We both slept well and pressed the “snooze” button on the alarm to sneak another 10 minutes in the comfort of our bed.
There were two activities planned today, the first was a visit to a farm that had embraced solar power, the second was an afternoon tea hosted by the local branch of the CWA.
We disposed of breakfast quickly and then “He” emptied our cassette and cleaned the back of our car prior to the trip to the solar farm. As it transpired, we were invited by another couple to go with them and we accepted.
97 vehicles left our campsite at 9:30am and headed towards Copeton Dam (about 25k’s) before turning left onto a very dusty dirt road for the final 6 or so kilometres into the farm. The volume of vehicles created a massive dust storm and at times it was impossible to see the vehicle in front of you. It was worse than driving in fog!
We were a little disappointed with the solar experiences as we could not hear the presentation and the solar installation was not as sophisticated as we expected. The owner did admit that several mistakes had been made and needed to be rectified. Nevertheless, what we did see was a system that produced enough power to run a couple of refrigerators and numerous household appliances as well as providing enough power to start electric motors. It looked like most of their money had been invested in a large bank of batteries. The batteries were lead acid with lithium too expensive at the time of installation of the solar farm.
We enjoyed a sausage sizzle (catered for by the local CWA branch) on the property and returned to our campsite early in the afternoon and before it started to rain. Depending on the weather, we may return to the road to Copeton Dam before we leave as there are many ruined buildings worthy of a photograph.
Rain had been forecast for today and it came in the afternoon. 10mm had been forecast but the rainfall was probably a lot less.
We went to the afternoon tea hosted by the CWA and returned, in the rain, to our campsite and then joined our neighbours for happy hour and our evening meal. We stayed talking to just short of 10:00pm.
Returning to our caravan we found a small frog happily sitting on our induction cooktop. He was in no hurry to move and allowed us to take some pictures.