2010/09 Australia trip - Dalby and Miles |
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Tuesday September 28th
Our neighbours at the campground had barely made it into Inverell the previous evening, driving through many rough water crossings, expecting their caravan to float away. That road had been closed as soon as they’d made it through. We had another overcast and rainy morning and we were wondering if our trip was going to end in Inverell. However, we found that the other route into Queensland via Warwick and Toowoomba had missed the worst of the rain, so we should be able to get through that way, even though it meant a substantial detour.
We drove to Glen Innes, a pretty town with much of its original architecture still in use, and the man at the visitors’ centre confirmed that all roads north of there were OK at the moment. We should be able to go via Toowoomba to Miles and get back on track. We set off in sun and heavy showers up the New England Highway, a road we’d last driven back in 2002 when we’d first bought the Troopie in Ballina. We soon crossed Queensland’s southern border. Our destination, Cape York, is also in the state of Queensland but the state is larger than Alaska, and we still had nearly 2000 miles to go.
We had heavy rain again as we passed through Toowoomba and headed northwest up the Warrego Highway. Queensland has the “rest and revive” signs too but it is not as generous with its rest areas as NSW. They are few and far between, and even then all you get is a layby lane, with traffic hurtling past your ear’ole. “ Drive until you drop” would be a more accurate sign for Queensland.
We also noted the signs warning of a $30,000 fine for keeping rabbits, so if you’re traveling to Queensland leave your bunnies at home.
We made a stop for lunch at little park in Dalby, a pretty spot with gardens along Myall Creek. We found a tree full of white ibis; they seem to choose a tree and then every ibis crowds onto it until they’re close enough they can argue and fight in comfort. With their curved beaks they look very foreign to us but they’ve recently discovered how easy it is to live in cities like Sydney and they’ve become a problem there. We had sunshine in the park, but the creek was running high, with its causeways under water.
Sandie met a very large spider as she was getting back into the Troopie, and it scampered out of sight underneath the dashboard. She asked some passing locals if it was poisonous but nobody knew. We continued up the Warrego Highway, with Sandie keeping her knees well away from the dashboard.
We passed Chinchilla where we’d camped back in 2002, but we weren’t going to make it all the way to Isla Gorge and we had to settle for a rest area on Dogwood Creek, just outside Miles. We were, at least, back on track, but still only 150 miles north of Goondiwindi.
Sandie was still worried about the spider so we bought some insecticide and bombed the whole camper while we went for a walk at sunset. We didn’t know if we’d killed the spider or just made it mad.
Dogwood Creek is a pretty spot, though it too was running high, over its banks. We spotted some local kids in the 
water, and thought they were up to no good, but we ended up helping them rescue a turtle caught up in fishing line. They had a low opinion of the fisherman who’d cut the line and left the turtle to die.
We soon found we’d parked on the wrong side of the road, and we had road trains blasting past us and stopping for the night, but it had been a long day and they didn’t keep us awake.