Having gone to bed relatively early yesterday and having a good sleep, we made our way out of bed at 6:00am with the intention of getting away by 8:00am. We left just prior to 8:00am to head north into the rising sun. The impact of the lost of the driver’s sun visor became apparent very quickly as our route seemed to follow the sun.
We had an uneventful trip to Moree where we stopped at the local Iveco dealer who informed us he did not have the part to fix the visor. This was not a surprise. They mentioned that there would be a part in Toowoomba but that was only 600 kilometres out of our way. We decided we would see if there was a dealer in either Mt Isa or Alice Springs and ring ahead to order the part.
We continued our journey to the west and started to notice an increase in the amount of road kill. We turned north at a small town called Mungindi and then crossed the border into Queensland. There were no flags flying or fanfair as a result of Queensland winning the State of Origin series!
We stopped at a small town called Thallon where we managed to purchase a couple of bread rolls which we consumed for morning tea. Our plan was to arrive at Nindigully by midday, we arrived at 11:58am.
Immediately upon our arrival we saw faces we recognized and quickly renewed acquaintances. We parked the motor home and then met friends from Canberra who were returning home from a trip to Darwin and had deviated from their route to say hello to the safari members.
We shared in a sausage sizzle for lunch and with the assistance of the male friend from Canberra they managed to fix the sun visor. At least something had gone right for once.
We had a look inside the hotel during the afternoon and enjoyed refreshments. Actually the XXXX beer did not taste all that bad. Later we had our first happy hour at the camp site before venturing back to the hotel for our evening meal.
The Nindigully Hotel is famous for its steaks and hamburgers. The steaks are normally over an inch thick and the hamburgers need to be ordered a couple of days in advance. Our group of 44 shared 4 hamburgers for tea. Normally one of their big hamburgers feeds about 10 people. We struggled to finish our portion and before returning to a friend’s motor home for coffee, we were all given our safari bags which contained our safari shirts, name badges and some discount vouchers from our host, Townsville Winnebago.
We were in bed before 11:00pm and for the first time in ages, looked at the stars from out of the rear window.