2010/09 Australia trip - Isla Gorge and Emerald |
|||
Wednesday September 29th
It was bright early till wet fog rolled in. We went to the visitors’ centre in Miles but they had little info except about Miles, with nothing on roads or conditions to the north. They also didn’t know about Wifi and sent us to the library for access to the Internet. We were able to catch up on our e-mail.
Mum’s phone had stopped working just before we left and, as we suspected, the phone hadn’t been paid for; the bill had been sent to the wrong place. According to her caregiver, Mum hadn’t noticed that it had been disconnected. The Internet also gave us a list of the highways that had been closed due to flooding; it looked like we’d be OK to get to the north through the town of Emerald.
We set off up the Leichardt Way towards Taroom, with lots of water around the road. We had lunch at Taroom’s park in deep mud and then began climbing into the hills of the Dawson range. We soon came to grinding halt with a very flat tyre; the Troopie has tubed tyres and the valve stem had been ripped out of the tube.
This was our first ever flat with the Troopie, so the first task was to find all the bits of the jack, which are hidden away under the luggage and behind the cabinets. Then it was a real struggle to crank the axle up, as the camper is a lot heavier than the standard vehicle. The occasional road train would go past, rocking the whole vehicle, but the changing of the wheel went well. We were just thankful that it wasn’t raining or dark or a dirt road. We hoped the spare tyre would hold up as it was eight years old, one of the originals.
From there it was a short distance to Isla Gorge where we’d intended to camp the previous night. There was a great 
view of the gorge from the road, and an even better one after we’d hiked to the end of the peninsula. The plants on the cliff tops were different too. In the far distance we could see the flatlands we were headed for.
We dropped down onto the Capricorn Highway, almost into the Tropics as the highway runs just a few miles south of the Tropic of Capricorn. A real surprise was the railway that runs along the side of the road: electrified with an overhead catenary. “Must have cheap power here” was my guess, and it turned out that the primary reason for for Queensland Rail’s service there is the complex of coal mines around Emerald.
We had torrential rain for about an hour, followed by a blinding sunset reflected off the wet road (we were headed due west) and then a wet night. As we got closer to Emerald, we found that many of the rivers were in flood, with water flowing over the bridges and causeways. Sandie was yelling at me to move away from the edge as it was underwater and hard to see by headlights, but I pointed out that the road trains coming towards us weren’t going to let me. After a few scary crossings we arrived at the rest area by the Nogoa River, only to find that most of it was under the river, which was also in flood. The rest of it was packed with campers, but we found a bumpy spot that nobody else had wanted and camped there.