Road Tripping

On our last day in The Blue Mountains, a thick fog rolled up the valley like a dust storm and smothered the area in rain and mist.  The temperature fell as fast as the rain so we sealed ourselves inside the van with wine, music and playing cards.  The next morning, everything in the Hippie was dripping with moisture and condensation - these vans aren't built for the cold!  The cab area was filled with our wet clothes and our soaked flip-flops lay sadly on the grass outside, cold and stiff.  Despite this, we felt rather smug as our fellow campers crawled out of saturated, wind battered tents and piled them, still dripping, into the backs of their cars.  Throwing our wet gear into the back of the van, we were on the road within minutes, the heater at full blast and the engine, which sits behind the front seats, slowly warming up the rear.  The wet weather persisted as we edged north, with intermittent heavy showers meeting us as we hunted for the sun. The cold and damp of the previous evening rendered our windscreen wipers permanently on for a few hours, which, when the rain stopped, began to heave and scrape their way across the dry screen as their motors whined and cried with the strain.  We therefore had to stop and start our journey every so often, removing and replacing the fuse as the rain came and went.

A few hundred kilometres later and the van was back to normal, everything was dry and we were rolling along a dirt road towards a small campground by the beach in another National Park.  Unfortunately, the cyclone had left it's mark on the weather and the wind continued to howl and stir an immense range of grey cloud above the wild coastline which roared with pounding waves, curling several metres high before smashing into the sand.  Although beautiful and romantic, it was not the Australian beach holiday we had hoped for.

Two more days of solid driving followed as we hunted for the sun and some warmth.  So now, almost one thousand kilometres from where we started, we are just south of Brisbane and the sun has finally appeared.  We can once again smother on the sun screen and hang up our umbrellas.  We're in Ipswich, camped out in the car park of a motel (it was advertised as a campsite), to visit some old workmates of Rosie's who now run a lovely cafe in one of the town's parks.  After this, we shall head another thousand kilometres north, to Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef.

Breakfast burger and milkshake at the Queen's Park Cafe, Ipswich