Author: geoff

It was a very quiet day today.

If short drives were an Olympic sport, we would be on the podium today.

Fishery Falls to Paronella Park is only about 65km. That’s about 50 minutes driving time. I could do it in 45 minutes if Percy wasn’t on the back.

The latest we could check out of Fishery Falls was 10.00am, and the earliest we could check into Paronella Park was 12.00noon. If you are struggling with the maths, that’s 2 hours to do a 50 minute drive.

MBW did a load of washing because it is washing day. Fortunately we are back onto the regular Thursday washing day cycle, and I no longer have to guess when it is happening.

When we get home, I guess that we will be back onto a standard Friday washing day, but who knows …? Maybe Thursday will become our new thing?

There is a little creek down the back of the Fishery Falls Caravan Park. People have said that they have been swimming in it and that they didn’t get eaten by a crocodile, but we haven’t even seen it yet … so we went down this morning for a look.

A very pretty creek, in a very pretty and well-maintained park. We rolled out of the park as close to 10.00am check-out time as we could.

Innisfail was only a small deviation for us, so rather than do the entire drive at about 35km/h, we asked Jolene to take us to Innisfail to have a look-see and to kill some time.

We found two of our favourite things in Innisfail – an Op Shop and coffee – and they were across the road from each other. It wasn’t a coffee shop per se, but rather a McDonald’s McCafe. MBW had enough McPoints for a free McCoffee, and I bought a chocolate chocolate chip muffin and flashed my Senior’s card, and was rewarded with a free coffee of my own.

It helps that I look old and grey, but having a young and beautiful MBW by my side makes “looking old” more of a challenge.

We consumed our coffee and 50% each of a CCC muffin, and explored the Op Shop unsuccessfully – or successfully if you consider that we didn’t spend any money – and by then we couldn’t delay our trip to Paronella Park any longer.

We drove through very picturesque cane fields and arrived at ”The Paddock” about 7 minutes before check-in time, which wasn’t a problem anyway.

We’ve heard that the paddock sites are big and comfortable, and they are.

Great amenities block, too.

So we had a bit of a lazy afternoon. Our ticket into Paronella Park gives us free entry for 2 years, and access to guided tours during the day and also at night.

We hadn’t actually checked in to the caravan park (we paid online in advance of our arrival), so we had a bite of lunch and wandered over the road to check-in and book for the evening tour tonight.

We had a quick unassisted and unguided wander around the park, then headed back to Percy in the paddock for a quiet afternoon.

We’d bought some beef ribs on special the other day, so MBW got them prepared for a slow cook all afternoon, and we just lazed around and read our books. MBW played catch-up on Masterchef.

It’s nice to have decent internet for a change.

Paronella Park is a 1930s Spanish castle build by a guy named Jose Paronella. A guy who clearly had too much money and too much spare time. But a great idea!

The castle would have been magnificent in its day, but “concrete cancer”, big wet seasons, tropical cyclones, and fires have all taken their toll and the place fell into disrepair. It was purchased by a family 30 years ago who have had it heritage listed and are doing restoration works.

We headed over to the park just before 7.00pm for our 7.15pm night tour and got to see the castle and waterfall by lights.

And it was pretty spectacular.

And that’s about it for today. Shower, coffee, reading, and off to the Land of Nod.

Tomorrow we do the day/history tour of Paronella Park and we will go exploring the park better equipped with the knowledge of what we should see.

We probably could have stayed here for just the one night, but it is what it is. We will get some rest before we unleash the horses and tackle the 1,600km or so back home.

Ciao

#Retirement2024

#VanLife

If you are of a certain age and you can remember Dragnet on TV, you will probably remember Sgt Joe Friday and the classic line, “Just the facts, Ma’am”.

And that is exactly what you are getting today. Just the facts.

No funny anecdotes, no witty wisdom, and nothing for you to ponder and reflect on. Absolutely no educational or nutritional value. 

Just the facts.

Today was a driving and exploring day. We were keen to get up and explore the Atherton Tablelands. Let Elsie and those horses run free for the day.

We rolled out of Fishery Falls just after 8.30, and pointed Elsie’s nose north and west. I’ve had a few issues with Jolene lately – she sometimes takes us on a wild goose chase – but we gave her the benefit of the doubt.

About 10km north, then Jolene told us to turn to the left (west) and start up the hill.

And what a climb it was. More twists and turns than an Agatha Christie novel.

It would have been a lovely (= fun) road in the Ferrari, but unfortunately we left the Ferrari at home this trip 🙁

First stop Youngaburra.

And what a pretty little place that is. RV friendly, too. We’d left Percy behind, but everything was well signed and easy to navigate around.

And what a pretty little place it is. I’ve said that before.

One of the places that I was keen to visit is Herterton. If you Google “Top 10 Queensland towns to visit before you die”, Herberton is right up there. Maybe not before you die, but … well, before you die.

