Let's Go Shopping

Here's a little note about beer. There is an off-licence at the bottom of the street called The Mill, and it sells beer from taps. You just buy a refillable bottle the first time and then keep refilling it from the beer tap. Very environmentally friendly, and cheaper too, which is great for the beer drinkers in the house. You can tell from the frothy appearance of this one, which I poured for the photo, that I am not one of those! And no, I do not want a Flake with that, but thanks for asking.

Today it rained solidly the whole day, which didn't really bother us as we had things to do anyway. Straight after lunch we took the Beast to the nearest shopping mall to get some camping supplies. It was fun parking in a really busy carpark when I still don't really know where the edges of the car are! Phil and Lou are going to lend us their tent and assorted other useful items, but some things we need to buy for ourselves because the other two are still using theirs. We went to The Warehouse, which is a large Big W style shop with plenty of cheap and cheerful items on offer. We spent about $350 in total today but got plenty of things like melamine plates and glasses, saucepans and a frying pan, a sleeping bag for me (Skry is borrowing Phil's), flipflops -- or jandals, as I must learn to call them now -- and beach shoes, and a pair of pillows too. We may be camping and hostelling for most of the next while, but I still want a nice feather pillow! At least the Beast has such a huge boot that we can pretty much take whatever we need.

This evening we drove up to Stephen and Caroline's house to return the car that they lent us - technically their son Jason's car, I think, but he never drives it now as he has a four-wheel drive. It really was fantastic to be able to get mobile straight away before we had anything sorted out for ourselves, and I am also benefitting from their internet access right now. Quite apart from being lovely, they are also very useful people to know!