The trip from Bribie to a rest area just south of Gympie was uneventful with Ross spending time working out how best to drive the truck up hills and watching the petrol gauge going ever lower at around 4.7 Km/Ltr. Scenery was primarily gum trees and scrubland with the odd road kill along the way to keep us entertained with the count being 1 Wild Pig, 2 Kangaroos, 1 Black Cat and 1 Rabbit. We arrived at the rest area nice and early and found a spot next to a big 5th wheel unit. Turns out the occupants were Kiwis so we have a good old chat to them before setting up the van. There were a few things that had moved so we changed our packing plan to accommodate in the future. We then headed off to Gympie town to do some essential shopping. Carol having her first drive of the truck, as she is a lead foot she is only allowed to drive around the towns and shopping centre’s!
Gympie is a nice country town and reminded us of Whangarei (without the harbour). We had a walk through the centre and then went to the main shopping centre to get enough food for a few days and then back to the rest area for our first free night on the road.
Our stay at this rest area turned out to be quite fun and we also learned a lot from our neighbours who were all really friendly being Ken and Jan and Barry and Leone. Both towing 5th Wheelers. Some notable things we learned are:
Try to arrive at rest areas before 3pm if you intend staying overnight as they can become quite full
Grey water can go straight onto the ground – not good Girl Guiding skills!
You can stay on a powered site behind the pub at Yaamba for $10
Road trains like it if you flash your lights after the last trailer has passed you
Accelerate when a road train starts to pass you
It gets bloody cold at night in Gympie in winter – 2 degrees when we were there
Because the inside of the van is so cold you get lots of condensation on the roof
When not connected to mains power we are a bit more limited in how things work (or don’t) as everything has to run off battery or gas and we have to make the battery last all night so a summary is as follows:
Battery – Lights, TV, Water pump, Range hood
Gas – Cooker, Water heater – still we both managed a good hot shower
We have not used the TV or range hood off battery yet as we are not sure how long the battery will last.
After a cold and noisy night (due to almost continual trucks on adjacent highway) we were up and packed the next day and on our way to Bundaberg via Childers. We stopped at Childers at in an area set aside for people towing caravans and checked out the main street. This is where the back packers burned down so we visited the building where it all happened (now the information centre) and they have a memorial upstairs that we spent some time in. It has the names and pictures of all who died so is quite a sad but moving experience.
The road from Gympie to Bundaberg was very rough even though it is a main arterial and it took us from 10am to 3pm to get there which we agreed was too much time on the road. We really like the Aussie drivers though – very relaxed and accommodating and we found most people towing caravans coming the other way would wave out so we have adopted the practice also – at least when not struggling to keep the rig on the road…
