The Blue Arsed Fly: the final hurrah with Fate

The Blue Arsed Fly is a wonderful grey nomad travel series by Bruce Hathaway and his wheelchair-bound wife, Elaine. If you’d like to read his previous blog, you can find it here

Of course me hearties there were a few things to be put right in the van so we stopped at the factory on the way home. Now, the A/C turned out to be a loose electrical connection – easily fixed – the switch on the wall turns on/off LED light above the bed, they didn’t tell me that, felt like ordinary seaman told to go get a sky hook or find the golden rivet. But the really big banger was the toilet. I said in my previous rantings that they put the toilet on a pedestal but when mother went to use it first time, only her tootsies touched the floor. No problem – they would remove the pedestal, this they did so the toilet rested on the floor, problem solved.

Bloody hell, me girlfriend stuck her size sixteen feet in and stuffed it up!

You see me friends, dropping the toilet was fine except for one thing and if you can guess what it is, I’ll give you a signed copy of my next blockbuster “To Hell With Sister Fate”.

Times up: You see, the hatch through the wall was cut out to match the raised toilet and now with the toilet lower, the canister wouldn’t able to be removed as the hatch was now too high. So what do we do? Put the loo up high as before and let mother suffer? No way, that great man at ROMA Arthur came up with the solution: cut out a section of the checker plate to match the position of the toilet. This left about a 3 inch gap at the top of the hatch and so now the van has a small patch put into the skin. It’s partially behind the lift and isn’t too noticeable but now mother can go to the loo in comfort and isn’t that what life is all about? If you have a comfortable loo then you haven’t too much to complain about, have you!

So ladies and germs, that’s the end of another saga of the Blue Arsed Fly for this year. Next year is already planned: we’re heading for outback Queensland, as far north as Normanton before heading for Brisbane and a cruise to PNG to celebrate our 50^th year anniversary of joining the Navy in 1965.

That is of course if there are no disasters but remember the BAF is accident prone, hope you enjoyed the journey.

What was your favourite part of the Blue Arsed Fly’s journey? Have you ever had problems with your caravan? Tell us below!