Fields north of Cooma
I had a shower this morning in the motorhome, and part way through the water pump started making strange noises. I did get the shower finished, and fortunately before I started I’d filled the kettle with water. It turned out that our water tank was empty, or at least one of the two we have was, as we found out later today. We could get no water from the tank to wash the dishes, brush our teeth, and so on this morning, but we did have enough in the kettle left from making coffee to wash the dishes.
We stopped in Canberra (at Fyshwick actually) to get some torx wrenches to allow us to remove the hubcaps from the motorhome. I also got a small metric socket set, and a screen door repair kit, since our screen has a tiny hole near the bottom. We’d looked up the address for a grocery store here, or so we thought, but it turned out to just be a service station. After we’d driven around for a while we filled up with diesel, and continued on. We stopped for lunch north of Cooma, then found a grocery store easily in the town. Curiously we’d seen a large Winnebago motorhome towing a small jeep while we ate lunch, and he’d honked at us as he drove by on the highway. It was parked in the lot of the grocery store when we arrived, and they left just before us. It was so long that the rear end of the motorhome and it’s hitch bottomed out leaving the parking lot. There was also a motorhome that was almost identical to ours. It must have been the same age, or very close, as it was on the same Mazda T4600 chassis; however, it’s entry door was at the rear, so it’s kitchen must be laid out differently.
We arrived at the caravan park at Jindabyne in mid-afternoon. I tried to fill the water tank, and found that the water wouldn’t go in. We ran the water pump until both tanks were absolutely dry, and still could only fill one of them with water. There must be something plugging the one entry line. I opened the underseat storage area on the motorhome to see if I could find anything wrong. What I did find was that our thermarest pads under there were damp. I think water may have seeped in from outside. It wasn’t much but enough that we washed the covers to make sure we killed any mildew. I also found that the vent hose for the water tank that won’t fill was uncoupled. That may be where the water got in under the seat, as it was open into the storage area. I tried to tighten the clamp to reattach it, but it didn’t work very well. To try and seal it better I coated it with silicone (that had been done before) and then reclamped it. This might work for a while, but it really needs a different kind of hose and coupling to seal better. It was good that we opened up the storage area though, as things would have molded badly if they’d stayed wet much longer. We also found the water bottle holders, which we’ll need tomorrow for our hike, and we’d forgotten where they were.
We talked to our caravan park neighbor while we were trying to repair our water tanks. It turns out that he is a farmer north of Canberra who raises Angus cattle and sheep. We learned a bit about farming in Australia from him, including the fact that black Angus cattle are worth a bit more when sold to the feedlots, red Angus and Hereford a bit less. Part of that is because of the demand for “Angus” beef for the hamburger chains. However he cynically indicated that the buyers will pay the Angus premium for anything that has a black spot on it. And as Enid pointed out, once the beef is butchered it would be very difficult to prove that it was Angus beef at all.