Mildura

We arrived in Mildura on Wednesday after calling in at Renmark Club on the way to see Glen Jones-a primary school mate of Mick's. It was great so see him-he looks well and happy and is going really well in his position as head chef at the club.

The weather warmed up as we travelled, so it was a bit of a worry to find our air conditioner smelling and crackling as we set up. I like to turn it on the minute we arrive anywhere as that's one of the times the van really heats up-must be the bitumen roads and the fact it's closed up for X amount of hours.

A visit from a repair man yesterday confirmed that it was stuffed. It has apparently fused the condenser and was going to take a day or so to get the spare part and was covered by our insurance according to him. It tuned out it WASN'T covered and with the factory closed until Monday, it started to look like we'd be here until Thursday. It's too hot to sit around here with no air conditioner, so we called him, cancelled the job and we are moving south to cooler weather as fast as we can. We plan to be in Port Fairy tomorrow and a Port Fairy refrigeration crowd will look at the van for us early next week and get it fixed.

I was really happy when the park gave us back our money for the extra days we paid for and even hppier when the repair man wouldn't take any money for the call out yesterday. It's a bummer it's not covered by our insurance policy as the guy here quoted $1200 to fix it. We live pretty tightly these days and that's an expensive have to have!

Last night we went over to our friends Julie and Geoff (Glen's parents) for a BBQ. It was terrific to catch up with them after a few years. I love the sort of friends you don't see for ages, but are just able to pick up where you last left off. They have been good friends to us for a lot of years now.

Today we've been over at the Centro Mall enjoying their air conditioning, buying a few clothes for us and Kobie and having a bite of lunch. It might be time for a swim in the pool here now.

We picked the park nearest the Jones's and it's turned out a great choice. There has only been 3 vans in and we were told to use as many of the nearby sites as we wished as they wouldn't put anyone near us. The site we chose for the van is well shaded which is lucky although it is still 32 in the van right now.