A Warming Glow!

---

Monday 3rd October - Today we thought we would head for Toowoomba and we were up and about quite early getting prepared. Without really trying we were ready to hit the road at 8:00am. There was nothing keeping us in Miles so off we went and within half an hour we were approaching the town of Chinchilla just 40 kilometers further on. Hindsight is a wonderful thing and we wonder now, following yesterday’s mishap with the power pole, why we didn’t crack on just a bit further to this delightfully named town. It’s considerably bigger than Miles and may have had a lot more to offer for our afternoon viewing and probably bigger sites to put the caravan on. But today we just carried on through Chinchila towards the next major town – Dalby. Traffic was heavy with a larger than normal proportion of road-trains which keeps Graham on his toes. The road wasn’t quite as “bouncy” as the last couple of days but we did encounter plenty of road-works. Nevertheless, we reached Dalby in good time and as we had stayed there earlier in our adventure we knew our way around and where to go to find a pleasant park for our tea break. The weather was cloudier than we have been used to and the overnight chill seemed to be hanging around so for the first time in ages I was sat with a jumper on. Apart from our tea break, we didn’t hang around in Dalby and carried on with our journey to Toowoomba – more heavy lorries – more road-works – and a bit of excitement when an on-coming road-train left the road briefly!! Graham heard the commotion and saw it in the rear-view mirror and then we listened to the aftermath on the CB radio. There was quite a lot of ribald abuse from other truckies towards the driver who, fortunately, was able to recover without creating a disaster.

Pretty soon we had covered the 200 kilometers to Toowoomba and because of our prompt departure from Miles earlier it was still only late morning. Warwick is only another 86 kilometers further on so we made a hasty decision to by-pass Toowoomba and to bash on to David’s house. He was half expecting us so it was just a matter of sending him a text to see if he would be at home when we arrived. Toowoomba is close enough to Warwick to visit for a day, as we have done before, so we’ll probably have a day out in that area during the next week or so. At lunchtime we were in the vicinity of Allora, a pleasant small town about 25 kilometers from Warwick and it was there we decided to stop for our picnic lunch. We found a lovely small park but it was strewn with branches from the many trees as if there had been a bit of a storm recently and we later learned that there had been a violent storm in the area a couple of days earlier. We arrived at David’s at about 2:00pm and soon settled in for a bit of a stay. We gathered everything we might need from the caravan and then took it to the local caravan park where we were able to “store” Sweetie for a week or so. We had been watching the clouds gather as we drove towards Warwick and now the heavens opened just as Graham was transferring some of the more hefty items from the back of the car to the caravan. Back at David’s we made ourselves at home where we knew we would enjoy a few more homely comforts than we have been used to.

David, as usual, was very welcoming and we enjoyed a very tasty dinner of buckwheat in mushroom sauce with veggies followed by a healthy and delicious version of apple crumble and custard (it might be difficult to tear ourselves away from here!). David assured us that before long we would have a nice warm glow from the buckwheat – and we did!! We are already thinking about what activities we might undertake during our third stay in Warwick although we might have to work around the weather forecast which is not particularly good. But whatever the weather throws at us we are sure we will enjoy our time in Warwick.

---