Homeward bound

MALBOROUGH (ROCKHAMPTON) TO SUNSHINE COAST - Wednesday 31st March 2010 (650kms)

Waking up in a truck stop surrounded by Trucks and bleak bushland couldn’t have been any further from the bliss of waking up to that first sunrise of our trip at Bargara beach.
We awoke to the sounds of trucks moving on and while Bas tucked into a full bacon and eggs truckies breakfast inside, I organised the window repair job with the onsite manager of the truck stop. As rough and gruff as they were, the truckies were all well-meaning enough and not so scary in the light of day and the boss Bill turned out to be quite a saint. With his bunged-up and braced knee he hobbled around the back yard  filled with old signs and a dilapidated old caravan and various other pieces of junk and scrap before finally settling on a brand new piece of ply from inside the storage room at the back of the shop. Having cut it to size, I held the board in place while he screwed it into the framework.

It was at this moment that APN Online called via conference call to interview me for a community editor’s position.
“Is now a good time?” they ask
“Not really”, I say, “Would you mind calling back in half an hour?” with one hand on the ply wood and the other holding the mobile phone. Not a good first impression I am sure! But they did ring back and the interview was going really well, right up until the point that the phone reception cut out and I lost them again. And this time they didn’t ring back.

Fuelled up and ready to drive all the way home, and relieved to have only been charged $25 for our emergency window repair, we stopped off for a visit to Capricorn Caves just an hour away on the outskirts of Rockhampton. For $33 for the two of us we were taken on a guided tour of the awesome caves which was well worth the stopover.

I also bought a very kitsch and tacky souvenir T-Towel for the caravan from the gift shop with a map of Queensland on it and marvelled at how much of the map we had actually covered.

Hitting the Bruce Highway again we headed even further south and just after lunch and yet another petrol stop we detoured off the main drag for a visit to the coastal town of James Cook’s discovery of Australia – The oddly named Town of 1770 and for a quick swim at Agnes Waters beach. Then we just drove and drove and drove from the back road to Bundaberg and on to Harvey Bay, Maryborough and Gympie until finally the road opened up, street lights began to appear and we were home, back on the Sunshine Coast at last. We arrived home in Maleny at around 8.30pm completely exhausted, a little bit stressed and eagerly anticipating the long-awaited sleep-in in our own beds.

So now it’s all over and we are slowly getting used to being home again. Of course, we’re still recovering and it’s still amazing me how much of Queensland we managed to fit into one week, but despite the glitches I think that overall it was a successful trip. It was an adventure with a whole lot of memorable moments and adventures don’t always go to plan. But, hey it’s a story! And after all, what is life for but the creation of stories...

Thanks Bas for being the bestest travel buddy ever!

What goes up must come down...

TOWNSVILLE TO MARLBOROUGH (ROCKHAMPTON) – Tuesday 30th March 2010 (650KM)

Once again the heading of this entry was supposed to read “Townsville to Bundaberg”. But our run of good luck had run out some time last night until it seemed that the further down the coat we went, the worse things got. Having said our goodbyes to our kind and Valiant saviours we set off for the second to last leg of the journey with the intention of pushing on through past Bowen to our very first stopover Bagara Beach in Bundaberg as we had planned to do after Bowen anyway. It was as easy as making up the 200km difference between Townsville and Bowen and we would be still on schedule to arrive back in Maleny on Wednesday as planned. From Bargara beach it is only around three hours to home, so it would be nice to wake up on that lovely beach one last time and have a relatively cruisy ride home.

Ah, the best made plans...

About ten minutes down the highway and just after the turnoff from Townsville to Ayr and “BOOM! CRASH! SMASH!” – A large semi-trailer truck whizzed past us and the side windows towards the front of my caravan literally exploded out sideways. I pulled over as soon as I could. There was no way we could risk driving the 1,000kms home with two missing windows. With no other options available, I embarrassedly phoned Shane and Melissa again. They said of we drove back to their place they would ply up the windows for us as Melissa is a cabinet and kitchen maker. So we did, and they did, but I really felt we were pushing the very new friendship by this point, and I think they probably did too. More copious thanks and praise and we set off once again. Determined to make up for lost time, I stocked up on the energy drinks with the intention of driving the crazy 1100kms and drive most of the night to get to Bargara as originally planned for that day.

From there it was straight past Mackay and through Sarina and into the “badlands” that long, long stretch of nothingness that is the Mackay to Rockhampton stretch. No houses, no mobile phone reception, no petrol stations, no nothing. Just 350 kilometres of absolute desolation. I had filled up just before Mackay, so I expected that we should have enough to get us through to Rockie. I was wrong. Things started to get precariously low at around 9pm one hundred kilometres from Rockie in a place in the middle of nowhere called Malborough so when a truck stop and petrol station finally loomed ahead I gladly pulled over.

It was then that I noticed that we were once again missing a window. The ply Mel had screwed in had come lose and this time it had taken the whole aluminium window frame with it. The truckies warned me against driving on without a window. Bas was not keen to stay at this wild desolate place and I must admit I wasn’t feeling super secure about it either, but at least a couple of truckies had stories to tell of exploding caravans who had literally disintegrated before their eyes on the highway because a bit of air had got into the vans. Not willing to risk that possibility I took up the truck stop owner’s offer to park the van around the back for the night with the promise that he would ply it back up for us first thing in the morning.

I cried myself to sleep that night – a truck stop in the badlands was not the beach stop in Bargara I had hoped for and I wondered what else could possibly go wrong.