Every good movie or road trip deserves its own theme song, so I’ve been pondering for several days now what is the appropriate theme song for the July 2021 road trip out into western Queensland with the new van on its maiden voyage.
Options – and the reasons for rejecting them – have included:
- Way out west (James Blundell) – rejected because it has a couple of unpleasant references to “job” and “work”;
- On the road again (Willie Nelson) – rejected for no real reason other than that it was Willie Nelson;
- My heart will go on (James Horner) – originally included in the list because it was about another maiden voyage, but rejected because as I recall that other maiden voyage didn’t end so well.
In the end, the Spotify Gods chose the theme song for us. The first song that played as we were driving out the driveway at 8.21am this morning was Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da (The Beatles) and I think that a theme of “Life goes on …” pretty much sums it up 🙂
Today was just a bit of a driving day, with the aim of getting to Chinchilla. Unfortunately there was a strong wind forecast for today, and I’m pretty sure that the wind was blowing directly from Chinchilla because it felt like we were driving into it all day.
Elsie’s fuel economy seemed to support that view also, as we achieved an average just north of 20 litres/100km. To be fair though, the new van is bigger and heavier than the old one, and the fuel economy going up the Toowoomba Bypass was pretty steady on something around 45-50 litres/100km for quite a bit of time, and that did some damage that couldn’t be undone easily.
You should consider yourselves pretty lucky, because you only have to read a filtered version of what happened today. There are lots of boring and mundane things that are omitted from the record in the interests of keeping it interesting.
Sadly we were not so lucky. There were a couple of old couples heading the same direction as us who treated UHF channel 40 like some people use Facebook – an opportunity to broadcast every random thought that popped into their heads, including:
- “I don’t think my left turn indicator is working. I’m going to have to avoid left turns”
- “Do we go up the range through Toowoomba or do we take the Toowoomba Bypass? I’m not sure what the GPS is telling me to do …”
- ”Let’s just pull over into the stopping bay and let everyone else pass us”
First stop for the day was in Oakey for a late breakfast and then we motored on through Dalby until our next quick stop to stretch our legs in Warra – a pretty little spot but not much happening.
We arrived at Chinchilla around 1.15pm and made our way to tonight’s accommodation.
We arrived at Clover Hill Camping ground, found a spot, plugged in and unhooked the car. I think that we stayed here by accident – as I recall the plan was to stay at Chinchilla Country Camping but I somehow got them mixed up.
Clover Hill is very nice, but still a work in progress … and they have had quite a bit of rain recently which didn’t help either. Everything is pretty boggy.
Saturday afternoon in Chinchilla is pretty much like Saturday afternoon in any other small-ish country town.
Everything is closed. Well, everything except the petrol station, Maccas, and KMart … and we avoided Maccas 🙁
Elsie got a big drink and we headed over to KMart and injected a whole $2.50 into the local economy, so that’s our good deed for the day.
We did a quick trip out to the Chinchilla Weir – very pretty … and they have about a dozen powered sites available for a simple donation, but with the number of grey nomads circling for a space, you’d have to be pretty lucky to jag one.
… and then home for a very late lunch.
It’s pretty cold out here – 14 degrees C that feels like 12 degrees, but thanks to the magic of reverse cycle air conditioning and 240V, it is a toasty 22 degrees C inside the van. Almost tropical 🙂
Overall we covered about 339km and that took us just under 5.5 hours. We weren’t in a crazy hurry and we just puddled along at our own pace.
Now that I have written it all down and gone back and re-read it, it must seem like a very unproductive and disappointing day. To be fair though, our only objective was to get to Chinchilla in one piece, and we were successful!
Tomorrow we head to St George for a couple of nights so hopefully there will be some more exciting things to report.
Until then … Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da, life goes on …
Ciao
Safe travelling. We look forward to the next instalments !