Money was mostly wasted going to the annual West Australian State Camping and Caravan Show. UK readers will know of the Birmingham Camping and Caravan Show held at the NIA. for those who have visited the UK show imagine going to the toilets in the north west corner. That’s about the size of the West Australian Show. Well I might be slightly exaggerating, but it’s small beer compared to the NIA.
I wanted to look at camper trailers managing to inspect two potentially suitable trailers. One I’d already seen an the salesman at the other wasn’t particularly interested. However I did manage to purchase an R&R Beadbreaker with a show discount of 5%.
Ordinarily, when you get a flat tyre you replace it with the spare and take the flat to the garage for repair. However when you’re in the middle of nowhere and all on your own, you need to do the repair yourself. Swinging tyre levers on a heavy duty large 4x4 tyres is hard work and actually proved too difficult for a 75 year old German migrant, so he invented the R&R Beadbreaker to take the majority of the physical effort out of the task.
He actually invented the tool to put the tyre back on the rim. However it was quickly modified to enable it to be used to remove the tyre
I used this tyre because the tread has almost gone and it had a steel screw through the wall. The shinny tip of the screw can be seen in this next photo.
Now I need to teach myself how to replace the tyre on the rim. Several rehearsals will be required before I’m proficient.
There was a financial win when we purchased a folding table from Aldi for $29.95. They were being sold at the show for $55.
Postman Gary appeared today with two small packages. The first was an orange HiViz vest.
When travelling lonely outback tracks you are required to fly an orange HiViz flag. The shops sell them for almost $100. My HiViz vest from China cost $3.32. Jan is going to pull out her sewing machine and convert it into a flag. I’ve already converted an old fishing rod into the aerial.
Gary also delivered the replacement part for the Samsung tablet.
The usb charging port in the tablet has failed and after an online search I was able to purchase a replacement from China for $12.
On a more general note, our retirement fund (mostly shares) has taken a hit. Thank you Donald Trump! This guy is starting to worry me. When you start surrounding yourself will “Yes” people and think your infallible, you can make a serious mistake. Ask Hitler, Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi.
I was also interested in the latest Brexit announcement. It appears the interim agreement mostly gives both sides another two years of negotiating. This gets the EU out of a financial crisis, because their next budget forecast is 2020 and if the UK had exited in 2019 the EU would have a massive hole in their budget. What did the UK gain? It appears Liam Fox has to get his skates on and have a significant number of free trade agreements settled within the next two years, because that’s the only way I can see the UK having any strength during the final negotiations. Interesting times!
Meanwhile the Australian weather has gone crazy. Two major cyclones up north. Two large bushfires in the south east with more than a hundred homes destroyed and flooding in the east.
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