This Adventurous Age

Adventures travelling and working around Australia.

Monthly Archives: February 2018


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2002 Travels April 25

THURSDAY 25 APRIL     ASPLEY

We set off late morning, to do some sight seeing of parts of Brisbane we mostly had not seen before.

Drove east to the coast, through the suburbs that are almost the northern edge of Brisbane, to the older, seaside suburbs of Sandgate and Brighton. Took a road that hugged the shore line to the north – very pretty.

Crossed a long bridge to the suburbs of Redcliffe and Scarborough, again, hugging the shore line as much as we could. There was an outlook across to Moreton Island, in the distance. We parked where we could look out over the sea, and had our packed lunch.

I think if I had to live in Brisbane, it would be these seaside suburbs that were most attractive. Of course, I don’t know if they are prone to sandflies!

We left the coast then, but continued north, through Burpengary and Morayfield.

Some thirty years ago, first husband and I holidayed, for a short time one January, in Brisbane, with a friend. I remember, dimly, that it was extremely hot and humid and we could not find the energy to venture out and do much. However, we did engage in some speculation in land, buying acreage – bush – in the Morayfield area. That land was long sold, but I was curious to see if I could find it again – having only ever been there once – to see if it had been developed as Brisbane spreads north. Development of the area in general was certainly happening, but I could not locate anything familiar, or the land. At the time, although this land was distant from the Brisbane built up area, there were large areas of pine plantation between the then outer suburbs and the Morayfield area – we had thought there was a chance that development would jump the pine areas to where we bought.

From Caboolture, made our way back east again, crossing the bridge over a fairly narrow sea channel, onto Bribie Island. This appeared to be a flat, sandy island – we were not able to explore much of it by road. It appeared to be changing, with housing development happening – looked like it was on the way to becoming suburban, too.

Then it was back to camp, before the late afternoon traffic peak.


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2002 Travels April 24

WEDNESDAY 24 APRIL     ASPLEY

The solar man turned up, as promised, not long after breakfast. He installed the two new panels on the poptop roof, and linked up all the wiring.

He discovered that there was a quite deep hollow on the poptop roof, under one of the panels put in by J. It looked like someone had kneeled or stood on it, carelessly. What was worse was that at the bottom of the indentation was the hole where the lead from the panels goes into the roof. Thus, there was a funnel effect. AND there was no sealing at all around the entry point! No wonder we had a massive leak in the rain.

He put silicone sealing around the lead at the entry point – as should have been done in the first place. He could not do anything, though, about the hollow. We would just have to hope that the silicone sealing is good, and holds.

That work cost us $1700. That is probably all we can do, for now, about the power set up. Will just have to see how it functions, out in the bush.

So we would not now worry about trying to get help from Bushtracker, and thus could make plans to head back out west, when our booked time here was up. We had already extended to Sunday, so John could play bowls on Saturday! That would also see us going through the city areas on a Sunday – always preferable.

Out extended three nights had cost $18.45 a night.

We might also fit in some “tourist” things, around Brisbane.

Now that we were so far east, I was very tempted to head back west via the Carnarvon Gorge National Park. We had not been there before and it is supposed to be well worth visiting. From what I had been reading, the campground there would still be open, but in the future, National Parks intends to severely limit its opening, or maybe close it altogether. So I thought it would be advisable to go there while we could camp in the Park. That would also try out the power system again!

I was concerned that the two extra panels would make the roof too heavy for me to be able to raise by myself, so tried it out. It certainly was harder, but I still could do it – a form of weight lifting exercise!

I phoned the National Parks booking service and managed to book us into the Carnarvon Gorge camp ground, for five nights – they said we would have a site that allowed for sun on the roof panels, and one that was suitable for a caravan. I was really pleased that we were able to get in!


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2002 Travels April 23

TUESDAY 23 APRIL     ASPLEY

Just pottered about at camp in the morning. Got clothes for tonight sorted. We do not carry much in the way of “good” clothes, but at least put out gear that was clean and not too crumpled.

Lunch was very early and then we went off to play bowls. I played a middling game. John was not much better. He tried hard not to be critical of my shots. I did not particularly enjoy the afternoon.

Then it was a rush to get ready and be at P’s place by 6pm.

When we arrived, she had just gotten home after a day of unexpected, last minute call, emergency teaching, which she does quite a bit of, in semi-retirement.

We had a very pleasant meal and evening, overall. I had not met her husband before, and she had not met John. She really has not changed much since school and uni – looks older, as we all do, but still as much fun to be around.

