MBW and I are like Ying and Yang.
One of us likes sultanas (bizzy-wizzies) in their breakfast cereal and raisin toast, the other doesn’t. One of us likes roller-coasters, and the other is always happy to stand and hold the bags.
One of us eats green peas, while the other doesn’t like them (… not that I ever get them because they are never served). Oops, sorry.
One of us sleeps well, and the other … well, you know how it goes.
History has taught me that while I will wake at 4.00am and say to myself, ”well, only two hours to the alarm .. I’ll never get back to sleep now” (glass half empty), MBW will wake at 5.55am and say ”beauty, another 5 minutes” (glass half full), and go back to sleep.
Seriously, MBW could sleep standing up in a hurricane.
But not last night.
Last night we stayed at the Wallumbilla (population 191) Showgrounds. $10 donation for water and power hook-up, remember? A bargain.
Turns out it was also close to the highway. Close enough that you could throw a rock and hit passing trucks. And that would have been like shooting fish in a barrel, because the trucks heading towards Brisbane were all frantically applying their compression/engine brakes to slow down as they are coming into the 60km/h zone into Wallumbilla. All night.
All. Night. Long.
But here is the funny thing. The one of us that doesn’t sleep well (me) put my head on the pillow and was off in the land of nod instantly and slept solidly for 8 hours or more, while MBW tossed and turned all night. I could speculate on the reasons for that – unconfessed sin, for example – but that would not be helpful or productive, so I won’t go there.
So I had a restful sleep, and MBW listened to trucks. (And me snoring, if you can believe everything that she says).
We were up, showered, fed, caffeinated, and rolling out the gate of the showgrounds before 9.00am, headed west again towards Augathella (population 328), home for the next couple of nights.
First stop for the day was Roma, to see the Pope. Kidding! The Pope lives in Rome, which is an entirely different place to Roma. A bit further North, and West I think …
We topped up Elsie’s tanks – just to take away any risk of running out of fuel in the middle of nowhere – and then went in search of Coles. Coles have a couple of specials on sale this week that we wanted to get.
Turns out that there is no Coles in Roma. The Project Manager in me really should have checked that before we left civilisation, so we took a detour to Woolworths instead to pick up some necessities.
Now, I know what you are thinking. We’ve only been on the road for less than 24 hours and you’d expect that it would have taken a little longer than that to run out of essentials … but alas, no. It actually didn’t take very long at all to discover that we had failed to pack any toilet paper. Not a single sheet of the stuff.
And I have to tell you, roughing it in the outback takes on a whole new perspective when you have no toilet paper!
So equipped with TP and a few other (slightly less urgent) essentials, we were back on the road, heading towards Mitchell.
Mitchell is a pretty little outback Queensland town where I would love to spend a week. It has artesian water swimming pools where you can soak those aches right out of your weary body, and it also has our favourite little outback supplies shop in the universe. Even better than Walmarts in the USA.
It had been predetermined that we would stop there, come hell or high water.
It is a rickerty old building with uneven wooden floors, and you can buy everything there. Well, maybe not everything, but it feels that way.
Cowboy/cowgirl clothes, boots, Crocs, Yeti drink coolers, hats (both Akubras and Stetsons), saddles and bridles, blankets, a gun safe, and stuff to kill intestinal worms in your livestock. Everything, I tell you!
MBW bought a nice pink checked shirt that I’m certain will appear in future photos, and it was also necessary because she’d forgotten to pack a decent shirt for the Opera in the Outback in Winton next week. Just like she forgot to pack toilet paper.
We were going to stop at the Mitchell bakery to get something for a snack, but we decided to keep moving towards Morven and stop at the coffee van that was parked at the side of the road last time we passed through Morven … maybe 2020? I mean, what could possibly go wrong with that plan?
Prepare yourself for disappointment (and no caffeine) Geoffrey, because the coffee van wasn’t there this time. What a surprise! And given that Morven has a population of only 125 peeps, it’s hardly like there is a plethora of other coffee shop options there. Sigh.
So we kept plugging along towards Augathella.
The roads are pretty long, straight and boring and given that we have driven these roads before – not that I can specifically remember them – there was nothing of note that we wanted to see or do. We have previously driven some of this road, but we passed the turnoff to Charleville and drove the bit towards Augathella for the first time ever.
