28 August – Thursday
We had an early start this morning (8.00am) as someone didn’t have his usual sleep in. Headed to Rockhampton and Yeppoon and although the road was still very straight, there were small hills to relieve the boredom. We also left the two way radio on today, as there were a lot of road trains and cattle trucks on the road. We had only gone a few kilometres when a women started to become rather agitated with “Caravan” – worked out quickly she was referring to us – and telling us to move over off the road. We thought she was behind us and trying to pass and said we couldn’t pull over yet – no where to pull off. She was rather upset with us by this stage and then we spotted a wide load appear over the hill, travelling towards us. If she had only said there was a wide load approaching … Anyway, this was the first of many, the widest took up the full width of road and had three police cars escorting it. Fortunately, a road led off to the left as we met the first police car and were able to tell him we would head for that. They were all very nice and polite. We only had one occasion when the radio traffic was a little bit “off.” Because our hand held radios only have a range of about 5 km, we do know what we hear is fairly close.
We passed a lot of coal mines between Emerald and Rockhampton – the six mines at Blackwater supply 26% of Queensland coal. The road trains might be long in this region, but the trains are longer – 2 km long is normal for a coal train – and there were certainly plenty of them.
Our drama for today involved the caravan toilet. This actually started on Tuesday, with the very bumpy road between Charters Towers and Emerald. The toilet roll didn’t jump off the holder, but did unravel itself into a very neat pile on the floor, looking just like continuous computer paper. Of course, it never rolls back up the same! There was also a bit of a toilet chemical smell and I thought the bit of liquid on the floor was simply splashes from the hand basin or shower. Good clean and the smell was gone. Today at our first stop after about an hour’s travelling, opened the caravan door to be met by a very definite toilet smell and very smelly liquid all over the bathroom floor. Toilet leak (pardon the pun!). Cleaned up, checked again half an hour later and found more fluid. Les removed the cassette and replaced it, hoping that it just hadn’t clicked into place last time it was emptied and had shaken itself loose. Needless to say, it was a BIG clean of the bathroom when we arrived at the caravan park. We are staying in a very nice park about 10 km south of Yeppoon.
We had an early start this morning (8.00am) as someone didn’t have his usual sleep in. Headed to Rockhampton and Yeppoon and although the road was still very straight, there were small hills to relieve the boredom. We also left the two way radio on today, as there were a lot of road trains and cattle trucks on the road. We had only gone a few kilometres when a women started to become rather agitated with “Caravan” – worked out quickly she was referring to us – and telling us to move over off the road. We thought she was behind us and trying to pass and said we couldn’t pull over yet – no where to pull off. She was rather upset with us by this stage and then we spotted a wide load appear over the hill, travelling towards us. If she had only said there was a wide load approaching … Anyway, this was the first of many, the widest took up the full width of road and had three police cars escorting it. Fortunately, a road led off to the left as we met the first police car and were able to tell him we would head for that. They were all very nice and polite. We only had one occasion when the radio traffic was a little bit “off.” Because our hand held radios only have a range of about 5 km, we do know what we hear is fairly close.
We passed a lot of coal mines between Emerald and Rockhampton – the six mines at Blackwater supply 26% of Queensland coal. The road trains might be long in this region, but the trains are longer – 2 km long is normal for a coal train – and there were certainly plenty of them.
Our drama for today involved the caravan toilet. This actually started on Tuesday, with the very bumpy road between Charters Towers and Emerald. The toilet roll didn’t jump off the holder, but did unravel itself into a very neat pile on the floor, looking just like continuous computer paper. Of course, it never rolls back up the same! There was also a bit of a toilet chemical smell and I thought the bit of liquid on the floor was simply splashes from the hand basin or shower. Good clean and the smell was gone. Today at our first stop after about an hour’s travelling, opened the caravan door to be met by a very definite toilet smell and very smelly liquid all over the bathroom floor. Toilet leak (pardon the pun!). Cleaned up, checked again half an hour later and found more fluid. Les removed the cassette and replaced it, hoping that it just hadn’t clicked into place last time it was emptied and had shaken itself loose. Needless to say, it was a BIG clean of the bathroom when we arrived at the caravan park. We are staying in a very nice park about 10 km south of Yeppoon.
1 comment:
Mmmmm, toilet bits floating around in the caravan. Yuck!
So is the big Rockhampton waterslide still there?
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