2010/09 Australia trip - Goondiwindi fiasco |
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Monday September 27th
The day began dark and looked like more rain; we’d had the best day for our fossicking. We met Peter on the way out; he was patching his road, definitely a good idea. He recommended “cabbing” our monster sapphire, turning it into a smooth oval, rather than faceting it.
Then we were back into Inverell for some power shopping. As well as needing diesel and propane, Sandie wanted a pair of sieves like those we’d been using, and I wanted that matting to get us out of sandtraps. We found the sieves, and I ended up buying an expensive pair of Maxtraxx, a long pair of plastic feet to wedge under the tyres, probably very effective but a pain to carry around because they are so big.
We were looking at a long drive to Isla Gorge, a park on our way to our next stop in Emerald in Queensland. The shortest route was also a new one for us, through Goondiwindi on the Queensland border. We found one of those shortcuts again, this time through the New South Wales town of Boggabilla, another of those poetic Australian names. The road was quite good but the last few miles were closed and under about five feet of water. The Troopie has a snorkel but we don’t! We managed to find a detour, slow, soggy and bumpy, but we finally made it to Boggabilla and crossed into Queensland.
We arrived at an enormous roundabout with signs that welcomed us to Queensland and to Goondiwindi in particular and then gave us a long list of closed roads. The numbers didn’t mean much to us, so we went to the visitors’ centre. There, the lady was obviously enjoying her day in the spotlight, telling everyone that the only road out of Goondiwindi that wasn’t flooded was the one we’d come in on.
We had little choice but to turn around, and we just made it back to Inverell by sunset. A 300 mile drive and we were back where we started.
We decided to make the most of it and chose a campground with a laundry The campground was on the River Macintyre but it was too dark and wet to do any exploring. We’d hoped to find a place with Internet Wifi but no one seemed to know what Wifi was, not a good sign. (Wifi gives your laptop a wireless connection to the Internet, very convenient on a dark wet evening.)