Wanderung 20

Australian Walkabout

May - June 2009

Wednesday, June 17th, Drive from Yeppoon to Gayndah.

Bob:

After a very leisurely breakfast, we rewound our way through the Yeppoon roundabouts and headed back toward Rockhampton. We first saw smoke in the distance, but as we came closer the smoke became quite thick and suddenly we were driving through a wildfire. The tinder-dry grass alongside the road on our left sent flames and smoke billowing over the road, a rather spectacular and unnerving sight, so I moved to the right into the passing lane to avoid burning the paint on the car ($330 deductible, after all) and watched what the local drivers did (when in Rome, etc. etc.). They all continued on nonchalantly as though nothing untoward was happening, so although my instinct would be to slow down in the thick smoke and fire just as I would in a thick fog, I decided to just keep on driving through it all at a normal pace like they were, because if I slowed down and they didn't I could jolly well be rear-ended!

Monika:

A last sunrise over the Pacific Ocean, and then we were on our way back to Brisbane. Driving on the road to Rockhampton we saw smoke in the distance. Now the previous day, I had seen smoke in the distance when we were on the boat. When I asked about, I got a shoulder shrug and a "just a wildfire" as if that was nothing special. Well that really seemed to be the attitude. As we got closer to the smoke we saw actual flames besides the road and nobody but us seemed to pay any attention to it (like call the fire department or something). We both, however, felt relieved when we were past that particular stretch of highway.

Bob:

The A3, also known as the Burnett Highway, split off from the A1 or Bruce Highway just South of Rockhampton. We headed toward some low mountains on the far horizon and snaked our way up through them onto a plateau. I had not expected tractor-trailer trucks on the narrow, twisty two-lane road, but of course they came down at me just as I was negotiating the 180-degree hairpin turns. I particularly remember a trailer truck full of frozen chickens flashing by in front of the nose of the car, because I remember thinking briefly at the time how embarrassing it would be to be run off the road by a bunch of chickens!

Monika:

We had decided to take the more inland route to return to Brisbane, but I had not expected that we would have climb up to a plateau and our poor little underpowered Kia (also known as "The Gutless Wonder") huffed and puffed its way up to the top. But the views were great.

Bob:

Fortunately once we were on the plateau the road straightened out and it was easy to hold a 100 kph pace. "Easy" does not mean, however, "comfortable". The road surface was so uneven and patched in places that we were really bounced around pretty well for much of the day's journey. Having the car bounding around like a kangaroo would have worried me a lot more if there had been any traffic in the other lane, but the road was well nigh deserted for the entire day's drive except for three huge cattle trucks. They were impressive, those trucks. The were high, wide double-deckers, and the innovative thing was that each cow or steer was loaded on crosswise and had its own little slot with walls on both sides. That kept them from hurting each other, I suppose, and the bumper sticker on one truck bragged, "Cruisin' without Bruisin'". I saw a lot of that bumper sticker during the day as somehow we played leapfrog with them and had to repass them after every stop for meals, gasoline, and so forth. Bother. Still, by and large the drive South on A3, although challenging, was a lot of fun. We pulled into Gayndah around 3:00 p.m. and stayed overnight at the Colonial Motor Inn, in part because they advertised WiFi connections ($6 for one hour, as it turned out).

Monika:

After we were on top, the road straightened out. There were a few "watch out for Koala bears" signs, but I did not see any. I did enjoy watching the road signs. Instead of kilometer signs for the complete distance, Australia has signs that give you the distance in kilometers to the next bigger town, but using only the first letter of town. It was always fun to guess what the next bigger town was that the sign referred to. We finally ended up in Gayndah, proud of its citrus crop, I think.


 


 

Copyright 2009 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt
Index
Prolog Map of Australian Walkabout Epilog

May 2009
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3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30
31
June 2009
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27
28 29 30

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