It was also a pretty little town, but nowhere near as nice as Youngaburra. RV friendly again, but it seemed that many places in town were either closed, or they were closed down (for good).

We found an Op Shop that was open and bought some books we liked for a few dollars.

We had morning tea – coffee and a scone – at a little coffee shop. It seemed as though there was a meeting of the CWA going on at the other side of the coffee shop.

Pretty feisty, those CWA ladies.

We did the walk around town, but we were on our way again pretty quickly.

From there we wanted to see the “highest road in Queensland”, which was only a few kilometres down the road. Except that Jolene – stupid Jolene – took us for a lovely drive down a picturesque road that added about 20 unnecessary kilometres to the drive.

Seriously!

MBW was keen to go and look at a diary because – let’s face it – we do like cheese. One diary that she wanted to see was closed that day, so the second choice was at Millaa Millaa … so off we went.

It was a fizzer. No cheese tasting available, and a bus load of tourists turned up a few nanoseconds before we did, so we couldn’t even get anyone’s attention.

So instead we went for a drive to look at Millaa Millaa Falls.

Shame that we hadn’t taken our swimmers, but then the people getting out of the water seemed … cold. Very cold.

So lucky we didn’t go in.

But we took some photos and had lunch in the carpark.

Next stop Malanda, and specifically to see the Malanda Falls. Not as nice as Mliiaa Millaa, but nice anyway.

Another Op Shop but nothing of interest.

We were starting to feel a little weary, and these little country towns – as pretty and delightful as they are – all start to blend into one another after a while.

We needed to head home via Youngaburra anyway, so we went to the platypus viewing platform to see if we could spot ourselves a platypus.

No luck 🙁

And home. Back down the windy and challenging road down the hill.

One of MBW’s friends from election work (Dianne) is in Cairns for a few days, and MBW was keen to catch-up with her. So we got into some warmer clothes and headed the 45 minutes back up to Cairns and met Dianne for dinner at Muddies on the Cairns esplanade.

Home for coffee and bed, and that’s about the day for us.

We had a lovely time and took lots of pictures. Tomorrow we are doing the KSR which should be fun.

Ciao

#Retirement2024

#VanLife

It was a bit of a lazy day today, I have to confess. Sunday, the rest day, so that was fitting.

We had a tour of the Undara Lava Tubes this afternoon, so we had the morning to kill. It was also quite cool this morning – MBW put her slippers on – so it was a “sit in the sun and drink coffee” kinda day.

I had some administration to do. Just boring stuff – pay some bills, book some more leave (I don’t actually retire until the end of July and I’m on leave until then). Just boring stuff.

MBW went and lay on the bed and read her book.

It was just one of those mornings.

We are staying at Pinnarendi Station. The Undara Lava Tubes are in a national park (or maybe a nature reserve) about 46km back the way that we have already come. There was a reason for that – really just trying to get that bit closer to our next destination for when we leave here tomorrow, even though it means an extra 92km for Elsie and a bit over an hour in the car for us.

But we will be laughing tomorrow because we are that much closer to Cairns already. Well, that’s the hypothesis, anyway.

We could have gone for a drive, but the nearest township (Mt Surprise – population 138) is about another 25km beyond Undara, and we have been there already.

In the other direction is My Garnett (population 532) about 55km away, but experience tells us that it is likely to be a ghost town on a Sunday afternoon.

So we stayed at Pinnarendi Station and just chilled.

We had to be at Undara around 12.30pm for a 1.00pm kick-off, so we left Percy around 11.30am to give ourselves time to have a leisurely trip to Undara and have a look around the resort there before the Lava Tubes.

Just before 1.00pm we were rounded up into a couple of minibuses and taken on a 2km (or so) trip into the bush towards the Lava Tubes.

Our guide either didn’t introduce himself, or I missed it, but he was a South African gentleman.

Not that there is anything wrong with being South African, but we have been to 2 different nature reserves in the last few days (Cobbold Gorge and Undara Lava Tubes) and encountered several South African guides both times.

You have to wonder if South Africa exports tour guides as a commodity.

The Undara Lava Tubes were great. Created by molten lava flowing at different temperatures and at different times to create something like “a skin on boiled milk”.

There goes any desire I have for a hot chocolate tonight 🙁

Our guide said that the First Nations peeps wanted nothing to do with the tubes, because they see them as being a scary spiritual place. Even though those lava tubes were 120 million years old (… and don’t quote me on that …), there were piles of rocks at the entrance to one of the lava tubes that we were told had come down “only last year”.

The Rangers check the rocks every season to see if there are any loose ones.

Now I have to say that closer inspection seemed to indicate some large cracks in the rock, and there were some large rocks in the ceiling that only seemed to be just hanging on.

So if you did a risk assessment on going in there, I suspect that you may not go in at all. We must have signed a waver when we paid for the tour.

