8th - 14th September - Finally under way!

Monday 8th

Ross had to wait for the gaskets to turn up, which they did at around 11 am. He got most of the work done, but the last gasket that needed to go on wasn't right, so we have to wait for another one to turn up in the morning ...

We also had a call from Fred today and it seems like he has broken down - not sure what is wrong yet.

Tuesday 9th

OK, the part turned up - woohoo! If Ross can get the car going we will be away by this afternoon - finally!

Later that day .. Ross called to say that he has it all together but it won't go - looks like we are going nowhere today

Later ... Late afternoon they finally got it going - apparently there was something wrong with the injectors - all fixed now - we will be off in the morning after Ross has taken it for a test-drive and taken it back to the mechanics to put coolant in the water - hopefully we will be away by lunchtime.

Update from Fred - he has blown his gearbox and it won't be fixed until next week sometime, bad luck for him but good for us because now we have a chance to catch up with him! Man, I hope this isn't an indication of what's to come - hopefully all of our mechanical problems are out of the way and we will have a smooth trip from now on. Fred has a daughter in Ayr, and he and Jude are going to catch a bus there and meet us there - they will go back for their vehicle once it is fixed. We can take our time now and enjoy ourselves and meet them in Ayr, which is where we will be leaving the caravan for the trip up to the Cape.

Wednesday 10th

We didn’t get away from Lee and Gary’s until 1pm by the time Ross took the 4WD to the mechanics and we finished packing up. We got to a little side of the highway stop that Gary told us about a few km’s south of Gympie. It was a pretty good spot, but too close to the highway – it was hard to get to sleep with the traffic. (Rate 5/10. GPS: 26.23212S 152.69696E)

I went to do my medical terminology work, but the internet kept dropping out – very frustrating. We will go into Bundaberg in the morning and talk to the Telstra people to see if we can get it sorted out – can’t put up with that all the time!

Thursday 11th

We spent a fair bit of time in Bundaberg trying to sort out the internet problem and we seem to have that sorted out now, so I should be able to do my work tonight with no problem.

We are really struggling to adjust to living out of a caravan – we really didn’t realise it would be this hard. Everything is so cramped and you have to pull everything out just to get to one thing and we are both taking time to adjust.

We stayed at a great camp spot at Calliope overnight (Rate 7/10 GPS: 23.95978S 151.15047E). It is about 7km north of Calliope and it is a huge site right away from the highway and truck noises. It’s a really big camp and there were probably about 30 other campers staying there overnight. There were no showers and the river was really low, and there was a sign warning of crocs, so we couldn’t go swimming – not that it’s warm enough yet to go swimming. Someone had cut up a big tree for firewood, but it was still really green and the wood wouldn’t burn, so I think if we went there again we would take our own firewood.

Friday 12th

Had a big day of driving today. We stopped only for lunch as we wanted to get to close to Ayr as possible. We couldn’t find any free campsites to stay at, even after stopping and asking at Mackay Information Centre. We rang ahead to a caravan park and they offered us an unpowered site for $10.00 overnight, so we decided to stop there. The caravan park was called Kuttabul Hotel and Caravan Park, and as we got close we drove past this really scary looking caravan a we guessed that was it – so we kept driving – it looked almost like a wrecking yard!! A little bit up the highway was a servo so we stopped and asked where to stay and they directed us to a caravan park called Jolimont Caravan Park, (Rate 8/10 GPS: 21.0026S 148.5227E) which was much nicer, so we stayed there for the night. They charged $18.00 for unpowered sites and $20.00 for powered sites, so we took the powered one. We found out later that there was another caravan park just up the road that is right on the river that looks nice that charge only $12.00 for unpowered sites! Damn! Never mind, the one we stayed at was lovely.

The weather is getting hotter and hotter and we are having trouble acclimatizing – guess by the time we hit the Cape we will be used to it! None of the rivers have much water in them – waiting for the wet season coming up I guess. Can’t wait to throw a line in and see if we can catch any fish! We have been travelling to fast to do any of that stuff so far – hopefully the pace will relax a little now that we are have caught up to Fred and Jude.

Saturday 13th

We only had a couple of hours of travelling to do today, so we took our time and had a few stops. Once we got to Carole's place (Fred & Jude's daughter), we had to try and park the caravan somewhere - that was an interesting job - there was this tiny narrow driveway to get it down, followed by a very small space for manouvering, then we had to back it into a shed - but we managed - Ross is a great caravan backer!!

It is very dry up here and we drove over heaps of bridges and the creeks/rivers had literally NO water in them - we had never seen that before - guess they will fill up pretty quick when the wet season arrives.

Tomorrow we are gong site-seeing, Monday Fred and Jude are going to pick up "Troopy" (the name for their troop carrier motorhome, while Ross and I pack up our 4WD and we are leaving Tuesday morning, so we won't have time to go fishing unfortunately - I'm sure we will get time somewhere along the line!

Sunday 14th
We decided to have a fairly leisurely day today and do some sight-seeing around Ayr, as well as doing a little packing of the 4WD. We all took off in Carole's little old Ford Festiva and went down to a little beach near here - Alva Beach, which was lovely, then we went out to Home Hill to see a few sites and guess what??!! We blew up the Festiva as well! That's the third car we have broken in the last couple of months between us, but we reckon that will be the end of it because bad luck comes in threes right? ...