Committed Travellers

We left Yelarbon just after 9am. There was nowhere to buy a coffee so I had to wait until we got to Goondiwindi. Anita went to Visitor Information to check road conditions, while I took Bluey to the Milk Bar for coffee. When I was a kid the only drinks available at our local milk bar were milkshakes and spiders.

After a stop at the dump site we crossed the Macintyre River into NSW via Gunsynd Way. We joined the Newell Hwy for the 125kms trip to Moree. The northern section of the highway was in excellent condition, but further south there were several sections with lots of potholes. The highway is wide with a decent shoulder so we could avoid the worst of the rough patches by driving with our left wheels on the shoulder, or sometimes with our right wheels just on or over the centre line when safe to do so. In a couple of places there was water over the road, or water both sides of the road.

We had agreed to take the Gwyder Hwy from Moree and weave our way in a south westerly direction to Nyngan, a drive of 450kms. There are no caravan parks along that route, so we decided to stop in Moree for the night, and spend time in the thermal pools at the Gwydir Carapark.

Anita did a load of washing while I set up the critters’ crate and let Tilly have some time outdoors. Fortunately she has resumed using her kitty litter!

A chihuahua cross pug (Chug) named Micron visited Bluey. The little fella kept trying to get to Bluey’s willy. He succeeded by sneaking in between Blue’s hind legs.

The pools are enjoyable with temperatures ranging from lukewarm to 39°. The water comes from 700m underground and there are taps available for people to fill water bottles for drinking.

We ordered take away meals from the cafe which were very good. I had the spaghetti bolognese and Anita had crumbed lamb cutlets.

As we packed up at home we discovered Tilly has not been using her clean kitty litter for about five days. She has been outside a couple of times most days, but not often enough to explain the clean kitty litter. At least in the car and caravan we will know if she uses either of the clean kitty litters. I should have left a little of the used litter to mix with the new, as we had issues with her using kitty litter when she first arrived as a kitten. That was solved when I got a handful of litter her mother had used and mixed it with the new.

I dropped Bluey at the groomer and he was ready to be picked up an hour later. On the way home I left four bags of clothing with Sue as she offered to take them to the Op Shop for me. We hooked up the Bushtracker and picked up our beautifully groomed Bluey with the caravan attached. We were on the road by 10.15.

We drove through Canungra and Beaudesert before our first stop at Aratula. It is easy to park opposite the bakery where for $16 Anita bought a pie, a toasted ham and cheese sandwich, hot chocolate and coffee, suggesting inflation hasn’t reached Aratula. We sat on the veranda with Bluey enjoying our lunch.

Our drive up and through Cunningham’s Gap was without any delays. We took the slightly shorter route via Freestone, and drove through Warwick continuing in a westerly direction on the Cunningham Hwy, stopping at the Gore Roadhouse parking area. Without realising it we both walked through a patch of dry cement, getting it on our shoes and trousers. The Cement Mills Mine is nearby so trucks carting dry cement probably stop at the roadhouse.

We refuelled at Inglewood and decided to stop for the night at the Yelarbon Recreation Ground, where a powered site cost us $20. This facility is run by volunteers, but I think this sign should read Volunteers Clean This Facility.

The few buildings have been relocated from an old railway station. We are parked next to a small museum with a bushranger mural. The main building is in the process of being reclad.

There is a workshop, collections of old tools and machinery, and railway carts.

I took Bluey for a “walk” to view the silo artwork – that is I walked carrying him most of the way. As we passed an old bicycle a ute driver tooted and I thought it was because I was carrying Bluey. On the return walk I spotted this dead snake beside the bicycle. Now I am wondering if the ute driver was trying to warn me about the snake being run over and thrown off the road by another car.

Artwork on the eight silos is impressive, but the nearby buildings are derelict.

On our return walk this large cloud was threatening rain, but we only had a light sprinkle when we first arrived. We did not drive through any rain all day.

We had dinner in the van, fed the critters then settled down in front of the TV.

Rather than carry our breakfast ingredients upstairs from the working fridge, we had our toast downstairs. Bluey saw the crust go onto his plate so he also ate downstairs. I thought he might not cope with this change to his routine, but sourdough toast crust is hard to refuse.

For coffee we joined a group of friends at the HOTA Cafe for a while. Bluey isn’t allowed there so we took him with us when we had lunch at Salt Cafe with Sue, our friend and neighbour. Blue lay on his mat and watched the world go buy. The lunch menu is quite extensive but I settled for a simple grilled salmon, while the others had Szechwan calamari.