We did not stay too late – tomorrow is a working day for them.

I was pleased that we were not far from the caravan park, and did not have to negotiate too much of unfamiliar Brisbane, in the dark.


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2002 Travels April 22

MONDAY 22 APRIL   ASPLEY

At dawn, heavy rain set in, teeming down, as it does in these parts.

To our horror, water started pouring down through the seam across the van ceiling, just along from our bed. And I mean pouring! It certainly got us out of bed fast. There was much mopping up with towels. We dropped one end of the poptop roof, to try to encourage the water to run over the roof, not soak down into it, wherever it was doing so.

As the van had never leaked before, we could only assume that this was something else associated with J’s work! It was like single-handedly, he’d ruined our van for travel!

The rain eventually ceased and things dried out. The ceiling leak subsided to a few drips, then nothing.

The solar man turned up, as promised, at 11am. His judgement was that we should have had 2 120W panels installed, not the 2 60W panels that J had put in. We arranged that he would come on Wednesday and add 2 80W panels – that would make 4 up on the roof!

He was also not certain that our two batteries hold enough capacity. In any case, he said they were cheap Korean copies of good ones. I was pretty certain that we’d paid J “good one” prices for them, though!

We were, despite ourselves, fairly favourably impressed by this man, and hoped our faith was not misplaced, this time.

We went for a walk around the streets, later in the afternoon, for some exercise.


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2002 Travels April 21

SUNDAY 21 APRIL     ASPLEY

Today was my daughter’s 30th birthday.

I was up at 7am. Went for a walk around the local streets, for 40 minutes. It was still cool enough for that to be pleasant.

I spent the rest of the day sewing and reading. John played on the computer.

We did not fancy going out sight seeing amongst the Sunday drivers.

At night, I phoned V and wished her happy birthday.


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2002 Travels April 20

SATURDAY 20 APRIL     ASPLEY

I did the washing, first thing. Bought the Weekend Australian paper from the shop next door. Cleaned the van. Did some embroidery.

It was quite pleasant, sitting outside under the awning. A lovely breeze came up in the afternoon.

John went off to bowls at midday. His playing fee included lunch.

My friend phoned during the afternoon, and I arranged to go to dinner at her place, on Tuesday. She warned me she was not a good cook! I was really looking forward to meeting up again, for the first time in some twenty five years! Contact via annual Xmas card does have its limitations.

John came home somewhat disgruntled. He’d had to play lead and was annoyed by the incompetent old guy he’d been put to play with. He’d booked us in to play together on Tuesday. Damn! I tried to talk him out of it, because of going out to dinner, but didn’t succeed. He promised not to make any nasty comments about my game!

Tea was spicy noodles and beef, and some elderly broccoli – which I’d bought in Canberra!

John fiddled around with the TV aerial and “found” the ABC. We watched The Bill, then he turned to his computer games and I went to bed.


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2002 Travels April 19

FRIDAY 19 APRIL     ASPLEY

It was mid-morning by the time we got going.

The caravan park lady very nicely lent me a street directory, after I’d gone to the Office to see if there was one I could look at.

We drove to the address I had for my friend, about ten minutes from the park. There were two numbers on the same letterbox, which was a bit confusing. After getting no answer from the place I thought was correct, I put a note under the door, giving our location and phone number.

We then drove to Stafford, to Kyocera solar panels. Very quickly found out that they import the panels, and do not make them, as J said they did! They do not fit or fix solar systems. The owner seemed pretty fed up with J – join the club! We told him what J had promised our system would do, and he just rolled his eyes! His young assistant showed us a calculation which indicated that, if everything was at its optimum, our system might just run the fridge. Only the fridge. In heat, forget it!

So we came away from there convinced we have paid several thousand dollars for a lemon – we had been had by a con man. We were certainly given the impression that this was common in the industry, with a whole lot of self-taught cowboys jumping on the solar power trend.

It was all most depressing. I was reluctant to start sending more good money after bad, though. They did give us the name of a mobile person who the Kyocera people thought was reasonably competent – and honest. Decided we had no option, really, but to get an opinion from him, at least.

The Stafford shopping centre and cinema complex was nearby and John decided that he wanted to go to the pictures. Maybe to forget reality for a little while?

The earliest film that looked tolerable was at 1.10pm, so we browsed the shops for a couple of hours and had donor kebabs for lunch. I put in a finished film for processing.

