Thursday 29 September 2016

First-aid ...

At some stage since our move to caravan living, we decided it was easier to take our dual fuel stove with us to boil a kettle/billy, rather than filling our thermoses before departure.

In more recent times our original dual fuel stove hasn't been working as well as it used to.  (It was purchased in very early 2009, so has done good work over the years).

I wasn't prepared to retire the original but thought we could use a small version for our day-trips, while we decided how to re-tune the larger stove.

Although Nick and Erin had tested the new stove while Vaughan and I were in WA, I was keen to see it in action once home again.

We found ourselves at Mount Franklin the day after Vaughan and I returned to Victoria.  We had a picnic lunch followed by a round of hot beverages, before setting off for a walk up the crater.  Tanya rang when we were at the top, to announce that she and Brett had eloped!  We chatted for a while before heading back down to Elmer - and decided another round of drinks was in order.

I'm not quite sure what went wrong but the billy slipped off the stove and spilled boiling water across the table.  Some splashed on Erin but as Vaughan was closest, it wet his leg.  He stripped off his track-pants and Nick applied some cold water but Vaughan then said he was ok and pulled his pants back up.  There was a bit of drama before his pants were removed and more water was applied - due to Vaughan being anti even semi-nakedness anywhere, let alone a public space!

We probably tipped 12-plus litres of very cold water over the knee, with many trips back to the tank to refill our bottles.  The local hospital was 15 mins away so after ringing, we drove there.  They checked Vaughan's leg and said we'd done the right thing.  (They advised water should be tepid not cold but we used what was on-site). A gel infused pad was applied and held in place with a bandage - which did very good work overnight (and the skin healed fully after a few days).

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