2002/11 Australia trip - Toowoomba |
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The drive back to the main road was much quicker than coming in. Obviously this time we were on the right road. The main road was the New England Highway, a quite good winding and hilly blacktop road, with a few villages and farms. Rather like driving in England but with almost no traffic.
We crossed into the state of Queensland, and our first stop was in Toowoomba, a large town on the main road west from Brisbane. We found a K-Mart and stocked up on tools, jumper cables, a shovel, lantern, flashlights, and a few days’ worth of food.
We also needed to get a cable for the video camera to connect to the computer, as this was the one thing I’d forgotten to bring with me. Sandie asked our neighbour in a restaurant if he knew where there was a Sony dealer. He turned out to be a German immigrant, an electrical contractor. He gave us a list of places to try on the other side of town and even offered to lead us there. He complained that the local Australians didn’t seem to care what was going on in the rest of the world, so he had no one to have a conversation with. We were going to have trouble getting away! He said his wife was a nurse and had started working in Toowoomba, but she had got into trouble by continuing to work when the other nurses stopped for a “smoko”, so she’d had to give the job up. He welcomed all Americans to Australia, except George Bush, who he thought was a crazy man.
We finally got away after thanking him for all the help, and found the dealers, but had no luck. All of them said the same thing “We haven’t got it and there’s nothing west of here. This is the last place you can buy anything.”
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Road to Chinchilla (15.57) |
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We left Toowoomba on the Warrego Highway. It was also labeled as Federal Highway A2, part of a push to develop a high quality road network around the country. But nobody uses the names like A2. They all use the highway names. The country was flat, with big wheat fields. The towns were tiny, just a grain elevator and a bar. It felt just like Saskatchewan. We pulled into a bigger town, Chinchilla, at sunset, and found the Cypress Pines campground. The owner was another German, also very chatty. He said he welcomed all Americans except for that crazy George Bush. Seems to be some pattern here!