I packed most of the last minute items into the car or caravan. Anita will finalise the food packing tomorrow morning while I take Bluey to the groomer. Hopefully he will be finished early so we can leave and not risk a fine for parking the Bushtracker in our street for more than 2 hours on a Monday morning.

By the time I took Bluey to the park his friends had gone, but I saw this interesting cloud formation.

We had more visitors and their adopted elderly dog. It was great to catch up with our friends, but Bluey was not keen on the 14 year old dog called Butch.

Little Leo returned a couple of days later, and Bluey was happy! They chased each other around the house where Leo could duck and weave through chair legs frustrating Bluey. They happily snuggled on the couch.

We have been busy washing the car and caravan, taking the van for a service, and packing for our next trip. Bluey has enjoyed spending time at the river park, while Tilly spent time getting into bags so she won’t be left behind.

This morning we discovered our freezer was not working. We went out for breakfast with our friends before dealing with that problem. Blue sat on Anita’s lap and licked his lips hoping to get a taste of her coffee.

We emptied the freezer and had to throw out some of the food. We ate some defrosted pizza leftovers for dinner, and Anita cooked the once frozen gozlemes and berries. Fortunately we have another fridge downstairs, and Anita had already taken some food out to the Bushtracker freezer. We will have to wait until we return from our trip to South Australia before seeing if the fridge can be repaired.

If the fridge cannot be repaired in situ, we have two problems – getting the old fridge out of the house, and a new one in. To get this fridge upstairs in 2013 we hired a scissor lift to raise it to the height of the upstairs veranda. That option is no longer available as the scissor lift was positioned on the driveway, but we have since built a carport over the driveway. If the fridge is not repairable, it may be possible to strip it down sufficiently to be able to take it down the spiral staircase. Getting a new fridge up will be more challenging.

Depending on the weather we plan to leave on Monday, picking a route to avoid flooded roads.

Tilly was reluctant to wake up yesterday, somehow snuggling on my lap cuddling three of her paws. As we had a breakfast catch up scheduled for 9am she was left by herself.

We met our friends at Stanley’s Barn Restaurant at Upper Coomera. The large rustic style barn was built using 100 year old recycled timbers. Dogs are allowed in the undercover outdoor area. Goats, ponies and free ranging chickens live on the property and can sometimes be seen on the lawn area.

There is an unrestored vintage car in a corner of the barn. A mannequin is wearing a dress, fur and handbag that were worn by the restaurant owners’ grandmother in 1963 when she escorted the Queen during a visit to New Zealand.

The Barn is colocated with the Gold Coast Motor Museum which has an extensive collection of cars and motor cycles. My favourite is the 1935 Packard given to Amelia Earhart by the President of the car company after her solo flight across the Atlantic.

The eclectic collection includes a life size statue of a chauffeur. His facial expression caught my attention. The members of the pop group The Monkees made the Monkeemobile famous. The museum has a replica of the modified Pontiac GTO (Gran Turismo Omolagato).

The rain started as we drove home in our very staid Toyota Landcruiser, and continued for much of the day. Between showers I fitted a new strap to stop the Bushtracker door opening too far, refitted a seat cover after sewing up a hole, and replaced the elastic strap retaining Tilly’s kitty litter box.

Bluey walked to the park but we ran home because the rain started again. He had plenty of exercise running and wrestling indoors with Tilly.

This morning we took Bluey to the Salt Cafe at the Ferry Road Markets where we had breakfast. It was cold enough to leave him in the car while we shopped.

I took a few loads out to the caravan, and restacked some cupboards finding the missing egg cups! Heavy tinned foods are now stored in a floor level cupboard, and the critters’ dry foods are in the more accessible pantry.

Our friends arrived in their motorhome mid afternoon, and little Leo was able to run around the house and play with Bluey. Tilly was confined in the bedroom.

We took both dogs for a walk and met up with my dog walking group. Six month old Harley slipped out of her collar a couple of times. When she did that the last time she decided to run around on the sand  and in and out of the river. She has not been able to run since being desexed 12 days ago, so had a lot of pent up energy.

Bluey was going crazy on his lead so it was safer to let him off to run with Harley. He got wet but fortunately doesn’t go swimming. They both rubbed themselves in the sand so I had to give Bluey a bath, washing him twice all over to get rid of most of the sticky sand. He was very compliant and appreciated Anita warming his towels in the clothes drier. After blow drying his fur I sat him on my lap and brushed out his curls. Leo kept visiting and snuggling with us, sometimes with obsessive interest in Bluey’s willy.