We looked in two lava tubes and they were both more like a cave than a tube … when you consider that a tube is normally open at both ends. And these tubes that we saw were both closed off at one end. But the belief is that the tube only appears to be closed – rather it goes downwards and is full of mud.

Our guide was telling us that they can get a build-up of carbon dioxide in the lava tubes and that is one of the reasons that the Aboriginals don’t like them. The build-up of CO₂ can (apparently) bring on a feeling of confusion and impending doom.

I confess that I was also having a feeling of impending doom with the sense that I was at the end of a long cave with rocks that could fall at any moment – potentially trapping or crushing me – and I was reminded of those boys that were trapped in that cave in Thailand in 2018.

I can’t even bring myself to watch the documentary on Netflix about that!

Our guide also told us that the first tube had about 1.5 metres of water through it up until about 6 weeks ago, as a result of the late wet season.

The second lava tube that we went through still had water on it – but only about 30cm deep – and so we were all invited to remove our shoes and go for a paddle along the walkway and into the water.

Cool and refreshing are the two words that spring to mind. It was fun and certainly a highlight of the walk.

We were back to Elsie just after 3.00pm, and back at Percy (Pinnarendi Station) by 3.45pm for a coffee and rest.

It has been funny weather today – cool this morning, hot at Undara but cool inside the lava tubes (as you would expect), and now (5.00pm) it is cooling off to the point that MBW has put on a hoodie.

Tomorrow we are heading off again – north east towards Cairns – although we are staying at a place called Fishery Falls that is about 40km south of Cairns. We couldn’t find anything that we really liked (or could afford) in Cairns.

We had considered staying at Palm Cove – north of Cairns – and having a few days of “beachside” holiday, but there was no availability in Palm Cove for the days we wanted. Plus Palm Cove is about another 65km north of Fishery Falls, so we would need to tow Percy all the way up there, and then all the way back again for our trip home.

It’s a bit of a tricky run into Cairns from here. We would have liked to go up through the Tablelands, but the roads down into Cairns are steep and twisty (some say treacherous), and so instead we are going to head towards Innisfail and then head north.

It only a short run tomorrow – just over 220km – so should be an easy driving day. MBW has advised me that we are leaving early, but let’s see what time we wake up.

3 nights at Fishery Falls, then 2 nights at Paronella Park, and then once Elsie’s nose is pointing towards home and those horses start galloping, there will be no stopping us.

MBW has pulled something out of the freezer for dinner tonight, so it will be a surprise to see what that turns out to be.

There are way too many midges around here and I am getting eaten alive, so I’m going to go and hide inside with the bug zapper.

Maybe I’ll go over to the ablutions block first and have a nice hot shower, and use another squirt of that 13 cent handwash.

Ciao

#Retirement2024

#VanLife

Did you know that in the 1980s, an American burger joint (A&W) tried selling 1/3 pound burgers at the same price as McDonald’s 1/4 pound burgers, but that they didn’t sell?

Why didn’t they sell?

Because people don’t understand fractions and assumed that a 1/3 pound burger was smaller than a 1/4 pound burger, and figured that it didn’t offer the same value.

Only a short trip today. About 203km from Forsayth through to Pinnarendi Station. About 2.5 hours travel time, not counting stops.

Pinnarendi Station is not a locality as such, but the name of a working cattle station. The actual location is called Forty Mile … which is probably just as unhelpful.

They probably should stop calling it Forty Mile and instead call it 64 Kilometre, but I can’t see that will be helpful either.

Let’s face it. If it was called 64 Kilometre, people would think it’s further away, right? And they wouldn’t go.

So how about I just say that we are about 200km SW of Cairns?

If you can recall me commenting on the gravel road into Forsayth from Georgetown, then I’m sure it won’t surprise you that it is still gravel. I mean, it’s only been 2 days.

Of the 40km road into Georgetown, probably 8km or so is pretty rough and corrugated. So it was a slow old trip out.

When we were at Cobbold Gorge yesterday, there was an older guy talking to another couple and he said that after dragging his van into Cobbold George over 37km of gravel, lights were broken, the microwave had fallen out, and there was dirt everywhere.

I’d suggest that he was driving too fast.

In any case I wasn’t talking the risk, so we did about 8km of gravel from Forsayth to Georgetown at about 40km/h.

You may recall that when we came through Georgetown on the way in, we were looking forward to stopping on the way out and have a poke around.

Bad idea.

Georgetown on a Saturday morning is closed. The coffee van was closed. Everything was closed. I must have imagined that there was lots to see, but clearly my memory isn’t what it used to be. There was hardly anything there of any value, and it was closed anyway.

But despite all of that, it is a pretty little town.

Sleepy, but pretty.

We did a quick lap of the township, then climbed aboard Elsie for the next leg of the journey to Mt Surprise.

Roads were mostly OK, but there were quite a few sections of single lane only that was pretty ordinary.

