Did you know that in the 1980s, an American burger joint (A&W) tried selling 1/3 pound burgers at the same price as McDonald’s 1/4 pound burgers, but that they didn’t sell?
Why didn’t they sell?
Because people don’t understand fractions and assumed that a 1/3 pound burger was smaller than a 1/4 pound burger, and figured that it didn’t offer the same value.
Only a short trip today. About 203km from Forsayth through to Pinnarendi Station. About 2.5 hours travel time, not counting stops.
Pinnarendi Station is not a locality as such, but the name of a working cattle station. The actual location is called Forty Mile … which is probably just as unhelpful.
They probably should stop calling it Forty Mile and instead call it 64 Kilometre, but I can’t see that will be helpful either.
Let’s face it. If it was called 64 Kilometre, people would think it’s further away, right? And they wouldn’t go.
So how about I just say that we are about 200km SW of Cairns?
If you can recall me commenting on the gravel road into Forsayth from Georgetown, then I’m sure it won’t surprise you that it is still gravel. I mean, it’s only been 2 days.
Of the 40km road into Georgetown, probably 8km or so is pretty rough and corrugated. So it was a slow old trip out.
When we were at Cobbold Gorge yesterday, there was an older guy talking to another couple and he said that after dragging his van into Cobbold George over 37km of gravel, lights were broken, the microwave had fallen out, and there was dirt everywhere.
I’d suggest that he was driving too fast.
In any case I wasn’t talking the risk, so we did about 8km of gravel from Forsayth to Georgetown at about 40km/h.
You may recall that when we came through Georgetown on the way in, we were looking forward to stopping on the way out and have a poke around.
Bad idea.
Georgetown on a Saturday morning is closed. The coffee van was closed. Everything was closed. I must have imagined that there was lots to see, but clearly my memory isn’t what it used to be. There was hardly anything there of any value, and it was closed anyway.
But despite all of that, it is a pretty little town.
Sleepy, but pretty.
We did a quick lap of the township, then climbed aboard Elsie for the next leg of the journey to Mt Surprise.
Roads were mostly OK, but there were quite a few sections of single lane only that was pretty ordinary.
We rolled into Mt Surprise around 11.00am and were pleasantly … surprised. Another pretty little town that seems to have a history around both WWII and the railways. Lots and lots of vans and motorhomes stopped in Mt Surprise, so we stopped too and had a look around.
Mt Surprise is a very RV friendly town. They have a dump point right there in the main street next to the train station, so if you find yourself in North Queensland with a full toilet cassette in your caravan, Mt Surprise is the place to go.
Just don’t camp at the railway station.
I needed a caffeine hit, so I had a quick coffee before heading off.
Elsie still had a tiger in her tank from yesterday, so Elsie was happy.
I had coffee in my tank, so I was happy.
And MBW is always happy. Well, mostly …
From Mt Surprise it was only a short hop to Pinnarendi Station. About 50km. Good wide, fast road and we sat on 100km/h most of the way. Most of the trip was travelling east, but we hit a T intersection and turned north for the last 10km or so.
We had booked and paid for our space at Pinnarendi Station several days ago, so all we had to do was arrive and be told what site we are on. That should be a quick and straight-forward process.
There were 3 other vans ahead of us waiting to check-in when we arrived, and the process was long and rather tedious. It seems that the lady who does check-ins has a predetermined speech that she needs to give to all arrivals, and she explains all of the features and activities that can be done, whether you actually have any interest in doing any of them.
There is a sign in the men’s toilets that says you are only allowed one (1) squirt of liquid soap handwash because:
a) one squirt should be enough for anybody, and besides
b) each squirt costs 13 cents.
So I did as I was told and gave myself a 13 cent handwash.
MBW washed out some smalls, we had lunch, and now we are just hanging around camp and wondering what the poor people are doing.
It’s pretty warm here – about 30 degrees but there is a nice breeze blowing outside under the awning. Of course it could be a very pleasant 22 degrees – or even a chilly 16 degrees – if we went inside, closed all of the windows and turned on the air-conditioning … but that’s not the point, right?
The spaces here are lovely and (mostly) shady, and I’m thinking I should put my 20m wire up in a tree and see if I can make any contacts on 40m (7MHz).
I’m also debating whether to have a nap, or whether I could get away with a 10m antenna as an alternative to a 20m wire, but frankly my brain is hurting too much trying to figure that out just now, so I suspect that the nap may win the day.
BTW that story about the 1/3 pound burgers is true. You can read about it here.
This is living! Nothing to do and all day to do it.
Ciao
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