Thames

It was Sunday evening 23 March when we spent the night on a campsite in Thames. A campsite with a long-haired, decidedly eccentric male owner, and where signs and rules proliferated. 'Floor may be slippery'. 'No noise after 10pm.'   'Penalty will be imposed for showers longer than 6 minutes'. 'Please clean basin after use'. That sort of thing, and also a notice in the ladies' shower block asking us not to complain about certain short comings because updating was in progress - when it was obvious that the owner had only been tinkering with improvements for years.
The site advertised free Wi-Fi but the owner would not disclose the password and insisted upon entering it himself on guests' computers.  There was only a signal on the decking outside the shop and the router was switched off at 10pm.

What made up my mind about the owner's madness was the information that his freezer contains wild pig that he shot one night on the site. I had a vision of campers fleeing in all directions as the pig ran through the site pursued by the man on his bike, hair flying, shot gun on the handlebars.

With muesli (me) and cocoa pops (him) running low, we drove into Thames on Monday morning for breakfast. Progressing slowly, with an elevated view from the cab of the van, down the long main street lined by single storey shops with verandahs felt like driving into town on the stagecoach in a Western.
In a cafe run by a Cambodian couple we had the full English. Then it was off to the library for free Wi-Fi and blogging for me and a wander down to the waterfront with his binoculars for Lawson.
He met me later at the library saying that he felt Thames was a town he'd be happy to retire to because it seemed to have everything except the frenetic activity and traffic of bigger places. I had to agree that, sitting listening to conversations and people watching in the library, I also got the impression of a relaxed, friendly but thoroughly modern, community.

Thames sculpture