We moved into the caravan about two weeks ago and so far so good. There was a heat wave the first few days which didn’t make things very comfortable, but since then the weathers been sitting reasonably comfortably around 30 most days. The site we’re on doesn’t have any shade, so it’s feeling a bit hotter than we’d like it to be, but tomorrow a van is moving out from a lovely shady site which we’re hoping to move into. We’re in a caravan park that doesn’t allow pre-booking of sites, so we have to try and grab it when we see them go. Fingers crossed. It’ll make life much more comfortable.

We had our solar panels fitted just prior to moving in. They’ve been fitted along the length of the roof. As we’re living in the van it would have made it difficult to get them fitted once we’d moved in, but in hind sight I do wish we’d waited. It turns out our air conditioning unit, being installed in the side of the van under the wardrobe isn’t really up to heat wave conditions. We think we’ll one day have to change it for a roof mounted unit, but  with the solar panels mounted the way they have been, we haven’t  leftroom for air conditioning. When we do bite the bullet and have it done we’ll have to get all the solar panels re-positioned to make space for it.

When the time comes to do that, it’ll make a lot of our space more user friendly. With the air con mounted into the side it means we have all the pipes running through our wardrobe and one of our kitchen cupboards and they’re a bit intrusive. But we’ll do that a little bit down the track if we’re not managing the heat.

Fuji has settled in well. She’s not supposed to be in this park, but fortunately her timid nature makes it easy to keep her presence hidden. The heat wave on the first couple of days was hard on her, but now she’s settled in and has found little cubbies to snooze in through the day, and at night she’s loving the amount of windows to to look out of. We have our annex up so as to create a bit of privacy and allow her to move around without being seen. She hasn’t been interested yet in coming out into the annex yet, and we’re training her to a leash and harness for when she is feeling comfortable enough to want to venture out a bit further.

Our plan is that she’ll only ever be allowed out into the annex when on her lead. When in places she’s allowed to be it’ll mean we can leave the annex walls off and she can enjoy the great outdoors along with us. When we’re in places she isn’t allowed to be, we’ll put up the walls and the leash will keep both her and all the native animals safe. I suspect though she’ll probably prefer the safe feeling of being inside the van most of the time. We’re very lucky she’s so timid really, as she doesn’t seem to have a wandering bone in her body, or any inquisitiveness to venture outside of her small secure area.

For most people who have owned cats that have the freedom to come and go as they please, it’s probably hard to comprehend how a cat could be happy being confined. It was certainly a pleasant surprise to us. But she is so happy and content in her small space and is much more companionable than any other cat we’ve ever had because of it. Everything about how she reacts to it seems to indicate she’s happier than having to deal with life in a the great outdoors. But then again, we suspect she’d a hard and possibly even tortuous life before stumbling upon us.

Our real journey is set to begin on 17 February when we leave Perth for the south west of WA. Until then we’re still working and still getting things ready. We still have quite a lot to do.