We had planned take away Thai for dinner, but it was closed so we settled for pizzas. The new owners of Jafa don’t make the pizzas as well as the original chef. Bluey and Leo finally crashed from tiredness. When the others had taken Leo to their motorhome, I let Tilly out. She was cranky! I had to step in to stop her from picking on Bluey. I followed her downstairs and played with her chasing a length of Velcro. She eventually settled down and had a cuddle on Anita’s lap.

Bluey came for the drive to pick up the Bushtracker from our friends’ horse farm. We had a side trip to Beacon Lighting for a specific bulb, and dropped off some donations to the Animal Welfare League Op shop.

Of course Bluey was given attention, cuddles and cheese treats, while the humans enjoyed coffee and carrot cake. I avoided the M1 as it is a school holidays long weekend. On my drive north the southbound lanes were already a car park. There are service roads where the speed limit is either 60 or 70kph so it took 50 minutes to drive home, but this avoided the risk of long delays on the M1.

We can park the Bushtracker outside our house over the long weekend and do some maintenance, cleaning and packing.

When I took Bluey for a walk our friends were 200m ahead of us. He walked along the beach then willingly walked quickly to catch up at the end of the regular route.

I spent half the day making sure the bottom flyscreen rail will fit on the new veranda wall. The aluminium vertical rails had to be cut down a couple of millimetres, and that was a tedious job. I started with a hacksaw, but could not go close to the wall. An electric multi function tool did most of the work, but I had to finish with the file.

The bottom rail had to be cleaned, particularly the groove that receives the flyscreen and spline. The supplier will come next week to quote on supplying the screen, new spline and special roller.

Before refitting the safety rail I redrilled all holes and filled them with silicone, to hopefully prevent water penetrating the timber frame of the veranda wall.

A cute 6 month old Groodle lives two doors away. She has just been desexed so has to stay on her lead. She and Blue are friendly with each other but can’t play while Harley is recovering from her operation. The humans owners of Harley are keen to have Bluey visit.

We had dinner at an Italian restaurant tonight to celebrate a friend’s birthday. The food was good, but the routine intrusions by the wait staff asking if we were enjoying our meals were a bit much.

We took Bluey to Manalos Cafe at the Isle of Capri. He was trembling when we got him out of the car, possibly because his crate was lower than normal in the back of the Toyota. He didn’t like walking up the escalator either!

I had the delicious porridge with fruit coulis and stewed apples. It was such a large serving I took home half and Bluey enjoyed a taste.

I cleaned out the back of the car and refitted our storage boxes, the critter crate and put away the tools, boxes, bags and kitty litter.

We had been invited to a seafood dinner at the Star Casino, where we shared a table with our friends. Most of the food was excellent, especially the oysters and smoked salmon. We were home within three hours, but Bluey went crazy. He suffers separation anxiety, especially when we leave him alone at night. After he calmed down a little, he and Tilly ran and wrestled to burn up excess energy.

With afternoon rain and storms forecast, first thing this morning I applied the second coat of paint to the veranda wall. While that was drying I did the final coat on the window sill. I was able to finally put away the painting tools, after the time consuming task of washing the roller. My fairly new paint brush is very easy to clean, unlike the older brushes made from bristle.

The large flyscreen that will be secured to the veranda wall is a special material – it is stronger than regular screen and comes on extra wide rolls. Some of our veranda screens need replacing because of sun damage.

I don’t want the company that did the original installation of the screens to fit new screens, because their poor workmanship caused water damage in several places. The only other company that fits these large screens is very busy and not taking on more work. They offered to sell me the screen so I can install it myself. I am waiting to hear back from them whether I need any special tools, and if the spline needs to be replaced.

Poor Tilly has been locked in the bedroom while I have been working on the veranda – I didn’t want her escaping onto the carport roof. I put on her harness and lead, and let her have some time in the garden. She has been purring at me ever since!

The window sill needed touch up filling so I did that first thing, before tackling the front veranda wall again. I drove to a specialist paint store for further advice about improving the texture finish and was sold a special roller to apply the render finish. The container said not to apply the product in the sun, but I am working on a north facing wall, which is in the sun for much of the day. I needed to get this job done before we get more rain.

The roll-on render has not completely covered the uneven surface, but it has improved the finish so by late afternoon I had applied the first coat of paint. Hopefully I will be able to do the second coat tomorrow morning if there is no rain.

It was 5pm when I took Bluey to the park, so he was allowed off his lead. There was no other dog suitable for him to run and play with, but he kept looking out just in case.

Tilly had been locked away in the bedroom to prevent her from jumping over the veranda wall. She was very demanding when let out.

While we were away this succulent produced a tall flower causing it to be leaning over. Other flowers are growing around the base of the plant.