We’re home now and “He” is back at work. Due to having a dose of the “Dog’s disease”, we have also neglected posting on our web site and issues with our hosting of the site have also added major delays.
Nevertheless, back to our trip.
After receiving the call from our son late Sunday night and then waiting for further news, we actually turned off our light just before 2:00am when we were comfortable that our Grandson was over the worse of his problems.
On Sunday, we had actually decided we would head to the coast and have a look around Rockhampton and then head south to Noosa and eventually Lennox Head where we would look for a relative. The news about our Grandson plus a lot of other factors made us rethink that strategy and we decided it was time to head home.
It had never been our intention to visit this part of Australia during this trip and we have now seen enough to give us an appetite to return to the northern part of Queensland and spend sufficient time to explore this wonderful part of Australia.
We informed our travelling companions of our intentions to start to head home and they informed us that they would also be travelling south, again due to a family illness and the need to return home.
At 9:00am we said goodbye after having a quick discussion about our intended route south and the possible overnight stops.
After leaving the caravan park we drove both of our vehicles several kilometres down the road until we found a flat spot where we could attach the car.
We headed back through Sapphire to Anakie where we made the decision to turn east and head back to Emerald. The other option was to turn west and head to Barcaldine and return home via the route that we had travelled to Queensland. That option was longer in distance and far from attractive at the time.
We refuelled at Emerald (that was a bit of a joke with the local BP having a queue of about six caravans waiting for diesel and we managed to block a street when we joined the queue. When we decided to abandon obtaining fuel here, we had an interesting trip through a car park as it was the only way we were able to return to the main road) and after speaking with our son continued to head east to the coal mining town of Blackwater where we stopped for lunch.
We were amazed with the number of coal trains assembled around Blackwater. The trains consisted of about four diesels (two were in the centre) with fifty coal carriage either side of the centre diesels. There must have been a dozen of these trains all fully laden waiting to head to Rockhampton and the coal loader.
We had hoped to stop at Mount Hay to look for thunder eggs but the turnoff we intended to take was just before Mt Hay and we missed the opportunity. In hindsight, we were not aware of how close we were and had we known, we would have detoured to Mt Hay.
We turned south was about 80 kilometers short of Rockhampton and the road took us through Biloela and then to Monto where we booking into the local caravan park.
The disadvantage of having the car behind was emphasised during the descent into Monto when we made a very slow descent on a windy road. Better to be safe than sorry.
Our travelling companions were at the same caravan park so we enjoyed happy hour before heading to bed relatively early.