A bit of rain – heavy at times – but nothing of particular note to report. Not much traffic.
Although the strangest and most unlikely things can bring humour to your day. There has been quite a bit of roadwork going on along these roads, so I can only presume that it is an election year.
Sorry, that probably sounded like sarcasm 🙁
Google maps is a wonderful thing, because it alerts you to speed traps, congestion, and road works. Except when you don’t have any mobile coverage (which was my reality for most of the trip today), in which case you have to look for ”roadwork ahead” signs, just like in the olden days.
Anyhow, we have had several occasions where we have stopped at a red light – literally in the middle of nowhere – to wait for traffic coming the other way to pass, so that it is our turn.
We came to some roadworks somewhere between Wallumbilla and Morven (can’t remember where sorry … a lack of caffeine will do that to you), and there was a set of traffic lights (red, of course), with a traffic control lady standing there with a clicker to make the lights change colour.
Seriously? I can get Chat GPT to write a beautiful poem for MBW for her birthday, but they can’t get a set of remote traffic lights to change by themselves without a lady in PPE with a clicker?
But the lady with the clicker wasn’t the funniest part. When she clicked and gave us a green light to go, she then waved us onto the wrong (right) side of the road to travel a couple of kilometres, while there was absolutely no roadwork happening on the correct (left) side of the road.
I mean, seriously? There was no digging, no people working, no roadwork, no machinery. NOTHING! We drove a couple of kilometres on the wrong side of the road looking at nothing happening on the correct side of the road!
And when we got to the other end of the ”roadwork”, there was another lady in full PPE, with another clicker, waving us back onto the correct side of the road.
I had to wonder if we were on an episode of ”Candid Camera”. It was really weird.
I needed a stretch after driving for a few hours with no break for coffee (sigh), so we determined that we would stop at the very next rest area that we saw. It was only another couple of kilometres down the road but was rather unequipped and uninspiring, with only a drop toilet and a wheelie bin.
I stretched, emptied the bag of rubbish in the car at the nearest wheelie bin, but couldn’t bring/brace myself to use the drop toilet, so we kept on towards Augathella. It was only another 10km or so.
The next act of complete randomness was signage on the road to Augathella that tells you that playing trivia can help you to stay awake.
First roadside trivia question: “What is the mascot for the Augathella football team?” Answer: The Meatant.
Next trivia question: ”Why was there only one trivia question?” They obviously don’t know much trivia around here, because they only had one trivia question.
Or they only want you to stay focussed for a very short time. Who knows?
Augathella (population 328) is another pretty little town in western Queensland. We have found a little public camping area that is $10/night donation for no power or water. Not quite the bargain that we got in Wallumbilla, but it is also not next to the highway.
There is not much to see in Augathella, but we heard that the local butcher is worth a look, so we did a wander up one side of the main street and back down the other.
We stopped at the local BoQ branch/Centrelink office and had a look at their gallery of black and white historical photos, but we had an attack of the guilts because we didn’t have any cash to make a gold coin donation.
As I said earlier, we are camped in the local park and didn’t even bother to unhook Elsie again, even though we are here for a couple of nights.
We stopped at the butcher to buy some steak and got a big lump of 1 inch thick porterhouse (to share, sadly) for dinner, and then went back for a nap (me) and for MBW to read her book for a while.
I ducked across the road to the pub to get a ”minimum chips” ($5) to have with our steak and salad was rewarded with a beautiful rainbow while I was waiting.
Dinner, blog and I am ready for coffee. I’m going to have to get out the generator and get some emergency power going for the coffee machine to work.
It turns out that the Augathella rodeo is on in town tomorrow (who would’ve known? Maybe that’s why there are so many vans here?), so that sounds like a bit of fun. I don’t expect that MBW will let me have a go riding a bull, even though I have the appropriate hat to wear.
One thing is for sure though – if we go to the butcher again tomorrow I’ll be avoiding the mince meat, because you never know what (or who) could be in it after a day of unsuccessful bull riders getting thrown off a bull and trampled.
Time for coffee. I can hear the locals across the road at the pub and I’m thinking of Lee Kernaghan’s ”Boys from the Bush”. I’m hoping that they won’t be at it for too long.
Ciao
#Retirement2024