Having heard on the news about the closure of Cunningham's Gap for half the night we decided to leave for Coolangatta airport in the early evening. The gap was supposed to close at 9.00pm but the local police seemed very over-eager and it was closed by 8.30pm. We had this horrible vision of either turning around and going home for 6 hours or sitting in the bucketing down rain on the western side of Cunningham's Gap for 6 hours. Some pretty cranky truck drivers however managed to convince the local constabulary to let the 2 or so kilometres of trucks and cars pass down the range as the huge piece of mining equipment was no where near ready to be moved. Not to mention it was bucketing down rain and the likelihood of it even going at all was pretty remote.
A dinner stop at Aratula confirmed that this huge piece of machinery was not leaving it's place of rest tonight. Bad news though when we got to Aratula. It may have been raining pretty heavily on the western side of the range but it had been virtually a torrent on the eastern side and the road through Boonah was cut. Not too worry though the road through Jindalee was still a go ahead.
It was a very slow trip as there was water all over the road everywhere. Lucky we had hours and hours until our plane wasn't due to take off until 9.00am the next morning. We arrived on the Gold Coast after much diverting here and there and going down roads we never knew existed and had a few hours to spare to catch up on a bit of sleep in the car.