We rolled into Mt Surprise around 11.00am and were pleasantly … surprised. Another pretty little town that seems to have a history around both WWII and the railways. Lots and lots of vans and motorhomes stopped in Mt Surprise, so we stopped too and had a look around.

Mt Surprise is a very RV friendly town. They have a dump point right there in the main street next to the train station, so if you find yourself in North Queensland with a full toilet cassette in your caravan, Mt Surprise is the place to go.

Just don’t camp at the railway station.

I needed a caffeine hit, so I had a quick coffee before heading off.

Elsie still had a tiger in her tank from yesterday, so Elsie was happy.

I had coffee in my tank, so I was happy.

And MBW is always happy. Well, mostly …

From Mt Surprise it was only a short hop to Pinnarendi Station. About 50km. Good wide, fast road and we sat on 100km/h most of the way. Most of the trip was travelling east, but we hit a T intersection and turned north for the last 10km or so.

We had booked and paid for our space at Pinnarendi Station several days ago, so all we had to do was arrive and be told what site we are on. That should be a quick and straight-forward process.

There were 3 other vans ahead of us waiting to check-in when we arrived, and the process was long and rather tedious. It seems that the lady who does check-ins has a predetermined speech that she needs to give to all arrivals, and she explains all of the features and activities that can be done, whether you actually have any interest in doing any of them.

There is a sign in the men’s toilets that says you are only allowed one (1) squirt of liquid soap handwash because:

a) one squirt should be enough for anybody, and besides

b) each squirt costs 13 cents.

So I did as I was told and gave myself a 13 cent handwash.

MBW washed out some smalls, we had lunch, and now we are just hanging around camp and wondering what the poor people are doing.

It’s pretty warm here – about 30 degrees but there is a nice breeze blowing outside under the awning. Of course it could be a very pleasant 22 degrees – or even a chilly 16 degrees – if we went inside, closed all of the windows and turned on the air-conditioning … but that’s not the point, right?

The spaces here are lovely and (mostly) shady, and I’m thinking I should put my 20m wire up in a tree and see if I can make any contacts on 40m (7MHz).

I’m also debating whether to have a nap, or whether I could get away with a 10m antenna as an alternative to a 20m wire, but frankly my brain is hurting too much trying to figure that out just now, so I suspect that the nap may win the day.

BTW that story about the 1/3 pound burgers is true. You can read about it here.

This is living! Nothing to do and all day to do it.

Ciao

#Retirement2024

#VanLife

It has happened again. That’s the second time this week.

We awoke this morning to the sound of people around us packing up their vans, and leaving.

Beside us, on the other side of the road where we are parked, and behind us. They were all packing up and leaving. All except for the bloke immediately to our left – on the “passenger side” of Percy.

It happened in Karumba, and now it has happened here in Forsayth.

It must be us. Probably me. MBW is charming and lovely. In fact if you looked up the word “charming” in the dictionary, her picture would be there.

I don’t know what it is that we … er, I … keep doing to offend everyone, but I need to figure it out pretty fast. At least I haven’t offended the bloke directly beside us yet.

Although I am officially the worst Facebook friend in the universe, I do look at it on occasion when I need to be distracted from something unpleasant. Like a Proctologist appointment.

Not that I’ve had a Proctologist appointment recently, but I did check FB the other day. And there was a discussion on the LC200 forum about how much oil your Landcruiser uses, especially when towing.

So I thought to myself, “I’d better check the oil in Elsie.”

Actually that’s not true. What I actually thought was, “I wonder how to get the bonnet up so that I can check the oil.”

So this morning, before we headed off to Cobbold Gorge, I got the bonnet up and checked the oil. And it was fine. Halfway between the high mark and the low mark. So I’ll give it a top-up when we get back to civilisation.

I did notice in there under the bonnet evidence of birds feathers, dragonflys, dead butterflys, etc. Which probably goes some way to explaining what happens when a bird hits the radiator.

But checking the oil reminded me of Pierre-Jules Boulanger.

Who is Pierre-Jules Boulanger? That is a very good question, and I’ll tell you about him later.

So with the oil checked, breakfast consumed, and Elsie packed for a day at Cobbold Gorge, we headed out of the caravan park and swung by the local dam because it is one of the top 10 things to do in Forsayth.

To be completely truthful, there is probably only 3 things to do in Forsayth, and we have already done 2 of them, so the dam was the last one to tick off the list.

And what a lovely dam and picnic area it is. Far better than anything I have even seen in Brisbane.

Which is interesting, because we learned today that there are only 900 residents in this shire, and only 200 of them pay rates. So well done Forsayth!

At the dam we realised that there was something we’d left behind, so we swung back to the CP very quickly. It wasn’t far … you could probably stand in the middle of Forsayth and throw a rock in any direction, and it would land outside the town centre.

There are a lot of interesting rock formations around Forsayth. MBW reckons that they are real, but I’m not so sure.

