Today we had to return to the mainland. As you can see from the photo, we didn’t all want to go! But we had a good eight days, and were ready to move on – to get back to the mainland to have a nice curry, do our laundry (and does that need doing) and pack ready for Australia. We’ll also be able to catch up with our email, update the website and (literally) recharge our batteries – after eight days with no electricity or many lights, the batteries in the laptop, the torches and the cameras are all flat as pancakes.

We went back to the same hotel we’d started in, into the same room – it’s always comforting to go back to somewhere you have been before. The children were instantly comfortable with their surroundings again – a lesson we’ll remember for the future. But hopefully when we get to Oz and buy our camper van, we’ll be taking our surroundings with us as we travel, so Charlotte’s little bit of homesickness will recede for a while. And as Sarah’s Mum and Dad will be meeting us in December in Australia, that will be something for the girls to look forward to (Emily has already decided that she’ll be sleeping in Nana’s bed!)