The film was “Gosford Park” – British, complex, but interesting and entertaining. I enjoyed it. John had gotten confused and thought we were seeing “Kate and Leopold”, so kept waiting for the plot to develop differently!

After the film, I bought some frozen fish for dinner.

I picked up my photos – nothing special, though the few from Leopardwood were alright.

John phoned the mobile solar man and arranged for him to come at 11am on Monday.

Tea was fish and fries.

Afterwards, I read some of a novel I’d borrowed from S, in Canberra. John computed.


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2002 Travels April 18

THURSDAY 18 APRIL   LAIDLEY TO ASPLEY   100kms

We talked for a while to a couple in a neighbouring van, who were originally from Victoria – they saw our number plates and made themselves known. They were an electrician and an ex-teacher. They were now permanently on the road and do fruit and vegie packing. They had been in Laidley for the vegetable harvest in the area, and were about to head to Bowen for the tomato season. They indicated that they made quite adequate money doing the packing. We found it an interesting insight into that way of life.

We set out for the suburbs of Brisbane.

I directed John around what was shown as a ring route on my map, to miss the city centre. It was not really a great ring route – there were lots of uphill starts at traffic lights and stop/start work. If we have to go back via Ipswich and Toowoomba I decided we would give the ring route a miss and go the long way round via the motorway and toll road and miss the hilly parts with the van on.

John felt the brakes were a bit soft. Maybe we’d worn them out yesterday, coming down the range?

We booked into the Aspley Acres Caravan Park. At $110.70 for the week, it was cheaper than the nearby Big 4 one, but did not have a pool, and there were lots of permanent residents. It was fairly noisy from the main road out the front, but adequate. There was a hypermart next door and I walked there for a paper and bread for lunch.

After setting up and having lunch, we walked around to the local bowls club. John booked in for a game on Saturday. He tried to pressure me into playing with the ladies, but I successfully resisted. It cost $7.50 to play, anyway, and I would prefer to conserve the money.

We went to the hypermart and I bought some silverside for John’s tea. He bought a Railway Tycoon computer game from ToysRUs. I made him buy some decent leather walking sandals – he had a big split under his foot, caused by wearing thongs. Back at the van, he realized that his glasses were missing and went back, eventually finding them in the shoe shop. He uses two sets of specs – one lot for normal getting about, and another lot for looking at anything close up – it is not unusual for him to mislay a set when swapping them around.

I phoned J, yet again, and explained where we were. At least he did answer his phone, this time. He gave us the name of the man in Brisbane who manufactures our solar panels. And that was the full extent of his assistance! With hindsight, I wished we’d kept a good chunk of the thousands we paid him, subject to satisfactory performance of the system he set up for us. We certainly would not be recommending him to any travellers who might ask about solar power installation – I doubt he fully realizes the power of word of mouth marketing! I will also let Trakmaster know what we think of his services, though I did get the impression recently that they were cool on him too.

It was too late today to get on to the solar panel man. John had a couple of phone calls with the people at Bushtracker. They were, understandably, very reluctant to have anything to do with a van that was not one of theirs, but did not say an outright no. But it looked like the panel man was the best avenue, for the moment.

Having booked in here for a week, I hoped we’d be able to do some tourist things, as well as get the power sorted.

We had pencilled in 6th May at the Sunshine Coast, in case Bushtracker would look at the van, but really did not think that would come off.

Phoned daughter to let her know our saga. One of her friends just died from an asthma attack, which rather put our woes into a different perspective.

Checked in with the house sitter. There appeared to be an issue with the home phone not going to message bank, so John would have to contact Telstra about that.

A friend from school and Uni days lives in Brisbane and I thought there would be a chance to meet up with her again, but could not find her number in the phone book.

Tea was Greek salad and coleslaw, with silverside too for John. The heat seems to have really diminished my appetite.

So – to sleep, with much background urban noise and the smell of the city, instead of the wonderful bush. This was not what we had in mind for this trip!

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2002 Travels April 17

WEDNESDAY 17 APRIL   ST GEORGE TO LAIDLEY   460kms

There had been no call from J by 9.40am, so I phoned him. He seemed taken aback, but admitted that we had a problem! Generous of him. He said that he would phone around and get back to us. Clearly, he’d not bothered to try to think of anything, up to this point.

I felt that I was being fobbed off.

He hadn’t phoned back when we left a 10.30am, having waited around for his return call.

Later, when we came into a town, there was a message on the phone, telling us to go to the RACQ in St George, to get the panel current measured. That was not much help to us by then.