We came back into the caravan park and pulled up next to Percy, and I saw that our neighbour – remember our neighbour? The only one we haven’t seemed to offend so far – standing at the front of his van and looking at me with this bovine expression on his face.

Maybe “inscrutable” is a better word that “bovine”, but you know what I mean. The same look you get from a cow when you drive past.

So I did the neighbourly thing and engaged him in conversation.

Me: “Hi. How are you today?”

Neighbour: “Bit slower’d be nice.”

Now I have to say at this point that the combination of his bovine inscrutable expression and his veeerrryyy slooowww speeeeeeech made me believe that he actually said “I’m a bit slow. Be nice.” Which confused me.

Honestly! That’s what I thought he said.

Me: “Huh?”

Neighbour: “Bit slower’d be nice. Keeps the dust down.”

Me: “Righto then.”

Update: It appears that I HAVE offended everybody in the caravan park.

So we got the stuff we needed and headed back out to Cobbold Gorge. It is about a 40km road, and as discussed yesterday, at least 37km of that is gravel.

To get out to Cobbold Gorge, you have to take the road to everywhere.

The first 3km of bitumen is a very nice surface, but at about the 2km mark you get a sign at the side of the road that says ”REDUCE SPEED. NO LINES. NO OVERTAKING”.

Like having no lines on the bitumen is going to be the worst problem that you encounter on this road today.

The road very quickly turned to gravel, and when I say gravel, I mean teeth-chatteringly rough gravel.

With some serious washouts. And corrugations. And cattle grids. And cattle. And water crossings.

But also some beautiful creeks.

It was lucky that we didn’t bring the Lamborghini on this trip, because it would never have made it to Cobbold Gorge on that road. But it would have been fun in a rally car 🙂

It wasn’t a quick trip, but then I didn’t want to rattle Elsie to bits on the way.

But we did see quite a number of cars and caravans coming out … and I couldn’t imagine how complex that trip would have been with a van on the back.

We got out to Cobbold Gorge around 11.00am and our tour wasn’t due to start until 1.30pm, so we checked in and then went and hung about by the pool. We had taken our swimmers so that we could indulge prior to the gorge tour.

We got ourselves comfy on beach recliners and watched some other people come in and get in the pool, only to watch them get out again looking very, very cold.

Rather than go to the trouble of getting into our swimmers just to freeze in the pool, we just stayed fully dressed and lazed on the recliners and enjoyed the sun and fresh air. MBW read her book and I had a nice nap.

We had a bite of lunch and got ourselves ready for the tour at 1.15pm as instructed.

We were in a group of 13 (there was probably 45 people all together, but split into 3 group) and Grant was our tour guide.

We all got into a small bus and headed down to the gorge.

What was really weird was the way that Grant gave his commentary. He did it in this really “sing-songy” voice, using really short sentences.

And there were some words that he simply couldn’t say. Like “genetically modified”.

The gorge was absolutely spectacular … and in typical fashion, I took about 200 photos of the gorge and none of them do it justice.

The gorge tour consisted of a 2 parts: a boat thrip through the gorge, and a walk through the nature reserve including a walk over the glass bridge.

The gorge tour was started with a safety talk which is to be expected given that we are out in the bush.

But it is always a worry when the first thing that you are told in the safety talk is where to find the defibrillator.

And the second thing that you are told is that “if anything happens to your guide, take the walkie-talkie off his/her belt and call for help.”

OK, that’s not particularly comforting but … all good to know.

Unfortunately we were the last ones to get onto the boat … but fortunately that meant that we ended up at the front, with perfect views of the gorge.

Here is a fun fact: Cobbold Gorge wasn’t discovered until 1992. That is only about 30 years ago.

Why? Because the people who owned the land raised cattle. They knew that the waterhole was there because that’s where they watered their cattle, but everything else was scrub and sandstone, so they simply never bothered going and looking.

It was only when their son and his friend brought a small tinny (aluminium boat) to the creek and followed it upstream, that they discovered the beauty of the gorge.

Then they turned 15,000 acres into a nature reserve.

After the boat trip we went for a 1.2km walk through the bush.

It was a fabulous day. Seriously hot up on the sandstone with not a cloud in the sky. But a fabulous day.

Nobody needed the defibrillator, and none of our guides needed assistance.

Grant must have had his whole commentary memorised, because if someone asked him a question, once he’d answered it you could see the cogs turning in his head as he worked out where he was up to in his spiel.

We got back to Elsie to find …

I don’t really believe it was actually 49 degrees outside, but it certainly felt like it.

We did the 37km of gravel and 3km of bitumen back to Forsayth in about an hour.

Topped up Elsie ready for the trip towards Pinnarendi Station and then the Undara Lava Tubes on Sunday.

Now before I forget … Pierre-Jules Boulanger.

He was the boss of Citroen during WWII. The Germans wanted to buy his trucks and he couldn’t refuse without becoming at risk of execution, so he played a trick on the Germans. All of the trucks that he sold the German army had a fake dip-stick installed with the oil level markings incorrectly labelled.

