Day 4: St Helens to Somerset

At the outset, we knew this was a down day – a long drive today. We needed to get from St Helens to Somerset, so we could start the West Coast part of our holiday. But this day turned out to be not so good for a couple of other reasons.

It started first thing in the morning when we found that the girl’s scooters had been stolen overnight. We had left them outside the door of the motorhome, along with our seats and a few balls. This is nothing unusual – everyone else leaves these things outside overnight. But they were gone, and we saw no hint of them. The girls were naturally pretty upset.

Then, when we were checking out of the park, I wound the drivers window down (electric window), and it refused to go up. Nothing we could do would budge it. We ended up checking the fuse, and I stripped the door down later at lunch, but I couldn’t see anything. So we drove through the day with the window down (both noisy, cold and insecure), while the motorhome company tried to figure out what to do about it – no easy task, this whole state really is completely shut down over this Christmas weekend.

In fact, that was a problem for a different reason – we needed fuel, and service station after service station was shut. I was starting to get pretty concerned when we came to our last chance town (Avoca) but fortunately it was open.

On the first day we had discovered Longford, and we liked it so much we went back there for lunch on the way past Launceston. Then we followed the Bass highway down to Burnie, stopping at a series of farm shops: Raspberry Farm, Cheese Factory, and Chocolate Factory. Yum.

After the chocolates, Kath decided to drive. Shortly after pulling out onto the road, she found the window annoying, and pulled the button to make it go up. Something I had done many times myself. Well, this time it went up. Apparently, according to Kath, this is a woman’s touch thing. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The girls certainly laughed. Lots. Seriously, I guess it’s a loose contact – we won’t be touching that window for the rest of the trip.

Tonight we stopped at Somerset – a lovely little camping ground just across from a gentle beach. It has internet access!