I was awake early again. The morning was not as cold, because there was cloud cover.
John washed three sides of the van – the fourth was occupied by the awning. I cleaned the windows and door panels. He took off the back light covers. They were full of mud and filthy, and I cleaned those. I armouralled the vinyl stone guard at the front of the van. John washed and polished Truck. The rig looked much more respectable after all of that.
The rig before irs wash. Those skies still look threatening……
After lunch we went out sightseeing, but found the town was as dead as the proverbial dodo. Everything was shut for Sunday.
We drove over the weir and back – there didn’t seem much else to do. Drove out the Roma road for a distance. There were houses on ten acre blocks, fronting the river and a “fishing” camp ground, about 9kms out, with powered sites, that looked interesting.
So, back to the van. A couple from a few vans down had wanted to see our opals, because they were heading for the Ridge, so we had happy hour with them, till after dark. Before that, we’d taken down the awning roof, so it wouldn’t be wet in the morning, and packed up some of the outside stuff.
I tried something new for tea – pasta with cheesy crumbs, a recipe I’d copied down from somewhere, ages ago, but never tried. It needed a couple of modifications – I had to use our grain bread, with lots of seeds in it, instead of the white bread of the recipe, and a didn’t have the smoked cheese specified. But tasty cheese was just as good, and it was yummy. John was more enthusiastic about it than he had been about a meal, for ages. So, repeats of that one were a must.
I was awake before 8. We were back into the morning noise of a caravan park, and people packing up for early departures.
The morning was cold – there had been a heavy dew overnight. My moccasins got wet as I went across the grass on my way for a shower, and my feet stayed cold for hours.
A very different environment to Lorne!
I drove into town to fetch the papers and read them until it was time to get ready for bowls at 12.30.
The club had one synthetic green and they had received grants of nearly $100,000 to renew it, as part of a program to encourage sports in the country. John was cross when he heard this, because our home club, which caters for a lot more people, had to fund things like that without government help. They also had poker machines here, which our club did not.
The game was a farce and a total waste of an afternoon. Most of the numbers were family groups of mixed ages, from toddlers who kept wandering across our rink and in amongst the bowls, to their grandmas, all drinking much beer whilst playing. They all had more fun than we did! They even smoked on the new synthetic green – no wonder they had needed a new one!
It was an extremely boring afternoon. John and I played on opposing teams. One skip was intellectually challenged and really incapable of working out any strategy or giving directions. The other skip fancied himself as the town clown. He was excruciating. It was so bad that John later actually apologized to me – unheard of. And we paid $6 each for that….
I decided I was owed about quadruple bushwalk credits for the afternoon.
After the chill of this morning, and finding out that it could get to around zero at Mitchell and Mt Moffat in winter, we had definitely abandoned the vague plans of maybe waiting around for the road into Mt Moffat to be ok. We would head north quickly, needing some tropics. More rain was possible around here too. Due to a large high sitting over Central Australia, NW Qld had recently had quite a bit of rain, and what was left was heading our way. A strange year, really.
It was a chilly night. We needed the fan heater on.
We did not have too much to do, to get away, after doing most of the pack up yesterday.
We stopped in town. John wanted to buy the local paper, in order to read more about some local land possibly being opened up for mining! He had a quick look at a few opal stalls set up opposite the “craft market”.
Today’s was a pleasant drive. The country was varied enough to be interesting. At one point the highway passed close to the Coocoran Lake, but we couldn’t see any sign of surface water. Maybe it was mostly dry?
We stopped in Hebel, just after crossing into Qld, partly for a break, and partly due to curiosity. A previous boss of ours had lived here for a while, a decade or so ago. He and then wife had the store here, and he also dabbled in opal fossicking, presumably at Lightning Ridge. We wanted to see what the store was like, having heard O talk about it.
Hebel store
It was interesting, although I found the downhill slant of the rough interior floor a tad tricky. We got chatting to one of the residents. They were under the impression that our previous boss had totally owned the property where we’d worked, instead of being a part owner and resident manager. They also thought his recent marriage was to a Parisienne lady, rather than a nurse from Brisbane. I knew the bush telegraph could distort things, but really?
Hebel was one of the tiny settlements that made you wonder how it kept going. Just a store and a hotel. It would originally have been established as a border station, back pre-1900, when customs duties existed between the states. Hebel was only a couple of kms from the border.
Central Hebel. Compare the size of our rig, on the right, with the road train!
After Hebel, there were increasing signs of irrigation and cotton farming, though the latter was not as obvious as I had expected.
We stopped for lunch at Dirranbandi, a little town trying hard to be attractive, but the number of businesses with For Sale signs, indicated that the town was battling.
Dirranbandi
John was getting sleepy by the time we reached St George. He had gotten out of travel mode.
We had a look at one caravan park, but thought it looked too small and crowded. So drove on to see what the Pelicans Rest was like – much nicer, newish, on the edge of the town. They had a long row of drive through sites, as well as conventional ones. All were well grassed. Grass! Green! The amenities were modern, nicely tiled, clean. All very pleasant after the rather rough and ready Lorne. $22 a night – good value.
We set up, then followed the usual ritual in a new town i.e. drove to the Bowls Club. There was no-one there. At the newsagent I ordered tomorrow’s papers to be kept for me. Checked out the location of a cafe for fish and chips – it had been a while since we had a bought fish and chips indulgence.
In cruising around the town, we found the Information Centre, so had a browse there and I bought some items. These included a card for younger grandson, with a picture of a bush curlew on the front, which when opened makes the sound of a curlew. Reckoned he would love that, though it might give him a fright when first opened. Not sure how well it would be received by parents, either, come to think of it. They might not thank me….
Went on to have a look at the Balonne River, which edges the town. This was bigger than I expected but made more so by a weir that held back water – presumably for irrigation. The highway to the west crossed the top of the weir, which had impressive towers along one side, that were part of the system for raising and lowering the weir gates.
As we drove back past the Bowls Club, there were signs of life. John went in and came back saying he’d booked BOTH of us to play tomorrow. He was going to owe me a lot of walking now!
From the cafe, we ordered our fish and chips, for collection at 6.30. Then it was on to the supermarket so John could buy a brush to dubbin his shoes, which had dried out from the white dust of the opal fields. I had a tin of leather dressing in the van, for my leather handbag, but usually applied this lightly with paper towel – no good for John’s shoes.
The caravan park had become quite full; probably a lot of overnighters.
We were allowed to wash our vans here. That was unusual, these days, but could help explain the lovely green grass.
After an adequate fish and chip tea, had an internet session.
We had TV again, after wonderful weeks without. John would be watching it long after I had gone to bed. I had, over the vanning years, trained myself to go to sleep despite background noise from the TV, or computer games – or both at once…..
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!
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!
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.
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.
This Adventurous Age 