One of the best parts about staying in a caravan park is the sport of people watching. That could be anything from watching people try to reverse their ridiculously large van into an impossibly small space, or any other activities that happen in the park.
The older couple next to us on site 29 at the Channel Country Caravan Park in Quilpie were sitting outside their van sunning themselves like a couple of lizards on a rock when we arrived yesterday.
Our spot – site 28 – was indeed one of those impossibly narrow spaces that had “divorce” written all over it … or at the very least “sleep on the couch for the next couple of nights.”
I’ve seen a sign that says “I’m sorry for what I said when I was reversing the van.” Truer words have never been spoken.
But despite that, I managed to reverse it in almost perfectly on the first attempt, and with just a little more jiggery-pokery I was able to make it completely aligned with the concrete slab, perfectly straight, at right angles to the road, and level. My OCD is still alive and well, even on holidays 🙁
I’m not sure who was more surprised by my parking efforts – me or the bloke next door.
It would be unkind to describe the bloke next door as seriously overweight, or even just obese … my mother always taught me not to say unkind things about others.
So let’s just say that the guy next door is twice the man that I will ever be. Perhaps three times. And he uses a wheelie walker to get around, just to complete the picture.
When I got out of bed this morning, the temperature gauge said it was about 7 degrees inside the van, and quite a bit colder outside.
I opened the screens first thing this morning just to check that the world hadn’t ended, and I’m pleased to report that it hasn’t – well, not here in Quilpie anyway. Anything is possible elsewhere in the world.
The thing that I noticed was that old mate next door was kitted out in his PPE – short sleeved shirt, shorts, crocs and garden gloves. OK, so maybe not full PPE in the traditional sense, but the garden gloves were the give-away. He definitely had something important going on, and he needed to protect his hands while he was doing it.
A few more minutes of covert observation and everything became clear. It was time to empty his toilet cassette!
This caravan park is the only place I have ever stayed where there is a mini dump point at each site. Normally you have power, water and sullage, and then there is a centrally located communal dump point where you get to queue up behind all of the other poor suckers who are waiting to empty their cassettes, but not here in Quilpie. Here you get your own dump point, right there at your site!
So I got to watch him go through the process of emptying his cassette. Now I won’t go into all of the sordid details, but let’s just say that it gives a whole new meaning to the expression “splash your boots” .. or in old mate’s case, splash your crocs.
At least he was wearing gardening gloves to protect his hands, but a shame he didn’t have something more substantial on his feet.
That cheered me up 🙂
Then I opened the fridge to start the process of making coffee and I discovered that we were almost out of coffee for our coffee maker.
That made me sad 🙁
Just to clarify, if you are at all surprised that we brought a coffee maker on our western Queensland adventure, then you clearly don’t know us very well and we probably shouldn’t be FaceBook friends.
There was only really one thing on the agenda for today, and that was a trip out to Eromanga (population ~30) to meet Cooper, Queensland’s newest dinosaur out at the Natural History Museum. We had an 11.00am booking and it is a bit over an hour from Quilpie, so we knew that we needed to get away by around 9.30am to be there in plenty of time.
We also needed to get some groceries – milk, bread rolls, etc – so we needed to get moving by 9.00am. We went to the bakery, and then to the Foodworks, and then back to the van to drop everything off.
Surprise, surprise – despite being in a township of 570 people and 1000km west of home, packets of ground coffee were (almost) the same price as we pay at home. So were many other items.
Not bananas though – they were 8.00/kg for cavendish, and 11.00/kg for lady fingers, so we didn’t buy any of them. In fact, other than the milk and the bread rolls, I don’t think that we bought anything fresh. To be completely truthful, I think that we made some poor dietary choices, but the things we bought were yummy, on special, and I’m a firm believer that calories consumed on holidays don’t count.
As we were leaving the park this morning to get our groceries prior to heading out to Eromanga, we couldn’t help but notice how many vans had cleared out of the park early this morning. I assume that they were all here for the football yesterday?
Quilpie is a pretty little township; very quiet on a Sunday morning. Nothing much open, nothing much happening, nobody moving around – all of the locals must have been still safely ensconced in their homes, because the majority of people on the streets had a caravan hooked up and were getting fuel.
The trip out to Eromanga was uneventful. 101km and (from memory) about a dozen cars that we passed on the way out. I think we saw more things dead on the road than we saw alive and grazing in the dry and desolate paddocks.
Among the dead were pigs, cattle, kangaroos, sheep and an emu, and much the same among the living, except that we also saw some brolgas in a paddock. Well, I think that they are brolgas. Feel free to comment and correct me if I am wrong.
It’s funny how at home, we never really worry too much about fuel because there is always another fuel station around the corner. You have choice of stations according to the retailer your prefer, where you get the best discount, and how much you want to pay.
Out here in the west, you find yourself looking at the fuel gauge each time you get in the car and doing a calculation to figure out of you’ve got enough fuel to get you to where you are going, and – if the place that you are going has no fuel options – get you back again.
We had just over half a tank when we left Quilpie this morning, or 400-odd km according to the trip meter, so there was no real concern … but if any of the (4) stations in Quilpie ran out of diesel, we could have a problem.
The road to Eromanga was just like every other road we have travelled so far out here – alternating between wide enough for two cars, to barely wide enough for one. The roads are straight, well surfaced, and the scenery is ever-changing.
We got to Eromanga at about 10.45 and went in search of the museum, which is about another 10km on the other side of the township. Eromanga is also a pretty little town, with an emphasis on “little” – population 30ish.
Eromanga’s claim to fame is that it is the furthest town from the sea, a claim that is disputed in various “reputable” forums, like Wikipedia. But their “welcome to Eromanga” sign states it as a fact.
The Eromanga Natural History Museum is an interesting place, with a good tour of the workshop and demonstrations on how the bones are found, extracted, and processed.
Apparently they have 90 years of bone processing to do based on the bones that they have extracted so far, so job security sounds like it is pretty good at the museum.
The trip home was much the same as the trip out, except in reverse.
We were back at the van for a late lunch, then out to fill the car at one of the few fuel options in Quilpie – this one an unattended card-only station.
A bit like in the USA, you prepay $100 for fuel, then fill up, then collect your receipt. For my $100 of prepaid fuel, the pump clicked off at $96.43 and then shut itself off, and gave me a receipt for $96.43 … yet the tank wasn’t full. Maybe it thought I was panic buying, so limited my purchase?
In any case, after getting fuel, we went and (unsuccessfully) fossicked for opals, then went to the local free vehicle wash down facility and gave Elsie a nice bath with hot artesian water, then off to Baldy Top to watch the sunset.
Baldy Top is a local lookout in an otherwise very flat landscape, a beautiful spot for watching the sunset, and one of the local “must do” attractions in Quilpie.
The track up to Baldy Top is at best tricky, and at worst treacherous, and certainly not for the faint of heart or fleet of foot … yet the old(er) couple coming down the track ahead of us were both walking with the aid of walking sticks.
I offered to help them down the track as I felt that would be easier than having to carry them down on a stretcher if they fell, but they somehow made it down unscathed.
Tomorrow will be a lazy day looking around Quilpie, and we will be heading to the Newsagent to get “the best coffee in town”.
Today we did about 250km just going out to Eromanga and back, plus some running around and then out to Baldy Top this evening for the sunset.
I’ve realised that I haven’t been putting in the daily mileages and statistics, so I will go back and start updating them. If you have just read the previous posts and they have travel details and mileage, then you know I’ve already done it.
Ciao