As most of my readers are aware, and for those that are not,
the Top End has just hit the beginning of the Wet season, the monsoonal weather
that brings the place back to life again for near 6 months. Monsoon, Wet
season, whatever you choose to call it, there’s lots of rain. Some of it comes
in to my caravan.
The first night that I slept out on the block through a
storm I felt like the caravan was going to blow away. The tarpaulin I’d put up
turned into a giant sail making the caravan rock like there was an earthquake.
With the tarp raised so high it let all the rain in and it dripped on to my
expensive jacket from the ceiling. I removed everything from that area and
stuck a bowl under the leak and went back to sleep. The lesson learned from
that night was be prepared for any leaks and tie the tarpaulin down better.
The second storm the caravan copped I wasn’t even there. But
it was windy enough to blow the caravan off the jack and block and the tow
frame hit the dirt, the caravan then being on a lovely slant. I looked at the
distance between the ground and the highest place I could jack it up from and
was pretty certain I wasn’t about to make the caravan level again for the
night.
So naturally that night there was a storm. And there I am,
sleeping at the most bizarre angle to prevent myself from rolling out of bed
and the rain starts pouring in from around the air conditioner. With the
changed angle of the caravan it gave an opportunity for the rain to be able to
leak in where it ordinarily wouldn’t. The dog slept under the bed. She warned
me twice that a big storm was coming. I told her not to be a sook and that it
would go around us. Dog was right, I was wrong. Every time lightning struck I
could see how much the rain was pelting down.
The leak that revealed itself on the first rainy night
needed fixing to prevent any worsening of the damage inside. I tossed up
between a fibreglass repair kit and bitumen strips. Bitumen strips won as it
was cheaper and there was less stuffing around. The packet said ‘permanent’ and
‘suitable for caravans’ so I was on a winner and that afternoon I parked the
landcruiser as close to the caravan as I could get it, climbed up onto it and
applied the bitumen strips to any holes or cracks in the roof I could see. This
is the point where I discovered that my entire caravan roof was rooted. Plan B
of a lean-to was not going to work. Plan B was tek-screw some C-section onto
the roof and tek-screw the tin to that. Plan A was a steel structure that would
later be the carport for the first house. I couldn’t afford the steel, my tin
is on a neighbouring station on the back of a truck where it’s been for 2
months and the bloke who was hopefully going to help me build it is impossible
to pin down for half a day. So now I’m at Plan C but that’s probably not going
to happen either… I’m such a cynic!
On hot nights I don’t even bother to sleep inside the
caravan. It’s not worth it. I sleep outside in my cute, little camp bed with a
mozzie net and a burning mozzie coil on the step ladder a safe distance from
it. If there’s a breeze, that’s great. If not, stiff biscuits. But I awake to
the sound of birds when the sun begins to rise. I get up, I get ready for work,
I get bored, I go to work over an hour early.
If I’m tired and need a nap there’s no chance I will risk a
migraine by sleeping in the camp bed in the heat of the day. The Prado with the
air conditioning running solves that problem… Till my neck gets sore.
Over time I will either adjust life to cater for the varying
weather situations or just simply do more house sitting. Meh, I like the house
sitting bit the most I think.
 |
| Camp bed |
 |
| Tigger's caravan has fallen down |
