Blogs from Moranbah, Queensland, Australia, Oceania

Arriving on a Saturday we had a day and a half to spend with Tristan before he returned to work. During the week we see little of Tristan as he starts work at 6am. Since his mine is 60km away and they car-pool, Tristan gets up at 4:30am and is out the door by 5:20am. A 10 hour standard day and the return drive results in Tristan getting home by 5:30pm. Such a long day means getting to bed early is essential. We find this highly amusing as when he was at Uni Tristan would often only get to bed at 4:30am! How things change. Each morning Tristan leaves in a clean high-vis uniform and each evening he returns blackened from coal dust. Dirty clothes are shed on the back deck on the way to a ... read more

After spending an enjoyable morning at Eumundi, we headed north west towards Moranbah to meet up with David and Mary ready to go to Carnarvon Gorge. David had been filling in at the Moranbah Baptist Church for three months until their new Pastor was able to start. Much of Queensland is in serious drought at the moment, so as we headed north west through Gayndah and towards Moranbah, the transition from the coastal lush to barren dry became evident. By and large the journey over three short days was easy and without incident, but we do wonder sometimes at some driver's mentality. We had stopped for lunch in a popular rest area, and after a stretch of the legs, we set out north again. We were approaching the highway entrance when a four wheel drive vehicle ... read more

We celebrated Tristan’s birthday, albeit a week early, with dinner at our caravan. The caravan must have sighed with relief as we handed over a couple of heavy presents we had lugged all the way from SA. An assortment of items and ingredients from Chilli Mojo on Magill Road, Adelaide had Tristan’s eye’s alight as such items are impossible to source in this area other than over the internet. As a connoisseur of single malt whisky, Tristan very much appreciated the gift from Grandma of a Hill-Smith limited release whisky. And the Webber pizza stone promises yummy meals to come. The water pressure cleaner handed over earlier in the week had his car, our car and his outdoor dining area looking spotless. We celebrated with a BBQ dinner and the Black Forrest Cake Joan made the ... read more

Leaving the Pioneer Valley (not far from Mackay) we headed to the small town of Walkerston as we had heard that they had a great bakery. Once we had some treats for our morning coffee we headed up the Eton range. Almost immediately we caught up with a wide load that was obviously very heavy. The road over the Eton range is quite steep in some places, up to 11%, and the wide load was finding the going tough. Chugging along at 20kph Greg did not have to feel embarrassed by the limits of towing a caravan as all of the traffic was in the same boat. When we finally reached the top we discovered that the wide load was actually being pulled by two prime movers linked together – the first time we have seen ... read more