We arrived a day early for the chapter rally but couldn't get in to the rally site.
We parked on the side of a local road outside the fence of the rally site and had our usual happy our on the grass. One of the safari who had left some time ago arrived unexpectedly and cooked pancakes for us all
In Thursday we settled in early. We walked into town (a considerable distance for us) and did a little shopping.
In the afternoon there was a General Meeting of the Chapter to discuss the situation regarding the disposition of funds from the Roma Rally which had been raised at Townsville.
A resolution to establish a committee to investigate the truth of the matter we made and I was elected to be its Chairman.
In the evening, the Leagues Club put on a "two for one" dinner deal which was really very good. The seafood was very fresh and there was plenty of vegetables and salads.
On Friday, the Committee met to work out a modus operandi. With no real access to the relevant documents, it was agreed to seek copies of any formal documents being held by any of the players.
On Saturday I wrote up the meeting minutes and drafted a letter for consideration by the Committee.
In the evening we all had Christmas dinner at the Leagues Club. It was all right in an institutional kind of way, about what you'd expect at any club I guess.
On Sunday we had a committee meeting in the morning to approved the draft letter and I spent a considerable time writing up and printing all the minutes and printing all the letters.
Somebody posted on the rally notice board a clipping from the Cairns newspaper which contained a report of the views of a number of named caravan park owners on "parasite" motorhomers who spent a week in Cairns at the showground paying only a fraction of the running rate in caravan parks. The piece failed to include any other views. There was no mention of the fact that there isn't the capacity to provide for an extra 150 vehicles in the caravan parks of Cairns in this busy period. I suspect the journo really wasn't happy doing this piece because he named all the sources and identified their caravan parks so that we could all boycott them.
The most stupid comment was that motorhomers have breadmakers and use longlife milk presumably to avoid shopping altogether though where the flour and milk come from, and the breadmaker for that matter, one can only guess. One wonders if the ignoramus who expressed this view uses the local laundry to clean his clothes rather than having a washing machine.
While I was reading this, the power of the free market was amply demonstrated. An old guy turned to me and said "I have a four week booking at that caravan park. He can whistle for that, now".
With the extra consumption and the lack of sunshine we ran out of power in the batteries so we left and went to the Rodeo Ground where we had been offered campsites with power and water.
On Sunday night we were the only motorhome at the Rodeo Ground. The blessed isolation was very refreshing after so much socialising. The TV was on the fritz so we dined, read and went to bed
On Monday we went into town to do the laundry, the shopping and to try to get the TV repaired. No hope of that so we invested in a new one (a spare!!!). Since we have a VCR and mains from the inverter, we only need a simple 34 cm set which was quite cheap.
When we got back to the Rodeo Ground, there were motorhomes everywhere and we had to squeeze in.
Tuesday was devoted to cleaning out the food cupboard and starting the installation of the TV antenna alarm.