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| This little guy's face looks annoyed - we interrupted his mid-road snack! There were herds of cattle all along the way, making the journey in the Outback slower than planned |
| Erin's Journal for 2/5 to 2/7//03 Queensland The next morning I woke late, or what would have been late without the time change! We are back to non-daylight savings here in Queensland, so what felt like 8am was actually 7am. I got up a little after Glenn and joined him and Jo for some early news, then Jo took the girls to school and Glenn & I lazed around catching up on emails and journals for a while. The weather warmed back up today, leaving some of the gale force winds and rain of last night somewhere else. Our only plan today was getting to the nearby mall to find some wedding shoes for me and a rental tux for Glenn. With such a relaxed schedule, we didn't make it out of the house till about 1:30, when we went to the tux rental place. We spent a couple of hours trying on the different types of jackets, varying vests and ties, and found a great look for the wedding. I was dumb enough to forget to take a photo!!! But I know he will take my breath away on our wedding day. After this, we went on a mission at the mall across the street for shoes for me. We finally found some at, of all places, Target. They were even on sale for $14 Australian, which is about $8US! Great deals make me happy, and my ensemble is now complete. Assuming my hair can be made to do something... Anyway, we grabbed some ice cream for our hosts for dessert before heading back to the house, and enjoyed a steak barbecue in the back yard. Shane had to go to the dentist during this, but returned in time for some good conversation with Jo and Glenn, while I hooked up our camera card and resized some photos from Sydney (and me in my dress, to send to mom back home!). I got a lot done, and by the time that was done it was just about bed time! Tomorrow we'd head north. 2/6/03 We got up early enough, but it still took us till after 9am to get ourselves out th door. We have once again accumulated enough stuff that leaving some behind at Jo & Shane's was a real help. Especially my wedding dress! We hit the road and headed back down south of the city to catch the road inland we wanted. We'd decided to take the inland route again on the way north, then do the coast on the way back down. Today our goal was a town called Roma, a little less than 600 km for the day. I took the first shift of driving, and went until lunchtime. We stopped off at the top of the first set of mountains, in Tooloomba. This was a more prosperous, pretty town than I'd expected, and we ate at a park with a pretty view of the valleys below. The weather was looking rainy again, though, so we ate fast and got back on the road. Another few hours passed with increasingly boring scenery out the window. As we went inland, the hills fell away and we were left with miles and miles of flat, dry countryside. It has a beauty of its own, but from the car it all blurred for me. I slept for a while, and by the time I woke up we were only an hour away from Roma. We'd debated going on to the next small town after that, Injune, but wanted to follow Shane's advice and stop at Roma's Info center for road information, as the dry lowlands tend to flood when there's rain. So stop we did, and luckily so. A very helpful Information worker gave us some good advice about length of time to stay at our next destination, Carnarvon Gorge, saying we needed most of a day to see it. He helped us book a room for the next night out there, and even called ahead to Injune to see about the one motel in town. This isn't their high season out in the desert, but sure enough it was booked out! So we stayed in Roma in a nice caravan park, with a free upgrade to an ensuite cabin due to faulty waterworks in the first one... What a lucky break! We grabbed a good Chinese meal at the Golden Dragon in town, then got a few supplies for the next few days at Woolworth before going back to our cabin to write journals and watch tv. I stayed up too late due to various programs, but it was a good evening. 2/7/03 Today we headed out of town by 9am (some days we do better than others at scooting out early), stopping first for gas. There wasn't much in the way of towns where we were headed! We went to the turnoff for Carnarvon Gorge, though it was raining...and got as close as 15 km from the entrance to the park before turning back. The roads for the last 25 km into the park are known to be unsealed, and were filled with potholes, cows, and mud due to the rain. As we drove those 10 km of mud, each of us was silently worrying that we'd get stuck out here with nobody but cows to complain to. So we agreed to turn back - even if we made it into the park, hiking in this downpour wasn't sounding appealing. As we headed on toward our next stop of Emerald, we passed a guy broken down on the side of the road. We didn't have jumper cables to be helpful to him, so we ended up bringing him the 40 km into the next town, borrowing cables from the auto shop there, and driving him back out to jump his car. This was an extra hour off our schedule, but was our good deed for the day. He wasn't very talkative, and we never did discover his name, but he was a young guy from Roma. Good karma always helps, we figure. Anyway, we switched drivers after dropping him off, and I got to drive the rest of the day. We went through a couple of nasty rainstorms on our way to Emerald, one of which was so bad I couldn't see out the windshield for almost 10 minutes (very stressy for me!). Finally we stopped at the Info center in Emerald and got some further info on the gemfields in the area. We planned to spend tomorrow 'fossicking' for gems, in particular sapphires. We drove the next 60 km out to the tiny town of Sapphire (isn't it useful to name the town for what it's famous for?), and booked into a caravan park for the next couple of nights. No tv in this one, so I'd get more journal work caught up! We rested a bit before heading down to the next small town, Rubyvale. This was due to a tip from our caravan park hostess, who told us that the hotel there has a meal special on Friday nites - $8 for all meals! We had to wait for the dinner cook to come on at 7pm, but when the food came it was really good. We talked about details for our wedding reception (planning already!), and did reading/journal work when we got home. We saw a few wallabies in the road on our way home, but thankfully didn't hit any. That's why we don't drive here at night! One of those little guys could practically total our tiny car! |
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| The resident miner at Sapphire - I wanted to find one this size! |