I was up and off early this morning, leaving Bec at the van to look after the dogs. It was still the proposition that ‘The Beast’ would be repaired during the day, so I wanted to get out and do a little bit of shopping before I was needed back at the van to watch over the surgery to ‘The Beast’.

I found a suburban shopping centre only 5 minutes away from the caravan park, which was overwhelming in its size, compared to the miniscule selection of shops we’ve been making do with. A sprawling mecca of retailers, all under one roof, in a bigger centre than any we’ve seen since Darwin, maybe even Townsville, I had trouble just finding the stores I needed.

All I was actually after was some more tins of food for the dogs, but by the time I had chased down the best price for what I was after, I felt like I’d about run a marathon as I charged up and down, from one end of the mall to the other. It was exhausting.

I finally had a trolley full of cans, almost enough I calculated, to see us through until we arrive back home. Now that’s a scary way of looking at it, as there didn’t seem to be that many cans sitting there in the trolley.

With ‘Kermit’ loaded up, and taking on a nose up attitude as a result, I headed back towards the van. At least I thought I did, as ‘Shazza’ chucked a hissy fit and refused to tell me which way to go. Before I knew it, I was on a freeway which I knew for certain didn’t make up part of my route to the shops, whizzing along at a hundred kilometres an hour, all the while looking across a golf course that I knew for certain backed up to the caravan park. ‘Shazza’ finally got over her episode, and guided me home via a rather more circuitous path than what I had taken earlier. Nevertheless, I made it back safely.

It was then time to break open all of our boxes from yesterday and make an attempt to set up the satellite dish and receiver unit. I was surprised how simply it all went together, especially since I had been expecting something of Ikea like qualities, to bamboozle me for hours. What I expected to be the hardest bit was still to come however. The actual aiming and fine tuning of the dish. According to the literature, as little as a 2^o error in any direction and in any plane would prevent us from obtaining a signal.

Beginners luck might have played a part in my rapid success, although I’d rather put it down to taking my time to make sure everything was aligned perfectly. Even taking my time, I had a picture being beamed to the little integral screen on the signal finder within a couple of minutes. Once I had that, it was barely a tweak to ensure the strongest possible signal was bouncing off of the dish and hitting the little receiver that sticks out in front of the platter. I was starting to wonder if I might have done something wrong it seemed so easy, especially after I’ve heard of other travellers having all sorts of problems with setting the system up, so much so that the dish often gets shoved beneath the bed and forgotten about.

About the only stressful bit was when I connected the dish to the inlet point on the side of the van, then went inside to switch the set top box like receiver on. It all lit up, just like it was meant to, but an error message kept displaying with every channel I tried to select. I then remembered that I had to make a phone call to get the box registered, before I would be able to watch anything on it. Only a couple of minutes later, we were up and running with a perfectly clear picture. Fingers crossed the setting up always goes so flawlessly, because on an average day, it will take me no longer and be a whole lot less stressful, than setting up the antenna for regular, terrestrial vision.

With the day still young, and still no word on the status of the parts we were waiting on, we chanced leaving the dogs alone in the van for a few minutes. Just long enough for me to drop Bec off at the shopping centre, so she could entertain herself with a spot of shopping, while I returned to the van to sit with the puppies.

Since the rest of my day, until such time as I got the phone call from Bec to say that she was finished shopping and was ready to be picked up, was decisively boring, apart from putting the new satellite receiver through its paces, I asked Bec to write a segment for the blog, about her day. She refused however. So instead, I can only tell you about my afternoon, which was spent watching corny Japanese game shows. I even recorded one to watch later, to try out the recording functions of the new box.

It was 5:00PM by the time Bec was finished on her shopping jaunt, which she blamed on exhaustion, but strangely enough coincided with closing time. Leaving the dogs to their own devices in the van again, I sped down the street to collect Bec, before anyone realised the dogs had been left alone. We had no complaints, so our fingers are crossed that we managed to get away with it.

It wasn’t until late in the day that we heard that the parts are still yet to arrive on this side of Australia, which was a little annoying. In hindsight, we ought to have put the dogs into the care of the front office staff again, to allow us to go out and do some sightseeing today, and set aside tomorrow for sitting in the van waiting for the repairs to be completed. We have now kind of wasted today, and will still have to wait around again tomorrow.

After dinner, I mentioned to Bec that I felt like a bowl of ice-cream. It’s been a long time since we have been able to get any of the freshly made sorbets that seemed to greet us in every new destination along the east coast, and my taste buds were aching for the sweet solace of a creamy, frozen treat. I didn’t have to mention it twice, as Bec grinned and suggested that we illicitly leave the dogs for a third time and race off to the nearby supermarket before they closed for the evening.

An early supper therefore consisted of a bowl of velvety chocolate, honey and nougat ice cream chased with a dozen or so chocolate chip cookies. All this as we marveled at the fact that we were watching TV that was being beamed back to earth from a geostationary satellite orbiting our planet somewhere in the stratosphere over Papua New Guinea. Isn’t technology grand?

Woo hoo!!!

Until next time, stay safe, have fun and don’t forget to write.