Another warm night with blankets thrown off but we could not throw open windows due to the threat of rain.
The rain never came, and we awoke to a cloudy sky with many patches of blue.
Leaving the caravan to head to the amenities block, we were greeted by several very friendly kangaroos, one so friendly that the kangaroo came to the door of the caravan and was happy for one of our friends to stroke her / him.
We departed in fine weather at 9:00am in what we called a disorganised manner. Our group has not been keen to discuss our method of travel and that became evident today with several of the group travelling together but a couple of the members heading off on their own. Whilst there is no problem with this approach, we do need to coordinate so we have some idea as to when our members will arrive at the daily destination.
As we left the caravan park, some members turned left and our GPS said go right, which we did. Two of us returned to the highway and travelled together until we heard another member in front of us indicating they were detouring to Maclean for coffee. Without hesitation we took the Maclean turnoff. Prior to turning off, we caught one of the vehicles that had turned right. This was a surprise as this couple normally travel a little slower than what we do.
We meet the other couple in Maclean, and we found a coffee shop to break our journey. After returning to our vehicle to continue our journey, we followed the GPS as we left Maclean, and it took us over the old Hardwood Bridge. A big mistake as the bridge is under repair and we had a long wait to cross the single lane bridge. We caught up with the other couples and continued in a small convoy to our overnight destination, the Mullumbimby Showgrounds.
We were very surprised with the cost of a night as they wanted $40 for power and $35 unpowered. These prices seem excessive for a showground, but someone pointed out that a caravan park in this area could be charging up to $70 per night. The showground was extremely wet and muddy, and we rejected the site we were given in favour of parking on a road where we could connect to power. Connecting to water was not an option for us.
Most of our group was camped on mud and it will be interesting tomorrow when we all depart, and we can only hope that no one gets bogged.
We had happy hour at 4:00pm and much to our surprise, it had not rained today. We did have a quick shower of rain just before 4:00pm but the real rain started just after 6:00pm. Microwave meals for tea (pulled pork Mac & cheese) before spending the night watching television and using our computers.
We will do our own thing tomorrow when we cross the border and head into Queensland. We can only hope that it stops raining before we pack up in the morning.
We managed to find a path to the amenities block that avoided the mud and most surface water and thanks to a BOM app on the phone predicting when the rain would stop for a short period of time, we had a late toilet trip to the amenities block without getting wet.
We ran our air conditioning on fan mode for the entire night as we could not open windows to draw in any cool breeze that was present.