ARC Day 14 - Mount Isa

After breakfast I took Blue to visit our friend's elderly mother who lives a short drive from our caravan park. Blanche has lived in the same house since 1960. She has people living nearby who look out for her. Since she retired from paid work she has put in untold hours of voluntary work for organisations such as Lifeline. I was given four small crocheted blankets Blanche had made from yarn she gets from op shops. Her yarn collection is impressive. Blue had to have a sticky beak.



While the supermarkets and large shops are closed here on Sundays, a pet shop was open so I was able to buy Tilly a new collar since she lost her red one. I would have washed the car at a self service car wash, but didn't have small notes to change into coins for the machine, since we rarely pay with cash these days. I refuelled the Toyota and fortunately didn't repeat Beccy's error and fill up the Prado with petrol when it should have been diesel! She realised her mistake and called the RACQ to tow the vehicle to get the fuel tank drained and cleaned out tomorrow morning.

We spent a lot of the day planning and booking caravan parks and roadhouses up until our next Aussie Road Crew tour which starts on 16 October when we go to Kangaroo Island. As the temperatures are likely to be in the 30s we need to ensure we can connect to power. We had to work around South Australian school holidays and a long weekend but succeeded in making all the bookings we want.

Beccy put on free drinks in the afternoon before dinner at the pub over the road. A few of the Roadies performed an entertaining coronavirus song for us. We took Blue and Tilly for a short outing but Anita didn't realise I have been carrying Blue around to keep him out of the red dust. He had a good dig under her chair then rolled around in the dust to make sure he was totally covered. I kept hold of Tilly as I didn't want her copying Blue's antics. While we were out for the evening he had to stay in his crate to stop him turning our Bushtracker red inside

We ate our pub meals in a large private function room, followed by Beccy's concert. This is the end of our Queensland ARC tour, but half our group are continuing on with Beccy for three more nights into the Northern Territory. We completed our NT border pass applications online and printed a copy to hand in when we cross from Queensland into the Northern Territory. 

After the concert we had to wash Blue in our shower. He needed two washes with shampoo before the water running off him stopped being red. Then he had to be dried - while his fur is short I left his ears and tail long and these needed the hair dryer. It was chaos in this small space for a while, but eventually we put a clean Blue into a clean crate, and Tilly approved.





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