For the second consecutive day we said goodbye to our friends before continuing our trip south.
We refuelled at Monto and spoke with our son and learnt that our Grandson was on the mend but still in hospital.
We decided that Toowoomba would be our destination and we made a booking at a Big 4 caravan park. We had a relatively slow trip south with the car slowing us considerably due to the undulating nature of the landscape. We also decided to stay on the major roads rather than shorter options where the quality of the roads was unknown.
We bypassed Kingaroy and joined the New England Highway where it starts at Yarraman.
We had actually travelled the long way to Toowoomba and were surprised when our travelling companions rang us to see where we were and if we wanted to join them at Warwick some 70k’s down the road from Toowoomba. At that time they were probably 50ks’ in front of us. We reluctantly had to say “no”.
As we travelled down the highway, we saw the first indication of how close we were to home with a road sign showing Sydney to be just over 950k’s away. When considering the distance we had travelled during this trip, Sydney was just down the road and we were almost home.
We arrived at Toowoomba late in the afternoon with very little diesel in the tank. We had some trouble getting to the caravan park as the route planned by the GPS took us into an area where roads were closed (we assumed as a result of the flood earlier in the year) and the detour around the road closures sent us towards a bridge that was lower than the motor home. We had to return to the New England Highway and drive though the centre of Toowoomba before heading north to the location of the caravan park.
We were fortunate to be placed on a drive through site but needed to exit the caravan park and return in a different direction to level the motor home without detaching the car.
Just before “He” was about to cook tea, our water pump made a small sound that is normally associated with either pumping water or pressurising the pipes. The pipes had already been pressurised and we were certainly not running water.
A quick investigation under the bed revealed a fair amount of water on the floor and further investigation revealed that a hot water pipe was wet. After unpacking the entire contents of our storage area, “He” was able to remove all the water from the floor and perform a temporary repair on the pipe.
The repair was actually better than temporary and we will decide later if we need to do anything further.
We eventually cooked our tea and then watched television for a couple of hours. The night was cool and it was very easy to sleep.