Problem Solving

Well, I got to know Cairns better than I had planned to! I had left you there planning to give the car and the caravan a hug to reward them for their hard work on an arduous track. And hugged they were! The car was serviced and needed a new set of tyres. These tyres are grown up tyres for I told the fellow in the tyre shop that I was towing a van and with great expertise I was informed what PSI I needed to be travelling with, the type of tyre I needed and what ply the walls should be (who would have thought that ply mattered in the tyre world? I was so sure that it applied only to wool and knitting and crocheting!) Having done as I was told the car now looks very spiffy with these grownup tyres! The caravan needed new struts for the pop-up part of the roof, a new exhaust for the 3-way fridge as the original had jiggled out and the brakes needed redoing. Apparently, these corrugated roads are notorious for smashing electric brakes.

All took some time to get organised and then the work done so Mr Bingley and I set out to wander Cairns on foot. I spent a lot of time people watching and met some lovely people. I was able to watch the grand final and the Cazaly Club that with a wonderful lady that I met in Broome, Vasi and her husband. I met a gorgeous couple from York in England while doing my laundry at the laundromat and a lovely gentleman from Coen (where I had spent a night on the side of the road on my way up to the cape) who was in Cairns for bypass surgery, the poor fellow. With this chap and the couple from York I had told them of a book that I had found in Cairns. At a place called Archer Creek on the notorious Peninsular Development Road I had been fascinated by a memorial obelisk. In the middle of nowhere such a thing is a strange site anyway but it is all the stranger at this time as it is in the middle of roadworks, and I had to climb over piles of gravel and dirt to satisfy my taphophile curiosity. This was a memorial to a woman called Toots! Toots Holzhiemer (I include a link to a very brief YouTube video of her https://youtu.be/jM1J6ih1uTI).

When I was wondering through the shopping centre, I found a book shop with a book about her in the window. I sat down and read about this fascinating woman who was not only a pioneering and legendary truck driver, tough, able to repair punctures on her vehicle and load full 44-gallon drums onto her truck as there were no forklifts. She was no nonsense and the mother of 8 children (she would travel with the kids in her truck when they were babies and toddlers), and she sewed all their clothes including her daughters’ wedding dresses and she loved to crotchet. The gentleman from Coen said, ‘I knew Toots!’ and very excitedly I said, ‘did you meet her?’ and he said, ‘no I never met her, but I knew her!’ and I knew exactly what he meant!

I decided as soon as the caravan was ready that I would get going out of Cairns. I knew I had full water tanks, so I pulled into a road side stop for a couple of nights and I assessed what else had to be doing to give the caravan some love after the cape journey. Yes, a goodly portion of a trip such as this involves problem-solving unless you want to spend a motza, or you want to give up! Sometimes it is more hard work than holiday. And I have been busy securing all cupboards, drawers and shelves and repairing a tear in the awning. These bloody flimsy things are always a source of anxiety but on these impossible roads I had tickled a tree branch and ended up with about a meter tear. It would not be covered by insurance and a new awning cover would set me back $1200, so I thought I will sort this! Famous last words! First, I pondered gaffa tape, but then I thought that won’t hold, then contact, but again I thought it would not stand the forces of travelling. I thought that the only thing that would hold would be stitching it into place. I had some embroidery thread and wondered if a full thickness would hold – nope! So, I went in search of an appropriate thread which ended up being a heavy-duty polythene thread, optimistically I only bought 2 rolls. Then I couldn’t keep the tear in place to even begin tackling it. So, I set on the idea of finishing off the edges of the tear with a blanket stitch so I could have an edge to deal with and something to anchor to tack the tear into place. (All of this took 2 full days and 3 full rolls of cotton, so a trip to the shop again had to be done and I purchased another 4 rolls). I have to say it was with some astonishment that I found this worked.

I had cause to be thankful for a lifetime of embroidery experience AND Girl Guides for it was there when I was 12 years old that I learned a stitch for mending tents. Admittedly these were canvas tents not the polymers that we have to deal with today which are not really at all amenable to stitches. I remember having a piece of canvas with a tear in it that I had to take home and repair and take it to the guide camp that was coming up and this was going to be assessed for our camping badge. The criteria were neatness, and that daylight could not be seen through the stitching. I can still see the old guide leader (who would probably be younger than I am now!) holding the piece of canvas up to the sun to see if she could see the light; I got my camper badge! So now I had the tear in place I set about going around the tear with this tent repairing stitch. With the fabric of the awning, I was never going to achieve the no sunlight standard, so I had already planned when finished to go over all the seams with silicon and the weave of the stitch was terrific for holding the silicon. So, standing on a ladder with a hyper extended neck and back I have for 4 days been stitching. If I could have taken the blessed thing down, put the telly on and stitched it while it was on my knee it would have been a doddle, but I confess to it being an arduous exercise, but my plan WORKED. To be honest I was amazed, but it is in place, waterproof and I do confess to being a bit chuffed about the achievement!

I am now pottering down the south coast – I am in the Whitsundays at a little place called Ingham the numerous Whitsunday Islands sit as green monoliths off the coast. It is amazing, you exit the rainforests almost as abruptly as they are entered at Mareeba, which seems like a lifetime ago, but was only 2 weeks! I am planning a left tune at Townsville to take me inland. Let’s hope the problem solving can be kept to a minimum ongoing.