Home to Cooyar – Unready
Unready. Maybe not a word, yet as sure as I draw breath it is a situation, feeling, state of being, reality. We were as unready for this long overdue holiday as we were for a quick case of diarrhea and a slap across the head with a blunt fish. Unready just did not do it justice.
Still fashioning the rear window stone protector at 6am out of $10 Bunnings corflute because I’m a cheapskate and could not bring myself to cough up $400 for the same commercial offering, the day already sucked. Car packing. Car re-packing. Nothing seemed to be saying get in Panther and drive.
Finally a bit after lunch o’clock we settled in and headed out. Actually it was just a bit after o’clock, because we did not get a chance to have lunch. That would be had at the ever reliable Tilley’s Café at Moore.
Arriving at Landsborough, the home of G-String, we noted she had gathered a bit of dust since last we met. Still, we packed her with goodies for the trip, hooked up and motored out via Beerwah, Peachester and Kilcoy. Fuelled up, we could almost smell the world’s best chippies at Moore, bubbling away in piping hot oil, just waiting for us.
By now we were already deep into snake country, with some of Allen’s short red, green and yellow ones going down a treat. Not not sure if there was a hole in the packer but the snakes seemed to escape pretty quickly.
We slowed, we stopped, we gasped. Our beloved Tilley’s was ‘closed for renovation’. Despair hit hard. No chips. Is there no god? With rumbling bellies we motored on.
We noted that Panther was pulling like a train today. Probably due to cool weather and damp air, the nectar diesels thrive upon. Similarly G-String was hanging in after a few twitches yet seemed to have found her comfortable place for the journey. All was well.
The Bunya Nut Café in Blackbutt stood in for Tilley’s and did a fair job. The 13 year old boy running the place cooked a two point above average burger and for G a pretty decent bacon and egg delicious. There is at least three less pigs in Blackbutt tonight given the amount of bacon he served up.
The feeling of freedom was present fleetingly before we decided to try to operate our third generation expensive Hema navigation system. Having been bitten by this creature twice before with our first many years ago being named ‘that F$&*%$g Hema’, followed by ‘that F$&*%$g Hema Junior’, a few years later, it did not take long for this new model to be christened ‘that F$&*%$g Hema the third’. Logic is simply not in the box. It’s a moody bugger, so tomorrow we expect it will work fine…..until it doesn’t.
Arriving in Cooyar at the Swinging Bridge campground we realised rain had not visited for a good time. The area was dry to the bone with dust becoming our friend. Still our usual spot up the back beside the nesting parroty looking birds, was again all ours. We parked, realised our van level was not, so levelled some more. All in all a fair day for a first on a long trip. With both of feeling the effects of maddening lives leading up to this break, we set the town on fire and were in bed fast asleep by 8pm.