Quilpie – Sunshine Coast

After leaving Windorah we decided we’d head east and come home via the Queensland and NSW coasts.  We were looking forward to beautiful surf beaches we could swim in without being taken by a crocodile, but we still had another 1,200 kms to go. 

We stopped a night in Quilpie and were joined in the caravan park by the 38 motorhomes travelling together.  We rode our bikes to the pub and had a drink and a good laugh with the publican, then a hot spa in one of the 3 tubs at the caravan park.

The main road from Windorah to Quilpie, then Charleville and on to Roma is only 1 lane and it’s a challenge travelling on such a thin strip of bitumen when you’re confronted by a triple road train barrelling towards you.  What you do with an oncoming vehicle depends on your size:  road trains are the biggest, so everyone clears out of their way onto the dirt so the trucks have the road all to themselves.  A caravan has precedence over a car, and farmers give way to everyone just because they’re nice guys, or they don’t want their cars sprayed with rocks.  If you’re on a bicycle just hang on and hope for the best!

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The road was busy with cattle trucks going to various properties to pick up their loads, but we’d spent much time wondering where they would go once they were loaded up.  It finally dawned on us that these cows were destined for the Roma Sale Yards, Queensland.  In northern WA and the NT, most of the cattle are exported to Indonesia or elsewhere in Asia. 

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While camping alone one night at a free roadside stop, 2 road trains pulled up outside our van.  A waft of cow smells drifted through the van windows.  It was pitch dark, and the 2 drivers got out and crawled underneath one trailer trying to find a problem.  We spied on them from inside our van and listened to the hundreds of cows who seemed very agitated, stomping around in their cages.  After roaming freely around enormous properties all their lives, it must be very stressful being bundled into trucks destined to end up on our dinner plates.  The drivers eventually solved the problem, and the trucks moved off into the night. 

We timed our travel east so we could go via the Roma Sale Yards on auction day.  There were 2,000 head of cattle being auctioned when we got there.  This was a real highlight and after talking to a couple of old guys who knew much more than we did, we came away quite enlightened.  Although even Google hasn’t answered the question of why some cows had blue paint splashed on their backs.  We spent a couple of hours there, moving along the viewing platforms to watch the auction, then the cows being prodded into various pens, weighed and then out the other side to the next stage of the process before ending up on the BBQ.  Watching the guys on horseback controlling the cattle was fantastic.  One particularly difficult cow got this constant barrage from one rider:  “Carn ya bastard.  Git in there!”   

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Even though the road eventually widened into 2 lanes it was in shocking condition and we spent hundreds of kilometres on what seemed like a roller coaster ride – up and down where the road seemed like it had collapsed into the soft ground beneath.  It seems like the Queensland government doesn’t spend much money on their roads out there.

On our way to the coast via Toowoomba, we detoured through Grantham and Gatton where the 2010 floods claimed so many lives.  The Lockyer Valley is a beautiful farming area and it was hard to imagine the suffering that is still going on by families who have lost loved ones.

We decided to stay a night at Somerset Lake, 1 hour north of Brisbane thinking it would be a quiet spot near the water.  The lake is part of the Wivenhoe Dam, cause of all the grief in Grantham and beyond.  What we found was an enormous camping area which gets about 3,000 people on a busy weekend.  It seems everyone who owns a ski boat or jetski in Brisbane drives up there for the day or to camp.  We found ourselves a spot amongst the trees with a spectacular view over the lake and wandered around the huge property.  An older couple camped near us and were struggling to get their awning in place on their caravan so we went over and helped.  Seems they’ve had their van for 6 months and were too scared to use it.  Watching them both trying to open up their camping chairs made us realise that perhaps they should sell the van and stay in hotels.

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So now our trip is almost over.  We’ve made it to the beautiful Sunshine Coast and are now at Coolum Beach.  We’ve been riding our bikes and visiting as many surf clubs as we can.  The clubs on the Sunshine Coast and Gold Coast have restaurants and bars on the beach, and it’s a lovely overlooking the ocean having lunch and drinking a beer.

Now that we’ve hit the coast we’ve seen something we haven’t experienced for about 6 months – RAIN!  When you’re travelling in areas that only have a wet and a dry season it’s a pretty safe bet that you won’t see any rain.  We’ve now experienced “the build-up” which is increasing humidity with some clouds but no rain.  The temperatures in Darwin and the Northern Territory have been around 35⁰C but the humidity was really creeping up, so our plans to visit Borroloola and Limmen NP were shelved, because there’s nowhere to swim croc-free.  It puts a different slant on camping when you spend 24 hours sweating and nowhere to cool off!

We’re struggling to stay warm here in freezing temperatures of 23⁰C, and now we’ve swapped our shorts for trackie-dacks in the mornings, we can appreciate what it must have been like for poor Mel moving down from Cairns to live in Sydney.

Tomorrow we leave to go south to the Gold Coast for 4 nights via Kedron in Brisbane who are doing a bit of work on our van.  Then it’s back home to life as we knew it.