It’s amazing just how much the weather can change over a couple of hundred kilometers. Not long ago (like just a couple of days) I was pulling my ugg boots on and wrapping myself in my blankie. Well, today it’s so hot (33degrees) I think our bodies are in shock and we have even had to put on the air conditioner. 
We had wanted to keep travelling straight through to Kurumba which is the furtherest you can drive without ending up in the Gulf of Carpentaria. Unfortunately, there is an an accommodation shortage during the dry season as nomads and travellers from all over Australia flock here for the sun. It’s one of the few places where the sun is shining and the temperature is in its 30s in Australia at the moment. 

We quite forgot that we would be limited for groceries in this area of Australia. When we were travelling with my brother and his wife, (see the early days of this blog) they were really good at planning ahead for things like that. Since then we have been mainly in highly populated areas so getting supplies has been easy and I guess we were “lulled into a false sense of security”. We needed to seriously top up our supplies, so to the local “One Stop Shop” in Normanton we had to go. 

We collected a trolley intending to at least half fill it but on the way in my eye caught the display of chocolate and I began to seriously doubt if any shopping at all would happen. The price of a family block of chocolate was $8.49. If this was the price for chocolate, what other shocks were we in for?

We ended up buying 2 items, putting back the trolley and using the experience as a learning example. I was determined to use every last pantry item we had to get by rather than pay the inflated prices that we saw. We quite understand the need to charge more because the freight on top of the “little bloke” buying power is hefty. We have been there. We owned a 7 day a week supermarket in a remote tourist area. But, we are proud to say that we NEVER, ever took advantage of it. 

Anyway, we returned to the van, Ray got chatting with the man next door and Caleb and I focused on his schoolwork. We were warned about securing our belongings overnight as the local population was known for helping themselves to whatever they could find. We packed up before going to bed, ready for an early start in the morning.