No Lights or Bells!

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DAY 371


I knew Andy was out of bed early again it was still dark! Far too early for me so I carried on sleeping except that every now and again I could hear the sound of Andy pottering around outside doing stuff, but I have no idea what.

At 6.00 Andy climbed back on the bed to close one of the inner windows as the sun was shining directly onto my head, but secretly I think he wanted to get me up early, but I compromised and said if there is a cup of tea waiting for me at 6.30 I will get up.

Agreed, but Andy still talks to me, telling me that he woke up at 4.30 and realised what was wrong with the water pump, he put the pipes the wrong way round and just needed to correct, thus of course the reason why he wanted me out of bed early so that he could get under the trailer to sort it out.

So as promised I got up early, my morning cuppa was ready, Andy told me what he had already done this morning while I was sleeping. So the first thing that we did was pack up the tent, pack up most of the trailer then we went to the camp kitchen for breakfast, just cereal but it was a nice shady place to sit.

Of course that was the moment that the mosquitoes were out and about so proceeded to get bitten to pieces again, but apart from an initial itch, they tend not to bother me too much, maybe you get used to mosquitoes after a while and become immune? It is a nice thought but I am sure not and I am definitely not immune to the midges!

Once the tank was drained of the water that we sterilised, as we did yesterday, we dropped the trailer off the jockey wheel to tilt it forward, so that the ball hitch was resting on the floor and thus the rear of the trailer was tipped up, Andy then wriggles underneath to make the changes, I remain on hand to pass the right tools when needed.

A chap wandered over and asked if we had a problem, we explained what we were doing, but got chatting to him we find out that Malcolm lives on this campsite, he tells us that he has prostate cancer and is going into hospital on 23rd December to have his operation, but as far as he is concerned life will be the best Christmas present that he could have. We wish Malcolm the best of luck and promise to see him when we are back up this way again.

After we showered and finalised the packing we hit the road, it was 9.20, a little later than Andy had hoped for our getaway, but still earlier than most times we leave site.

We are on the road again, this time we head south toward Brisbane but long before Brisbane we turn off West to head inland before coming south again. We ran a route through the RACQ website yesterday to see what the quickest route suggested was, so we decided to take the advice and follow it, but there are half a dozen different route combinations you could take but which one is the right one, if there is a right one?

We have over 1350 Kilometres ahead of us to our next destination, we anticipate arriving sometime on Sunday, providing our journey is good to us.

There are a lot of roadwork’s in and around Beerwah and along the Steve Irwin Way, so my Hema map is slightly useless as we drive around following the diversions, but we are soon on the right road out toward Peachester and once again beautiful countryside, getting away from the hustle an bustle of the East Coast.

There is a haze hanging over the mountains here, but we hear news of a bush fire somewhere in Queensland, which is also affecting visibility around Brisbane CBD. I am typing up the blog while Andy is driving, as we have been so busy we are a day or two behind so just need to get back on top of it, for me it is easier to do this while we are on the road, it saves so much time later on in the evening when sometimes you just want to sit and relax.

We stop for a brief spell in Esk, which is very picture’Esk, sadly as time is our master today, we do not have time for a look around.

The drive itself is uneventful in the main, but we drive into Toowoomba and stop at the lookout, wow, what a huge city, we get out to look at the view, but it is a little bit cold up here! I pick up the driving for a spell to give Andy a break, we drive through a very busy Toowoomba and out the other side towards Warwick, and Goondiwindi. Somewhere along the way Andy picked up the driving reigns again so that I could do some blog.

Our thoughts were with the question that Jane, one of our blog readers, asked recently, so we are trying to come up with our top 5, best beach, national park etc. We both have different places for different reasons, the difficulty comes down to picking the top 5! So watch this space.

We wonder what Woodstock looks like now, it was a very parched landscape earlier this year in the heatwave. Seeing the land around us now that is soaked with water, it is lying in the ditches and across the floodplains so we wonder how much greener Woodstock will be if at all and will the dams have water in them?

We are looking forward to seeing the dogs, of course we look forward to seeing Helen and Robert, but we do love the dogs (sorry Helen). Will any of Kimba’s puppies be around for us to see?

Seeing the landscape around us is so green, again the scenery reminds us of England. ‘We are surprised about the amount of water, especially as for the best part of the last year we have followed the sun with the Northern part of Australia and for that I include the Kimberleys, Darwin, Cape York etc, where the rivers have been low if at all present.

The lightening flashes around us in the darkened skies, it looks really eerie out there, the fields look a beautiful creamy yellow colour against the black sky.

45k’s out of Moree we see a huge cluster of Emu’s, possibly about 20 or 30 of them, there was nowhere for them to shelter from the storm above or they just seemed to have little concern for it.

It is dusk and a kangaroo shoots across the road in front of us, my heart leapt in my mouth as I see another one just about to leap into the road, with my hands over my eyes as I cannot bear to look I thought we would get the kangaroo with the trailer but Andy assured me he slowed up to let us pass. Put it this way I did not hear a bang and we are still moving without a blip, the dangers of driving at dusk, the wildlife has no road sense, no lights and no bells!

We pass through where the storm has now left, the air smells lovely and fresh now it has had a shower of rain. More importantly is where to park up for the night, we had hoped to free camp tonight, but all of the rest areas we pass are on the highway and quite exposed so not conducive to a restful nights sleep. With that in mind we head into Moree, were we have stayed before.

Finding the Gwydir CaraPark we know what this site is like and as it was pleasant enough last time we were comfortable with booking in here.

By the time we booked in, parked up and set up it was 6.00 but of course we are now in New South Wales so the time is actually 7.00. It has been a long drive, we left Maroochydore at 9.20 this morning and have travelled all day.

We decided to pop into town to get something easy for our tea, neither of us could be bothered with pfaffing around, we just wanted food, finish the blog and go to bed especially as we want to be away early in the morning.

We found a KFC, I know more junk food, but we don’t do it that often. The amazing thing is that as we came out I could see the most amazing sunset, the sky had turned a beautiful shade of pink and blue, the sunset was crowning Moree tonight.

We had considered jumping into the Artesian spa waters, but we are both too tired, as it is windy at the campsite we sit inside the tent, however Andy gets onto the bed while I finish the blog and publish it. I thought he would have fallen asleep quite quickly but instead is reading a magazine that I just put there.

By the time I go off and clean my teeth and come back to jump into bed, Andy is sound asleep, so I read for a short spell. My watch says 9.00, which is Queensland time, so as I need to be up with the lark in the morning, it is lights out.

Until another day on the road tomorrow, our hop tomorrow is from Moree to Bathurst were we are going to stay with Lee and Marilyn who we met on Tasmania back in February, it will be another 600k’s roughly.

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Photos

My Navigator!
Fast asleep with the map outstretched, he took one look at the route and fell asleep

Draining the tank
Getting rid of the sterilised water ready for filling.

Packing Away
Th elast Final things being packed away in Maroochydore.

Red Sky at Night
Shepherds Delight

Red Sky in the morning
Nuclear Warning

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Always fun ...
Life is always fun in a pop-up camper!