So when the German engineers serviced the trucks, they thought that the oil tank was full, but it was actually desperately short of oil … causing the trucks to break down and the engines seize.

The Germans thought it was just poor engineering, but it was actually Pierre-Jules Boulanger sabotaging the trucks.

You can read all about that here.

Ciao

#Retirement2024

#VanLife

Here is the leaderboard:

Geoff 3. Birds 0.

Yes, I hit another bird today. Somewhere from Karumba on our way to Normanton this morning, another slow-moving bird hit Elsie’s radiator, and exploded. It didn’t fly (pardon the pun) over Elsie and Percy like other ones have done.

I’ve checked Elsie’s radiator and while there is some evidence of bird remains there, the bird itself is not there. So I assume it went under Elsie.

I also ran over a small kangaroo this morning, but to be fair, it was already well and truly deceased. Only recently deceased, though.

Deceased, but still fresh, if you know what I mean.

The buzzards had already found it and were fighting over it.

It’s never wise to swerve suddenly to avoid something when you have almost 6 tons of machinery moving at 100km/h, but I also didn’t want to run over it.

Hmmm. I mean, it wasn’t ever going to try to get out of the way, so it was completely up to me to avoid it.

I managed to avoid running over it with Elsie’s wheels, and in that brief moment of relief that you have, Percy got it on the way through.

All MBW said was “eeewwww”.

As I said, it was already deceased, but I guess that’s not the point.

We see a lot of kites feeding on roadkill. Some of them are very risk averse and fly away as soon as you approach. Others are pretty keen not to leave their meal behind and stay until the very last moment.

We have also seen what we assume is an eagle or two feeding on roadkill, and they are seriously slow at lifting off and getting out of your way. I really don’t want to hit one of them though – while I am sure it would be life-altering for the bird, I’d reckon that Elsie will take some damage also.

We packed up most of our camp last night so we would be ready to get going as early as possible this morning. Percy’s awning was in, towing mirrors clipped onto Elsie, and not much left to do this morning.

No alarm this morning to wake us up, but we were awake about 6.45. Well, I was awake about 6.45, and MBW joined me in a state of consciousness around 30 minutes later.

You need extra beauty sleep if you are going to look as beautiful as she does 🙂

All the usual morning stuff – I’m sure you know by now that means ablutions and breakfast – and we were rolling out of the park around 8.20am.

50 minute run into Normanton and we stopped briefly at the supermarket to get a couple of things. We are going to be in some pretty small townships over the next few days, so we need to stock up when stuff is cheap.

You will remember the wisdom from my mate Jack Reacher?

Here is a quick quiz: Will groceries at Normanton (population 1500) be cheaper than groceries at Karumba (population 500)?

Bzzzzt. No points for you.

MBW emerged with only 2 litres of milk because – if we had purchased anything else – we would have needed to get the credit limit on our credit card raised.

“Eyewatering” was the word that MBW used.

We rolled out of Normanton and onwards towards Croydon. That is about 140km and an excellent road. I think we got around 17.5l/100km today which was nice. The closer we get to the more populated east coast of Queensland, the better the roads get.

Well, you’d think so, anyway.

We stopped in Croyden to have a poke around the Visitor Information Centre and look at the history of the township, and look at the trains.

You will recall that we took the Gulflander to Croydon yesterday, but caught the bus back so we didn’t have a great deal of time to explore.

Topped up Elsie’s tank, and we headed off on new (to us) roads towards Georgetown and Forsayth – home for the next couple of nights.

Just to be clear, we didn’t stop in Georgetown, but we needed to drive through on our way to Forsayth. We noticed that they have a coffee van in Georgetown, so that is a good reason to stop and look around on Saturday morning when we are next on the move.

With any luck they will have an Op Shop. If they also have cheap fuel, that will be a bonus.

The roads from Croydon were good, but pretty hilly so fuel economy wasn’t as good as it could be. But the roads were good. No complaints from me.

But MBW has been obsessing about why some road surfaces are black while others are red. Reddish, anyway.

If you know the answer to that puzzle, can you please let me know.

Frankly my dear, I don’t care so long as the road is two lane (one each way).

And then it wasn’t two lane. Just single lane.

But that’s OK. I only encountered one vehicle on the single lane bit and they pulled right off the road and stopped to let me pass. Road signs say that the smaller vehicle must give way to the larger vehicle, so I won.

But if it had been a road train, it would have been me sitting on the dirt.

The single lane road wasn’t too bad – I’ve been on better roads, but I’ve been on worse. At least it wasn’t gravel.

And then it became gravel. For a couple of kilometres, then back to bitumen, then back to gravel …

… then it became even trickier. Roadworks. Dirt. Soft and messy. With lots of graders and trucks.

Fortunately this only went on for a few kilometres and then we had bitumen for the remaining 5km or so into Forsayth.

