At about 4am the rain returned. And rained. And rained. And now, as I type, it’s 8.30am and it has not stopped. M is sitting at the picnic table that he has decided has uncomfortable seats, looking like a drowned orphan under the tarpaulin.

Oomoo is full of water. All our washing is draped, drenched and bedraggled. I am sitting in the front passenger seat of Vanee catching up on my blogging.

M is growing increasingly fixated on having ‘comfortable’ chairs to sit on. He just suggested we buy normal (not camping) chairs and just keep them in the back of the van. I think his condition stems from not having a comfy chair in the house we were staying in in Melbourne, and also our evil van mattress. I, personally, would like one of those fold out chairs that have the stubby holder in the armrest that live, when unsed, in a cylindrical bag. But M says the good ones start at $50 and that he doesn’t want to spend that much money. I tend to think we could get them for cheaper than that but he just looks disbelieving. Gah.

We’re going to leave this soaking place and drive to Mullumbimby to investigate it in the rain. It’s a good day to go to the movies.

We drove to Mullumbimby, M in grump. Couldn’t find him a cheap prepaid cdma phone. Every post office that I called had run out of the cheap one - the Nokia 2112. We made grand holes in our holiday funds, and bought a new mattress for the van, which was 70 dollars. Ouch. We’d seen some of my fold-out-stubby-holder chairs on sale in a hardware shop catalogue. They were ten dollars. TEN DOLLARS. Each. So we popped into a Mitre 10 and a guy let me sit in one and said how great they were for TEN DOLLARS, and I grabbed one. M ummed and aahed, and pontificated briefly about how he was still going to have to spend at least 50 dollars on a proper, comfortable camping chair. I said fine, he could sit on our tiny low to the ground chairs and I would wave at him from above with a stubby sitting snugly in my right armrest. I pointed out that camping was not supposed to be expensive and comfortable, and that if it was, then you were obviously a grey nomad with weird-arse priorities.

M got a stubby holder chair too. Then we drove 30km to Murwillumbah. Lushly lush greeness. It continued to rain. Not crappy middle of the range Melbourne rain, but big dollopy tropical blobs. M bought a Nokia 3105 from the post office. The exact same phone I bought him from ebay about three weeks ago, but have as yet been unable to unlock. So now we have two - so at least I can clone the one I bought to his current phone, so when he leaves it in his pocket as he jumps overboard, he’ll have a backup phone ready to go.

Murwillumbah wasn’t great. It didn’t seem to be coping with the amount of traffic that was trying to move through it. There were a lot of guys who had that Queensland/Ned Kelly look going on, which indicated to me how close we were to the border (although I was later informed that this is a ‘Kyogle’ look, not a Queensland one). The op-shops were mediocre, and everything seemed to be a little bit run down and dirty. (I did score a rounded old red and white esky for $4 that will look great in Oomoo.)

There was a great bookshop, Bailey’s Books, that we spent some time in. I bought a Pelecanos Right As Rain (yah!) and M bought another Alan Lucas bible. We went and poked around in a fabulous shop called Bowerbird, which had beautiful bits and pieces of homeware (like we even have a home, but I digress). We languished in front of some 1930s china cannisters for flour, sugar, sago etc and pined over some gecko coat hooks. Sigh.

We got lots of information about bush walks and camping spots from an environmental network shop, and the visitors centre. The rain had actually ceased for about an hour or so, but while we were in the visitors centre collecting maps, it returned at quadruple its previous force. Torrential. A deluge. We were soaked running the ten metres to the car.

On the way back to camp we investigated Burringbar, which had a cafe, a church, an op-shop and a general store and that was about it. The op-shop had so much stock that it was impossible to actually find anything. And it sort of stank of dried old sweat. However, I did find a stash of great cassettes - including my fave - a Rough Trade sampler from 1989, Garbage’s first album, and a whole lot of restricted release stuff from Festival Records that I’m going to investigate. Oh. And Bananarama dance mixes. Eeek!

Rain. Rain. Rain. Back in Mullumbimby we bought an extra tarpaulin to try and do battle against the precipitation at our campsite. Our funds were low. We filled our new little 1kg gas bottle so we could use our special lantern that M’s mother gave us about a bazillion years ago.

Went for a swim. My newshorts performed moderately well in the surf, while my bather tops were an utter disaster. M started calling the occasional enthusiastic wave a ‘two puppy’ wave. I shall not go into further detail. I am now just going to wear a black, racer back sports bra that I’m hoping will be wave proof.

We collected our mail from the Terrace caravan park and…relief! A cheque from the insurance company for our poor little stolen Tohatsu motor (short of the $200 premium). Splendid news! This made me feel much better about our tarp, chairs, mattress and M’s phone.

Our came, after dark, is completely revolutionised by the new chairs - but most of all by the lamp. Up until now we have eaten by candlelight and then sat in the back of Vanee reading with the torch. The gas light is fantastic- very effective, and the quality of light is great. It’s not like being stuck in a Seven/Eleven, it’s like being bathed in a golden glow. We both felt quite beatific.

We had some divine beetroot and hommus dip, and then M made tuna sandwiches for dinner.