Day One: Home to Eidsvold.
There’s a little bunny that is well known called Eveready. Unfortunately we inherited his illegitimate cousin, Neveready! For that is yet again how we felt on the morn of our mid-year sojourn north and west through Queensland.
The car was not packed. The clothes were over packed with no idea of what we had packed and our 11am meeting limit was fast approaching. Through some grace of god we managed to slip into the BP service station at Glenview just on time to see Richard and Denise waiting not so patiently.
The lack of patience was not on our behalf though, as an electrical gremlin had struck them not 30 km into the 5500km trip. After a bit of diagnostic work Peter and Richard decided in true tradesman fashion, to ‘let the problem develop’. The result would be it would fix itself or catastrophic failure. Either way we would know where we stood.
We headed off with the mandatory $2 bag of lollies in hand with nothing of significance going on; until.
Just before we had the chance to admire hundreds of acres of Solar Plants (just like sunflowers, only environmentally irresponsible and not at all pretty) we were dispatched almost into the culvert on the left of the road near Woolooga. It appears old mate in his V8 Landcruiser did in fact own the road so overtook at speed running us and the vehicles oncoming off the road. It was one of those times where the elastic in G-String was tested and she became just a little bit soiled in the process. No damage, just a big fright.
We motored on thinking, ‘well thank god that one is our of the way early in the trip’. Kilkivan threw up a mighty burger for lunch, with Denise munching on an equally superb toasted sandwich.
Tansey was next followed by Gayndah for a leg stretch and a brief look at the big orange. We noticed also a protest sign about hydro not being so good. The funny thing was it was attached to a dump point. Just sayin, if was us we would probably protest water issues where water quality was sound as opposed to a poo receptacle!.
Soon after we entered BinJour and proudly did what all tourists do in BinJour. Turned left!! This was followed by an RBT just outside Mundubbera, brilliantly delivered by the Eidsvold Police. Peter’s heart had its cockles warmed at the site and sound of the troops out on the road intercepting vehicles. A lost art that apparently is still alive and well in these parts. The gods of rod safety were with us today.
Eidsvold popped up within about 40 km. We fuelled then selected our spot for the night at the RM Williams centre. We pretty much had the place to ourselves realising it was now cooling off and the predicted four degrees of tomorrow being a reality.
G and Denise felt their inner youth; toddlerhood, rising so attacked the zip line with a style and grace we, and indeed Eidsvold, had not seen in many years. Following a few Gins we watched the free RM lightshow before Peter failed dismally at herding G towards the pub for dinner. Maybe she had been just a little bit affected by the light show.
Peter headed off to explore ultimately locating the wall of legends. Disappointed in not seeing how name there, he continued on to capture pics of plants in boots, old farm implements and other random stuff.
We’re not sure how many chooks and beasts lent their lives to our meals but ‘holy hungry tourists Batman’ they were huge. Huge and amazing. The food was perfectly cooked and tasted like no other in Eidsvold. What an experience. The Parmi set new standards not imagined to be surpassed for decades to come.
We waddled back to the vans, said our good nights and drifted off to sleep. Day one had been a good start.