Forsayth is a pretty little town (population 129), so not exactly a thriving metropolis. But the Forsayth Tourist Park is a friendly place and Ian – the owner/manager – walked us to our site and gave the directions to assist with reversing Percy into a tricky space.

I really do appreciate it when they give that personal service.

And only $30/night. Cheap, cheap.

He then took the time to tells us about everything going on around the place, and what there is to see nearby, before inviting us to “Happy Hour” tonight.

$15 parmys tonight, so while we have eaten out more than we have needed to, we are going to go over and support them anyway because places like this need all the support they can get so that they can survive and thrive.

Because they deserve it.

We did a quick walk around town and checked out the township and the trains (I can’t get it out of my system).

You may know that I don’t mind the odd Gingernut biscuit with a cup of coffee. Here is a fun fact: Arnotts make different GNBs for different states of Australia.

I guess that probably explains why the ones we bought in the NT seemed darker and harder than the ones I’m used to.

Weird.

Tomorrow we are going to Cobbold Gorge and that should be a great day. We decided to stay at Forsayth rather than right at Cobbold Gorge because we are better doing that last 40km or so without Percy on the back – we only have to come straight back out again on Saturday so it will shorten our trip when we leave and the less we tow Percy, the better fuel economy we get.

But mostly we are staying here because the 40km to Cobbold Gorge is 37km of gravel, and if I can avoid showering Percy with rocks all that way then there will be less damage.

Much easier to drive Elsie there and we will make better time anyway.

Okey dokey – I need to go and work up an appetite for tonight’s parmy.

I’ll tell you all about Cobbold Gorge tomorrow.

Ciao

#Retirement2024

#VanLife

We did something today that we haven’t done for … maybe 6 weeks. Something really unpleasant.

Something that I’d hoped never to do again.

We set the alarm to wake up at 6.00am.

Sunrise here in Karumba today is 7.03am. For context, sunrise in Brisbane today is 6.35am. So our sunrise is 30 minutes later. Which means it is dark for 30 minutes longer here in Karumba.

Old habits die hard. I was awake at 4.00am wondering what time it was, and worried that if I had slept through the alarm?

No, not yet.

I went back to sleep and woke again at 5.15am, wondering the same thing.

Nope, not yet.

I woke again at 5.57am, and realised that I may as well just shut off the alarm and get up, because near enough is good enough.

Unless of course you are performing brain surgery, in which case I’d suggest that near enough is NEVER good enough.

But no brain surgery here in Karumba. Today we are going on the Gulflander.

I’m not going to bore you with yet more sunset photos. 

Nope, no sir.

Today we were lucky enough to witness the sunRISE.

We needed to be at the Normanton Train Station by 8.00am, and Jolene tells us that trip from Karumba is about 51 minutes or so, so by a process of deductive reasoning, we figured that we needed to to leave Percy by about 7.00am.

My mate Jack Reacher reminds me, “Hope for the best, plan for the worst.”

So I advised MBW that we needed to leave about 6.50am to be in Normanton in plenty of time. That gives a nice “Geoff buffer” to allow for anything that could possibly go wrong.

Flat tyre, roadworks, meteor crashing to earth. You never know what could happen.

Unlike MBW, who likes to taunt me with “just one more thing that needs to be done before we leave” … which makes me very nervous when we leave much later than I am comfortable with.

Now if you do the math, if we leave at 6.50, and sunrise is 7.03, then we will see the sun rise on our way.

And rise it did. In the east, where it always rises. And which way were we headed?

East.

So the sun rose directly in front of us, astonishing us with its beauty, and blinding us with its brilliance at the same time.

Another thing that happened on the way in to Normanton was that we hit a bird. Or perhaps it is more correct to say that the bird hit us. Straight into the windscreen. Ka-boom!

This is the second bird that we have hit. 

MBW didn’t see the first one happen the other day because she was doing something important on her phone, but I was looking out through the windscreen and I saw this pretty little coloured bird smack into the windscreen and literally explode in a kaleidoscope of colour as it bounced off the glass and flew over both Elsie and Percy.

It looked pretty spectacular to me, but I imagine that it was fairly catastrophic for the bird. I didn’t see it land, but I expect that it didn’t get up again.

Today’s bird was the same cause and effect – too slow, hit the windscreen, feathers go everywhere – except that this one was a little black and white bird.

I’m not proud of this BTW, but I am glad that I didn’t run Elsie off the road and crash trying to take an evasive manoeuvre.

So the current tally is Geoff 2, birds 0.

I’m sure that if I hit a slow-moving pelican it will be a different story, but I’m trusting that won’t happen on this trip.

Anyway, today is Gulflander day, and we had to be at the Normanton Train Station at 8.00am for an 8.30am takeoff.

We checked in, got our souvenir coffee mugs, took photos, looked at the museum, and found a seat – right up the front with the driver.

Well, just behind the driver.

