walk two kilometres to the toilet in the first place. Then add to this the walking in the dark, and the rain, with the pademelons and potoroos[1] making monster noises from the bushes. To then have to fumble with a coded door lock or key, with a weak bladder that’s about to release because it thinks you’re already sitting on the toilet just because your eyes have registered the word “toilet” on a sign. Or worse still, you’ve forgotten the number for the keypad, or forgotten the key, and have to track back through the man-eating monster territory, with a close-to-bursting bladder...

So, when we found that our caravan park in St. Helens doesn’t keep its amenities under lock and key, this made Daph very happy. Now she only has to deal with the demons in the dark and the two-kilometre walk. Daph’s bladder is getting stronger through all this training, though. A little bit of wee only comes out occasionally. Thank the maker for panty liners.

On a side note, today we went to the Bay of Fires. Stunning. Very windy and cold. But stunning, nonetheless. And we popped into St. Helens town centre to check out the information centre, the number one thing to do around these parts, according to Google. For a mere snip at five dollars for a family entry, we got to check out the history room. Chock-a-block with locally donated artefacts from times gone by, from taxidermy albino wombats and wallabies to an old horse-drawn hearse, complete with coffin, donated by the late Albie something-or-other. Daph hopes the late Albie wasn’t in the coffin.

We watched an awesome low-budget motion picture in the theatre about the Chinese history of the area, and we marvelled at old Aboriginal artifacts that Mrs. Jones or Mr. Anderson had found in their back paddock. The place smelled like an old lady’s wardrobe. But it was entirely fascinating and well worth the five dollars for entry.

Daph and Ern love fossicking through old things. Maybe that’s why they love each other so much.

[1] Cutie patootie Australian marsupials that are less than monstrous in the daylight.