Snowy Mountains Trip - Day 16

Day 16 - 10/5/2011 - Cooma

It was an early and cold start today.  We had to get the Pajero into the Dealer by 8.15 am for a service.  Our hands were frozen by the time we’d made breakfast and cleaned up.  We dropped the car into the dealer, and then wandered up to the main street as it was too far to walk back to the van park.

The weather really wasn’t too flash at all.  It was drizzling rain on and off, overcast and a freezing cold wind was blowing.  We sat outside the Coles store (inside the shopping centre) to get out of the wind and cold to eat our smoko but it didn’t help all that much.  We then wandered down to the Camping Store in the main street and spend a couple of hours and some $$$.  We both bought a pair of Emu Ugboots - the best purchase we made on the trip!  They are so comfortable and warm - and if you wear them under jeans you can’t even tell they are ugboots!  We also bought a few more pieces of LOC n LOC boxes for the van and a Led Lenser torch.  I will never buy another brand of torch again, they are fantastic (but expensive!).  After that we went and picked up the pajero and headed back to the van park for lunch.

Some friends that I had meet when I was in Rockhampton had moved to Cooma.  We arranged to go to Gareth and Tanya’s house at around 5 o’clock’ish.  It had been a long time since we had caught up with Gareth and Tania and their kids had grown up heaps.  They have also been doing heaps of work on their house - they even have transformed the shed into a guest house which is still under construction at the back of their house!  Luckily for us Gareth had the fire roaring by the time we arrived, (he knew us Queenslanders would be feeling the cold!) We ordered pizzas for dinner which were very yummy!  It was great catching up with old friends.  After dinner we said good bye and headed back to the cold little Quantum!!

When we got back it was about 5deg inside and out of the van and the temperature was dropping rapidly.  In about half an hour the diesel heater had the inside temperature up to a bearable 12deg and climbing.  By the time that we eventually went to bed it was about -0.5deg outside.  It was going to be a chillie night!!  The diesel heater certainly earned its keep again that night.