The Gulflander was built in the early- to mid-1900s and has a 102HP diesel engine with a 4 speed crash gearbox.

Let me put that in layman’s terms for you. Big noisy diesel rumble, lots of double-declutching, and lots and lots of crunching and grinding of the gearbox.

And lots of rocking, rolling, and shaking going on.

It was a 5 hour trip from Normanton to Croydon. We travelled at a top speed of 25mph (that’s 40km/h) with frequent slowing down to 10mph (about 16km/h) due to flood plains or for other safety reasons.

Safety reasons, like ensuring that we don’t go flying off the track and being derailed.

Garry – our driver, and station master at Normanton Station – gave us a great running commentary and pointed out all of the interesting features along the way. 

Like the 1974 flood marker.

You may recall that in 1974 Cyclone Tracy devastated Darwin (you will have to go back a couple of weeks to read about that), but the same cyclone dumped so much water in the gulf that they had the worst flooding ever.

That flood level in 1974 would have been 2 or 3 metres above the top of the train.

We stopped at a place called Black Bull siding and met up with an “over 50s” bus trip, who then joined us for the remainder of the trip to Croydon.

Honestly, they could have called it an “over 70s” bus trip and they still would have been correct. It was walking sticks, wrinkles and blue rinses everywhere you looked.

No air-conditioning on the Gulflander, and it must have hit 32 or 33 degrees today by the time we hit Croydon. And it was a rough and bumpy trip … so I’m kinda glad that we are only going the one way and catching the bus back.

It was a great experience, but I have to say that it wasn’t built for either speed or comfort.

It was so bumpy, in fact, that my watch reported that I’d done about 1000 steps, while I had only been sitting in the Gulflander looking out the window.

Oh, and the return trip isn’t until tomorrow anyway, so we would have had to pay for a night’s accommodation in Croydon while we waited to go back again.

Garry and his guard Kiwi (yes, his name-tag said “Kiwi”) did an excellent job looking after us all and serving morning tea.

It wasn’t the most comfortable trip on the Gulflander, but you don’t do it for comfort. You do it for the experience.

As they say, it’s the journey, not the destination.

And it was an excellent experience, and a lovely day. And MBW and I had a lot of fun.

We arrived in Croydon around 1.45pm and were given a quick tour of the township by the local council representative, whose job it is – apparently – to pick up passengers at the train station, give them a quick loop of the township, and then drop you off so that (I presume) you can spend your money there.

So we got dropped off at the pub, and had a lovely lunch of a BLT and chips. By the time that was done, it was time to wander across the road to the spot where we were due to be picked up by the Cairns to Karumba bus service, to drop us off back at Normanton.

$73 for that experience (Senior’s rate), and while the bus was air conditioned and made the trip in only about 90 minutes (compared to the Gulflander’s 5 hours), the seats were sooo uncomfortable and narrow that I completely lost all feeling in my derrière.

So seriously uncomfortable that my bum went to sleep.

We were dropped off back at the Normanton Train Station, and we hopped into Elsie around 5.15pm and started the trip back to Karumba. Remember how we drove into the sun all of the way from Karumba to Normanton this morning? We drove into the sun all the way back to Karumba this afternoon.

Over the last couple of weeks, not only have we hit a bird or two, but we have also copped some serious rocks into the windscreen from passing trucks. Fortunately no obvious damage to the windscreen though …

… until this afternoon when we arrived back at Normanton. An enormous crack in the windscreen from the top of the glass (under the spot where the rear view mirror attaches to the glass), away in both directions and up towards Elsie’s roof.

Not ideal, but I’m pretty sure that we get a free windscreen with our RACQ car insurance … unless they removed that benefit the last time they jacked up the premium.

But I can’t do anything about that until we get back to Brisbane, unless the windscreen completely shatters, or I get a stern talking to by a police officer.

But if that happens, I’ll just use my charm. Flutter my eyelids. That kind of thing.

They say that you have to be careful driving at dawn and dusk. We saw a few kangaroos at the side of the road heading into Normanton this morning, but there were dozens of them feeding at the side of the road coming home tonight at dusk.

Dozens and dozens.

And I certainly wouldn’t want one of them to bounce of the bullbar and crash into the windscreen.

We have eaten way too much today, and eaten out too much generally, so we had breakfast cereal for dinner tonight, along with coffee and chocolate, and it’s almost time for bed.

It’s been a great day, and a great experience riding the Gulflander. It’s a “must do” if you find yourself up this way, but I’d urge you to consider only going one way as it is quite a long and taxing trip. And bumpy, And hot.

Off towards Cairns tomorrow, with some more fun stuff planned. We have about a 410km (4.5 hour) drive from Karumba through Normanton and Croydon to Forsayth for a couple of nights.

We are going to stop off in Croydon tomorrow for a while on our way through, so I’ll tell you more about it then.

Stay tuned!

Ciao

#Retirement2024

#VanLife