Author: Rob

Using night mode. Heavy mist has blotted out moonlight and it’s in real life dead dark.

5.50 AM

No other overnighters. A few cars circling through. Still dark. (That’s a car light in the shot above.

Slept through but a bad dream woke me. Usual.

Strange I don’t want to go back to the coast. It’s like going backwards, or something I can’t yet identify. The rest area stopovers used to be a highlight but when they’re busy it can be horrible. A sitting duck waiting for an arsehole to park right up close invading space, or thoughtlessly talking outside your window, or turning up with music blaring, turning up late and cooking dinner loudly, filthy selfish young people not caring or capable of it until spoken to, especially hired cans…it’s all actual unpleasantness that I’ve had.

Just depends on who turns up. But it’s a me-take-all selfish attitude there because people are stopping only to save money. There’s for them nothing else attractive about it. (I love the bush and trees.) So it’s that mindset, with the odd rare lovely exception, such as old Barry.

And then the weekend possibility of the Pests of Waldrens Swamp turning up.

I really need a property to park on.

I’m also a ball of worries and fears. I can’t seem to shake the attitude for long, and it’s replete with death and dying.

7 AM

Quite like this little foggy morning snapshot:

10.30 AM

Actually this minute inside the mens at Old Parliament House and booked in for Question Time in the big one.

Tour Guide Clueless

I saw the sign so hung around for ten minutes for the Old Parliament House tour. 10.45. Been keen to do it for a while.

When I come back a small group of maybe six are locked around a bloke talking quietly. I get a lanyard ID from a girl. Is that it I ask, to the private party. Yes.

So I try here, I try there, I try different places to get a spot where I can hear this bloke quietly droning on. He knew I was there, he knew I was trying to hear. He just ignored me.

So I try again and none of the idiot grey numbnuts let me into the private party either.

Usually you can’t shut them the guide up and they’re so loud everyone around can hear them if they want to or not.

Not this clueless, arrogant no-energy fuck.

I handed back the lanyard. I can’t hear that Om sorry.

“Oh you can get closer.”

You have to be fucking kidding. I was already breathing down their necks. And it’s not my fault the bloke was a clueless, arrogant no-energy fuck who didn’t do his job and didn’t even fucking try.

Old Parliament House.

What a blight that episode has left. The prick should be sacked and the girl given a job doing something else. I left in a dignified hurry, with bad feelings and memories of a place I treasured.

Questions Without Notice

I finally did it. I went to Question Time in the House of Reps.

A polite hokd up getting through security as I forgot about my keys, and I was causing a strange sound from the female guard’s hand-held detector.

Then one queue after another, everything, phone, wallet, hat, keys, checked into cloaking then another queue then ushered into chambers.

I didn’t think, didn’t realise, that I couldn’t see clearly. My long vision, usually fine, was blurred, so I couldn’t make out who was who. Terrible reality check.

When the govt spoke, I could.

It was interesting, but less gripping or earthshaking than I expected. Very matter of course.

A couple of winter Olympians were there, got a mention and stood, gold medals brandished. And the five Iranian soccer players given asylum at 2AM that morning by Tony Bourke were a highlight. Very moving.

Mostly the topic was about petrol and diesel shortages due to the Iran war, due according to Chris Bowen to panic buying, with a very weak Opposition which contributed to the low-consequence atmosphere.

I left three minutes early to avoid queues at the cloaking bench and discovered later that the leader of the Nats, Littleproud, resigned at the tine I was walking out. Might’ve been able to spot that. No real loss.

Glad I did it and, with glasses for it, will probably do it again. It’s comforting, tge whole organised, controlled, architectured, space.

Then drove to Brooks Hill, full hot sun. Batteries on 97% because I disconnected the solar when in the House because of intense sunlight. Went straight onto the fridge over the time, using power.

In Canberra for a lakeside chilly shower. Just got here. On the way in got water, saw Queanbeyan pool was full, and sold my two much appreciated batteries for $10 each, in fyshwick.

Then ordered a cheap inverter with thanks to MH who let me deliver it to him.

That’s it. Canberra done, and literally a huge weight off not carrying around two sets of heavy batteries.

WTF to do now?

That’s one of them above sitting on the ground at the fyshwick scrap metal yard after being sold. Marcus the mechanic gave them both to me in payment for a Transporter van that gave me endless grief. $500 in lieu of.

Here now:

And during a very chilly and twice loudly interrupted night I took this shot over the toilets of the moon. From in bed the only angle I could get.

11.21 AM Just boiled the jetburner and ready to go and sure enough, because I’m here it gives them the idea, down come people so I can’t shower with it. Cold southerly and my shower is getting cold! My fault I should have gone somewhere invisible. But it’s the same principle as people who park right next to me in two hundred yards of open space. People are sheep.

12.10 PM

Managed a shower by angling the car. Added a new glucose sensor. And just this minute chucked outvthe rwo empty Dune Battery boxes that I’ve been carrying around in case of returns. Overcautious but free now, decision made.

I really have to work out where I’m staying, pushing it at Brooks Hill with the prying natives.

4.38 PM

Back at Brooks Hill having a coffee. Got more $4 clearance lights at BigW which are bright, then out to Gungahlin Anaconda to get inverter cables, ordered earlier today, because I thought I’d stay out there.

But it was late, and I went only as far as just before Lake George then chickened out and drove the old Federal Hwy until it looped back, past some campers which might be the spot, then the Sutton Rd to Queanbeyan which bypasssed the whole Canberra thing. Still late re dinner.

Very tired and lonely, alone. Don’t want to go back to the coast.

7 PM

Been a lovely sunny morning then a rain threatening sky and now overcast and chilly.

Shower at Queanbeyan, onto a beaut place beside the Molonglo before it becomes lake,cehere rowers house their canoes and kayaks.

Did some admin on pest inputs at cvx and some money calculations. Hopefully solved those niggling things. Then slight rearranging makes the inside very nice. Much better.

Out to Brooks Hill for the night. Drop off the ssd batteries tomorrow as it looks like the new ones and the monitor work really well. Down to 97% overnight.

Still clueless, but really enjoyed last night in the rain, back in my old stayover spot, and hopefully tonight is as good.

Some gratification that the monitor (and the inconvenient surroundings in which to put it in) and the shunt in the battery compartment, along with the new AGM batteries, works.

Seems to. Down to 98% for running the fridge overnight, which is pleasing because it’ll keep the batteries at a strong level and there’s plenty of room for discharge if needed.

Good sleep but woke too early. 3.45 AM.

 

10.34 AM

Finished shower, at the lake. Sensational.

Forgot yo mention that yesterday I pulled the doors apart enough to spray a heap of lanoline into the lock mechanism thereabouts. Not sure if it did anything.

4.40 PM

At Brooks Hill. Got here alone and fell asleep.

Today I went to a govt carpark at the end of Kings Ave and cleaned out my two food containers. Massive waste. Chucked a heap of stuff. Then cleared out a shelf section and rearranged. There’s now room to build in an inverter and to sit comfortably on the fridge.

Checked oil – strangely it hasn’t needed any for a long time, including the Snowy Mountains Hwy. Put a little in anyway.

At my old favourite spot here at Brooks Hill now I know the old homeless guy isn’t here who pinched it from me.

Instead of outlooking up the weird settlement road I get bushranger bush.