I had promised the Woods that we would spend a little time with them so we headed south towards Beaudesert. We stopped at Jimboomba to do the laundry and to do a little shopping.
The Dawsons and the Rands were still at Sherwood Forest so we had a few people for happy hour.
I spent the best part of the day building a the electric bucket (a bilge pump with a level water switch mounted on a plate which sits in a bucket) which will enable us to recover all the rain water which runs off the awning and which will make filling the fresh water tank from jerry cans easier.
In the evening, we celebrated Ross's birthday with a barbecue, a super fruit salad made by Val and cream cake complete with 53 candles prepared by Keryn.
After dinner, the batteries were low and it was still hot so I ran the generator and the airconditioner for a couple of hours. I have to turn the fridge on the 240V to stabilise the generator while it is on low load and I forgot to switch it back to gas when I switched the genny off. Consequently, the batteries ran down in a few hours. Fortunately, I woke up and finally worked out what had happened and switched the fridge back on so we only had empty batteries and not a hot fridge as well.
We went into Beaudesert to do the chapter banking and to shop. It was as hot as hades and we were unhappy to have to leave the airconditioned comfort of the shopping centre.
Jean spent the afternoon sleeping in the Motley with the air conditioner on and I finished the installation of the electric bucket.
At dusk, a severe rainstorm hit us and I was able to fill the fresh water tank using the electric bucket. It needs a little work but it does the job remarkably well. I thank Don Kennedy for yet another good idea.
I spent the morning working on the awning. I only managed to destroy another spring assembly.
I took a quick trip into Jimboomba to buy some supplies.
In the afternoon, I had a look at Keryn's chapter laptop which is still not working. The diagnostic message says that a windows system file is missing. As the recovery disk reformats the disk, it will be necessary to back up all the vital files before we can do that. I have taken the machine with a view to attempting a repair myself, or, failing that, taking it back to Acer yet again.
In the evening, we all went to the RSL for dinner to celebrate Keryn's daughter Joanne's birthday. We dined well on Sea Perch and on the way home we stopped in at Macas for a 40c icecream.