At Westmar, John put 40 litres of fuel in, to see us through to a larger centre – 93cpl.

As we went east, the country became more fertile and crop lands appeared. We were into good looking country.

I’d bought some rolls in St George while we were waiting around, and we stopped by the road side near Moonie and had those for lunch.

We’d noted St George as worth a return visit and a stay of a couple of days to explore, at some future time. Dalby also looked interesting. Very much a farming centre town. There was really cheap fuel there, and we filled up – 78cpl.

John wanted to tackle the steep drive down the Range from Toowoomba today, rather than spend the night brooding about it. From our 98/99 stay in Toowoomba, we knew the gradient!

There was much cloud build up as we neared Toowoomba and it looked like a thunderstorm was brewing.

We negotiated our way through the late afternoon traffic in Toowoomba alright. John did the first part of the road down the range in normal gears – I think he had forgotten that he used low range gears on steep gradients, before! After about a kilometre, he pulled into a little parking area – the Truck brakes were smoking! He let them cool down for about ten minutes. Neither of us felt good about this venture, at this stage. We watched all the big trucks crawl down using their engine brakes, and wished we had one of those. Then John decided to use low range and we got down the rest of the range with minimal use of brakes.

John had thought we’d make Brisbane today, but it was later than he realized. We saw a sign to a caravan park at Laidley, so impulsively took that turn off.

Laidley was a pleasant little village. The caravan park was alright. There were a lot of permanent dwellers. It wasn’t flash, but was only $12 for the night. The owners used to live in our suburb!

Tea was smoked fish, beans, potatoes.

04-17-2002 to laidley.JPG


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2002 Travels April 16

TUESDAY 16 APRIL   LEOPARDWOOD TO ST GEORGE   420kms

We had to do a full pack up this morning, as nothing was done yesterday, due to the rain.

It was overcast again this morning, and I thought the day would turn out much as yesterday, here, but didn’t know what it would be like to the east.

The bread had gone mouldy – that didn’t last long – so I had to fall back on Cruskits for lunch.

What seemed a fairly small amount of rain had certainly created some large puddles and boggy patches on the track out to the main road. It obviously does not take much rain to affect the roads around here!

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Not looking good, up ahead!

Mike had already left before us – could see his wheel marks on the road.

Came to one part where the water was across the track and we got out and walked around, trying to find an alternative way around, or work out how boggy it might be. Then we found the tyre tracks where Mike had gone, with his heavy load, followed those and managed alright. It was a relief to get to the sealed road, though.

Resize of 04-16-2002 which is best way

Trying to decide which way is the best

We stopped for a morning tea break at the park in Cunnamulla, and refuelled in town – 91cpl. Had lunch at a roadside stop and made St George about 4pm.

When we got to where there was phone coverage, in Cunnamulla, John phoned J and told him about our power problems, and how we’d had to radically alter our trip plans as a result. He was not particularly helpful and made some vague comments about “thinking about it”. John was quite terse and made a comment about having been sold an expensive, dud, system.

Most of the way was through scrub and sparse woodland – mulga and callitris pine country mostly. The driver needed to be alert as the road was narrow. Occasional emus tempted their fate by being tardy in moving off the road.

The little Kamerooka Caravan Park at St George was very nice. $16 a night, and we were back on 240v power! The park had an excellent amenities block – one of the best I’d seen. The owner had a dog that we were sure was part dingo, though he said not (found out later that it is not legal to have dingoes or part dingoes in Qld!). He also had a young grey tabby cat that had adopted him. It was a very relaxed place.

There was a newer caravan park a bit further out of town that also looked good, but there was not much shade there, as yet.

As soon as we got to our site, I phoned J and left a message on his phone about where we were, that we had phone cover and that he should phone us before 9am tomorrow. He obviously had decided not to answer his phone. It was still business hours there and he should have been available. I think I probably sounded quite annoyed in my message – because I was!

It was really a total nuisance that we had to take time to go back east. I was conscious that this would take time out of our “proper” travel. Conscious, too, that before we left Melbourne, I had done something totally unusual for us – phoned and booked a site in a caravan park at Karumba, on the Qld Gulf coast, for three weeks, during July. Had mailed off a very hefty deposit on same. So that was a fixed arrangement we had to work to. This was not something we liked doing, but all the information I’d researched indicated that booking well ahead was the only way to get into Karumba in the middle of the year

Tea was lamb sausages and beans.

The TV signal was adequate enough for us to watch The Bill.

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