I had a terrible sleep last night. From all reports, MBW also had a bad night sleep.
After being so cold for so long – chilled to the bone almost watching the Big Rig night show – I fear that we overdid it with the portable heater while we were having dinner and the van got a bit overheated and stuffy.
We didn’t get to bed late … I think I was crawling into bed at around 9.30pm and preparing myself early for the assault of trucks on the highway behind us, but then I couldn’t get to sleep because I was hot. After trashing around for a while I ended up opening some of the hatches in the bathroom to allow some airflow, and then after some further thrashing around I threw off the quilt also.
And then my feet were itchy. I’m not sure if that was because I was hot, or if it is some undiagnosed mental disorder – either is possible I guess – and then at around 11.00pm or so I gave up and sought some pharmaceutical assistance, via a sleeping tablet.
We packed down the van in record time this morning, and were ready to roll just before 9.15am. If I turned up to work at 9.15am I’d probably have my pay docked, but 9.15am isn’t too shabby in Roma, on holidays, and especially after a bad night sleep.
I got the coffee going this morning while MBW was in the shower, but she finished the process while I had a quick shower. I think that she must have done something wrong with the coffee today, because it did nothing to either wake me up, or cheer me up. Maybe the coffee we are using is past it’s use-by date and no longer works?
Or maybe it’s just because I’ll be going back to work in a couple of days and I don’t want to.
I felt just a little bit like Captain Kirk (of Starship Enterprise fame) this morning when I asked MBW to close the hatches, set Spotify for a country music playlist, and we set off at warp speed.
Actually I lie – it wasn’t even close to warp speed.
There was an absolutely ferocious cross wind on the trip out from Roma this morning heading east and that, combined with the appallingly uneven road surface, made for a very unpleasant journey.
Picture this: Imagine that you are sitting on a trampoline with two small children that are jumping up and down around you; meanwhile you have other idiot drivers flying past you in places where the white painted lines on the road are clearly screaming “DANGER – NO OVERTAKING HERE!!!”, and you are listening to this country and western playlist that includes classics such as “Beer never broke my heart” and “I only date cowboys”.
And I have to share with you that the music was the most enjoyable part of that whole experience. When in Roma …
So I kept it at a nice steady 95km/h and ignored the speed signs that said “you can go 110km/h if you want to”. I didn’t want to. I was happy doing 95km/h because I wanted to live a little longer.
It was a relatively uneventful trip – other than wondering if I was about to see my first dead body (… actually it would be my second DB, but that is a whole other discussion for a whole other time …) each time one of the lunatics overtook me on a double line in the face of oncoming traffic.
We blew through Wallumbilla and then suddenly the diuretic part the coffee kicked it, and the coffee needed to make an urgent exit. Next possible location was Yuleba.
I’m going to digress for just a moment and say that I’d like to buy a property in Wallumbilla. MBW doesn’t know that yet, but I guess she will find out when/if she reads this post. I think that Wallumbilla is a fun name for a township, and I think it would be cool to say “yeah, I have a place in Wallumbilla …”
The fact that it is little more than a “Welcome to Wallumbilla” sign, closely followed by “Thanks for visiting Wallumbilla” sign is not particularly relevant to me. If not Wallumbilla, then maybe Muckadilla. Either or.
I think I mentioned yesterday some of the changes that we are seeing the closer we get back to Brisbane – wider, faster roads, painted lines, more cars, overtaking lanes, etc.
The other thing that we have noticed is that instead of travelling an hour or more between townships, we are seeing them much more frequently. It sometimes feels like I have only just got Elsie back up to warp speed from coming through the last township, and I am throwing out the anchor and slowing down for the next one.
This was exactly the case this morning – there was hardly enough time to worry about missing an opportunity in Wallumbilla when another opportunity came up in Yuleba, only 15 minutes further down the road.
Now I’ve promised MBW that I won’t bore you with endless toilet stops and bladder issues in this trip’s blog, but I do need to mention this one because it was … unusual.
It was unusual because it was in the middle of a cemetery. I’m fairly certain that it wasn’t there for the benefit of any of the residents of the cemetery because they are all, um, dead, so maybe it is there for the comfort of people who are attending a burial and failed to plan by not going before the service … or maybe for the benefit of people who DID plan, but the service went very looooong.
Who knows? You can see the facilities in the picture below – it’s the little building just off centre.
To be fair, it wasn’t actually signed as a public toilet, but it was open, and it was unoccupied.
MBW was waiting in Elsie just outside the cemetery (I’ve been able to go by myself for some years now), and on the way back out I stopped and looked at some of the gravestones in the cemetery – some of which are quite old.
From Yuleba to Miles it was only about another hour, and we stopped for a late breakfast/early lunch.
While we were stopped for lunch and sitting in the van, we had a road train pull up beside (or outside) us, and I managed to snatch another photo of Elsie & Ernie Vs Road train – although this one wasn’t the full 53m long as it only had 2 trailers so it wasn’t quite as impressive.
I’m sure that a road train with only 2 trailers, not 3, has a name, but I don’t know what it is. Maybe a B-Double Vs a B-Triple?
We had a super-quick stop in Brigalow and then kept travelling through Chinchilla.
We stayed in Chinchilla on the first night of this trip, so we didn’t bother stopping again, preferring instead to get into Dalby earlier rather than later.
Somewhere past Chinchilla, in a place called MacAlister there is a grain (I think) silo with this impressive conveyor belt across the road to the train line. It doesn’t look like much from a distance, but becomes more impressive the closer you get … and you have a brief moment of panic wondering how much clearance there is underneath it!
The further east we travelled, the more the skies became threatening and in fact we had a few spots of rain on the way today.
We finally arrived into Dalby at around 1.30pm and checked into the Dalby Tourist Park. I asked for a nice, quiet, grassy spot and we got a nice one well away from the road … so no road trains to keep me awake tonight.
Dalby is the epitome of civilisation considering where we have been for the last week or so, with traffic lights, Woolworths and Coles AND Aldi. More fuel stations than you can poke a stick at … all sorts of fun things to see and do.
We thought we’d pop out for a quick coffee to celebrate civilisation found … only to find that the coffee shops in Dalby all close at 2.00pm, and we missed it by 10 minutes.
Maybe not so civilised after all 🙁
But at least they are honest. On a quick trip out to Coles to buy a few last-minute things that we needed, and a few things that we probably didn’t need, we saw this sign outside of a Lifeline shop …
Weird stuff for sale.
Maybe the locals in Dalby aren’t as normal or civilised at we thought?
We will be home tomorrow and I’m feeling a bit sad. I’ve enjoyed dragging Ernie around western Queensland with MBW – seeing and doing some fun stuff – and just once I’d like to be going home because I’m ready to go home, not because I’ve run out of time 🙁
We are sitting here in Dalby tonight, warming up one of our final frozen dinners that we brought with us, and listening to the increasingly heavy rain on the roof. There is also a strange vibration coming through the floor of the van and I can’t figure out what it is – either wind rocking the van or maybe an earthquake?
With any luck I won’t be able to make it back to work on Monday and I’ll have to “work from home” from Dalby for the foreseeable future.
I suppose I could go outside and look around to try and figure out the cause of the vibration but experience has taught me two things:
- Don’t ask a question if you don’t want to know the answer; and
- Don’t do something today if you can possibly put it off until tomorrow.
Today’s vital statistics are that we travelled approximately 270km over about 4 hours or so.
If anyone is talking to Zach, could you please remind him we will be home tomorrow and that it’s probably a good time to put on the dishwasher and give the house a tidy up.
Got to go. Dinner is ready and I don’t want MBW to shout at me for being late.
Ciao