Before you start sending in complaints, yes – Bloomsbury is a real place – and no – I didn’t make it up.
Somewhere south of Proserpine and north of Mackay. I’ll explain that soon.
Actually it will be VERY soon, because this will be short.
Today is officially the beginning of the end. Not the end of the world, or anything dramatic like that. The end of our long retirement holiday.
Today we start heading home.
I should start by saying that Jeremy Winter – remember Jeremy? – hadn’t solved the case before I went to sleep last night, so I finished that off this morning while MBW was still asleep. I can be thoughtful like that.
Please make sure that you mention my thoughtfulness to her, next time you speak to her.
The usual start to the day with one exception. Today I took my towel.
Once is an accident. Twice would just be stupidity.
Actually there was another exception today. After 6 (or 7?) weeks of sunny, blue skies, today it was starting to rain. It’s a sign.
Packed up, packed down, connected, disconnected. Hooked up Percy and turned Elsie’s nose south, and all of those horses were champing at the bit.
We rolled out of Paronella Park’s The Paddock around 8.15am and I shed a silent tear for leaving the amenities block behind.
Jolene was in a mood today, and took us on a bit of a circuitous route back to the Bruce Hwy, but we were soon on the way. It’s amazing how Jolene can lift her game when you start ignoring her instructions 🙂
All we really did today was drive, with a stop in Townsville.
It was a completely uneventful day, except for when some turkey with Victorian numberplates decided it was important for him to drag his caravan out onto the highway in front of me when I was doing 100km/h, causing me to take evasive action.
He then consolidated his position as King of the You-Know-Whats by then travelling at 20km/h under the speed limit until I had the opportunity to overtake him, at which point he sped up.
Idiot.
Other than that, a completely uneventful day.
We saw the water at Cardwell which was nice, but decided that we’ve seen water in the last 7 weeks, but we haven’t seen any of our favourite little people … so we kept rolling.
But it did look nice.
MBW has a brother (Chris) who lives in Townsville with his wife (Louise), so we stopped off and spent a lovely hour or so with them.
They don’t live in a fancy castle like Jose Paronella, but they DO live halfway up a dead-end street which made getting Elsie and Percy back out again a bit … challenging.
You will notice that I wasn’t important enough to be included in the photo 🙁
It rained for most the day, so it was good to learn that Elsie’s wipers still work correctly. I mean, it’s been about 6 weeks since we have even seen a cloud in the sky.
We stopped for lunch somewhere by the side of the road around 2.00pm, then kept rolling towards … wherever we were going to stop tonight. We had a couple of options, but we wanted to make as much progress towards OFLP as we could.
The primary consideration for tonight was that it had to be free. Unless it wasn’t …
Which is funny really … driving down the east coast, all we see are signs telling us to stop and rest, yet there are so few (decent) rest stops on the highway that it is absurd.
Sure, there are plenty of tiny little “truck stop” places at the side of the road, but if a passing vehicle lost a wheel as they drove past, you’d be standing at the Pearly Gates in no time at all, and the conversation would go like this:
St Peter: “And what did you die from?”
Me: “Queensland State Government laziness and stupidity for not providing suitable rest stops.”
We had the usual assortment of coffee stops, comfort stops, and stretch stops … but I’m sure that you can create your own adventure with that. I don’t need to go into details.
We ended up stopping for the night at a BP service station at Bloomsbury and found a spot to camp for the night.
We did about 560km today, so it was a big day and I’m feeling tired.
But we were rewarded with an amazing sunset to close out the day.
Now that Jeremy has solved the case, I’ll have to start something else. I bought an autobiography of Paul Burrell at an Op Shop recently, so I might make a start on that. Paul Burrell, you may recall, was Princess Diana’s butler and confidante.
Any disgruntled employee who writes a “tell all” about his mostly dysfunctional employer’s family (my opinion) should be worth a chuckle.
It was a big driving day today, so hopefully we will slow down a little tomorrow and enjoy the ride a bit more.
Ciao
#Retirement2024
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