Day 25 – 7th February 2018 – Norseman to Esperance

So a small incident happened after I published the blog last night.  I will share with you the story.  A storm was scheduled to hit Norseman around 2pm but wasn’t meant to be anything too major according to the BOM site.  It was early evening and we saw the grey clouds rolling in from a distance and I thought I would take the opportunity to have a quick shower before the storm hit.  As you know, we use a double shower/toilet tent, and I nicked around to the tent and jumped in the shower.  I had no sooner put conditioner in my hair when the shower tent promptly folded down on top of me.  There is a window at the back of the tent to allow the shower hose through and my face and elbow were popping out of it each time the tent blew over.  I was battling with the shower hose in one hand and holding the tent off my head with the other, quickly trying to wash out my conditioner.  At that point I look down at the toilet side of the tent and see the first tent peg pop out and the corner start lifting, then the second tent peg went pop and that side of the tent was starting to get airborne.  So there I am naked, holding onto the tent with all my might and screaming at the top of my voice for Col to come and save me   Unfortunately he was running around like a mad man trying to put down the annex before it got ripped off and putting all the equipment away to protect it.  Eventually he did hear my distressed cries and came to my aid.  He held the tent while I very quickly pulled a short dress over my head – no time for undies!  So off we dashed inside the van, but to my horror, the wind got hold of my dress and as I battled to try to keep it down, I did give anyone looking a bit of a show hahahaha.  It would have been an hilarious scene to watch play out.  Hopefully everyone else was so focussed on their own vans that they didn’t notice my showering or streaking incident.  It was pretty funny.

Shortly after getting inside the van (and putting on underwear), I see that the tent has completely collapsed and was looking like it was going to completely blow away.  I braved the wind and rain and managed to put the toilet on top of the tent to prevent it getting airborne.  We did get a bit of video footage (not of my semi-naked run).  Lessons learnt – never shower just before a storm hits if you are using a shower tent and always wear undies!

The storm passed pretty quickly and the rest of the night was uneventful.

Today we packed up camp at Norseman and headed for Esperance.  The drive was really beautiful and both Col and I were appreciating the beautiful woodland, lakes and shrubs.  So different to SA.  The bark on the trees is quite orange and reminds me of the colour that everything is painted when the sun is setting.  Will try and get a good photo of them tomorrow.  We did a bit of shopping in town and then set up at a Freecamp about 65km East of Esperance.  We plan to camp at one of 3 camps on the foreshore, but need to do a bit of a drive around tomorrow to see how busy they are and if we can get the van and boat in ok.  So we have set up camp temporarily until we choose the best spot.  We plan to stay in Esperance for about a week.  It will be nice to stay put for a few days.

The weather is still all over the place – it was 39 degrees yesterday and 20 today!  Hoping we can get some days somewhere in the middle.