Still here. But in good news: the windscreen is all fixed, and the sunroof is patched up properly! 馃帀
I received the long awaited phone call at about 10:30am this morning – the windscreen had arrived on the truck and I could bring the car in to have it fitted over the next few hours! They were even able to drop us down into town before they took the car back up to the workshop, which was super handy.
We headed to the Family Fun Park first, which we hoped would use up most of the time we had to wait for the car. It’s a huge playground, but it also has a decent water park as a part of it as well. Unfortunately, when we arrived, the water park wasn’t running – even though it was supposed to be! So the kids enjoyed running around on the play equipment for a while. Shortly after though, were then joined by one of the local schools and a bunch of teenagers who were having an hour or so at the park for morning tea or something like that! The bigger kids were fine, and they didn’t bother our kids at all – but obviously they were much bigger than our kids, and so they started to retreat a little!
With the water park not being an option anymore, we realised that the park would probably be short-lived, and so we made a couple of other plans on the run. First up though we needed some lunch, so we wandered back through town to see what we could find and ended up settling on the Coffee Club for a nice lunch.
Then, with still potentially another hour or so until the car was back, we headed to Kmart. And we decided to set the kids a challenge: they had $10 to spend, and they had to choose things that would be useful for the rest of the holiday. And the only rule was that they had to buy multiple things (so that at least they were doing a bit of maths). Sure, it was possibly going to create a bit more junk that we had to carry through the last 4 weeks – but we know how much the kids love buying things, and so we thought this was a good way to kill some time, and keep them really interested. Sure enough, it did take quite a while, because each of the kids took a lot of time to decide what they wanted! Lots of back and forth and tough decisions. But they each were really happy with what they purchased.
Shortly after, it was time to collect the car. Not only had they fitted the new windscreen, but they did a great job on sealing up the sunroof solidly. It’s still using that plastic board I got from the caravan park, but it’s now got a good seal of the magic crash wrap underneath it, along with a couple over the top as well. So it should be really solid all the way home. (I think I’ve settled on just getting it fixed properly when we get back home.)
So that means tonight is finally the last night here in Mount Isa. We’ll head off early tomorrow towards Hughenden, and hopefully still tick off a couple of the things we wanted to do on the way through Cloncurry, Richmond and Julia Creek. Although we’re going to miss a couple of things in Hughenden that we wanted to see, and we also won’t get a chance to drop into Charters Towers, we’re still going to make it to Undara on time for our tour bookings there, which is something we’ve all been looking forward to.
