Necessities

So, before we left Old Bar, I was already getting a list together of what we had forgotten, that we may need to buy. I forgot my thongs (flip flops to you Americans), Rob his hat. We’re going to need to do some washing soon, and a delicates bag would really help to care for my bras. And we’re missing having our own cracked salt and pepper.

We arrived at our apartment in Port Macquarie (alright, just outside of the town, Rob wanted to go a bit cheap on this trip). The first thing I copped was a wiff of mold, confirmed by a few black smudges on the sheer curtains. We entered, Rob had confirmed that the place had a kitchenette, but as we entered Rob warned it was a ‘basic’ kitchenette. I guess he could already predict that we had been ripped off in that department! Yep, no stove, no oven. Just a microwave, kettle, toaster, some plates and cutlery. Oh, and a tea towel and a sachet of washing up liquid after a bit of hunting around. Washing up needs to be done in the only hand-basin which thankfully is adjacent to, rather than in the bathroom.

“I’m sorry our apartment is a dive”, Rob has whined a few times. It’s actually not that bad, but it’s not that comfortable that you would want to ‘hang out’ in it, which was to be my preferred activity here. There’s a hook on the main wall space, but the picture has long since disappeared. In the living area the lighting is dismal, one over in the ‘kitchenette’, the other diagonally across the room, above a single bed. Both oyster lights, not the best for reading, writing or needlework.

“Rob, did you bring your cap lamp?”

“No, I didn’t actually”

It may have to be TV in the evenings here…

There is a massive widescreen TV (the owner has mentioned this a few times, come to think of it), smack bang on top of the only counter space available for food prep. Why didn’t he wall mount the thing in the space where a holiday print is meant to sit?

So my duty to play ‘housewife’ on this trip has been stripped away from me. There’s not going to be nice home cooked dinners here, although I am setting my mind to how I can be creative with the outside BBQ (surely I can do scrambled tofu on a massive frypan of a hotplate!), or ‘boil in pouch’ meals (we do have one camp stove with us, we cooked Mac & Cheese for lunch which was actually doable, if it wasn’t, I might be in a worse frame of mind regarding our accommodation!). Rob’s going to have wrinkled clothes for his aviation training this week, as there is no iron nor ironing board provided. And I’m going to have to search out a laundry mat and hang about while I washing washes, rather than slip back to our luxury digs which was my original preference (except the man thought he could get just as good, cheaper).