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| The "Outback" provides for a Free Range where the cattle share the roads with the cars. You must be very careful driving out here!! |
| Glenn's Journal 02-05-03 & 02-06-03 Queensland Wednesday morning and it is our day off in Brisbane, or actually Morayfield, a suburb north of Brisbane. Jo and Shane's place is a wonderful home with a huge backyard for Husky (the dog) to play. Husky also dug under the fence and a nice little boy from the neighbors stopped by to let us know. I returned with him to the back fence, called Husky who quickly returned crawling back under the fence in which I quickly re-filled the hole with dirt and added some rocks to try and prevent it from happening again. No worries!! Erin and I spent the morning catching up on e-mails and internet work. I also found my parents on-line so, after a few e-mails, we decided just to call. My parents called me and we talked for about a half hour before we finally had to go. By the time we had completed all of our casual work and Erin had watched part of a movie we finally had lunch and headed out. We ran into town and located a formal wear rental store where I tried on tuxedo's for the wedding. After about an hour and trying on multiple combinations of tuxedo's we found just the right combination. We paid a deposit and would return on February 28th for pickup. our next stop was at the mall looking for shoes for Erin to go with her wedding dress. After stopping in most of the shoe stores in the mall we finally found a pair that should work. We also spent some time looking for some jewelry for Erin to wear with her wedding dress. No Luck on the jewelry but Jana, a friend from Seattle, is working on providing the perfect piece for Erin to wear. After the mall we stopped into a grocery store and picked up some ice cream for desert. Erin claimed that I was buying the girls off and I did not deny the claim. We returned home to find everyone home already. Shane was setting up the grill for a barbeque with steak while Jo was preparing salad, bread, and potatoes. We enjoyed dinner while sitting outside on the back patio. After the girls went to bed we spent the rest of the evening sitting around the table chatting about kids, travels, cars, and anything else that came up. Jo and Shane called it a night around 10:00 pm (they have to work in the morning) while Erin and I stayed up for a little longer before calling it a night ourselves. 02-06-03 New South Wales Today we are heading towards the Carnarvon Gorge in the Outback of Queensland. We would drive as far as we could get but make sure we were situated for the night before dusk. It is not safe to drive after dusk due to the many kangaroos that cross the road and will do major damage to any car that hits them. We would rather not be one of those cars and it only takes one. We have also noticed that the farther out you go the more cars and trucks that have roll cages for front bumpers to help protect the car from any animal hit. After packing the car and taking off the drive was pretty uneventful. We drove back through Brisbane and stopped in Toowoomba for gas and lunch before continuing on. We made our way to Roma before stopping into the information center. The gentleman at the information center was extremely helpful and provided us with some very useful data about the Gorge and Emerald (our next stop). He recommended staying near the Gorge for longer and even called a few places to help us set up accomodation for tonight and tomorrow night. We also had dinner at the Golden Dragon Restaurant which was a recommendation of his. After settling into the caravan park we headed out to dinner and Woolie's (Woolworths) before returning to our cabin. It had been sprinkling for part of the day but tonight it was raining so we stayed in. Erin wrote postcards while I worked on Journals. We passed on a free pass to the Big Rig presentation on the founding of oil and gas production in Australia but maybe some other day. Tomorrow we would continue on to Carnorvan Gorge. |