Day 54-55 (March 25-26) - St George to Lake Wivenhoe via Toowoomba

These two days were basically just driving east towards Brisbane, so I've combined them into a single entry as there's nothing overly remarkable about either day.

I went for a run around St George in the morning. The caravan park backed onto a school and I was pleasantly surprised to see kids still going to school on my run. It's amazing how quickly things have changed and closed down.

We didn't leave St George until about 11:30am and the rest of the day was just driving. Mim and I were both feeling a bit tired so we stopped for lunch on the side of the road and put the bed end of the van out and had a 20 minute nap. After that we pushed on to a roadside rest stop about 100km west of Toowoomba. Again, this one was set back from the road a bit which was good. Throughout the drive we'd seen a few long lizards on or near the road and hadn't been able to see them up close. To my eye they looked like a small goanna, but if you remember the David Attenborough Planet Earth 2 trailer, these lizards ran just like those little iguanas which were running away from the snakes!

If you've not seen it, check it out here, it's very good!



Anyway when we got to the rest stop we saw one of these lizards resting on a mud rock. As we approached it shot off just like the little iguanas in the video!

The boys and I had a hit of cricket before we headed in for tea.

Maintaining social distancing while shopping!

Thursday we drove into Toowoomba and picked up a packet of spares for the caravan. One of the awning clamp screws had rattled loose somewhere between Lightning Ridge and St George.

Our bushfire fundraiser had attracted one donation but by the time it came in we were on our run north. So we looked up towns in Qld which had been affected and discovered the little town of Crows Nest north of Toowoomba had lost a few houses. So we headed for Crows Nest where we spent the money on some lunch from a takeaway store and some soft drinks, iced coffee and cordial syrups from the Crows Nest Soft Drinks and Syrups company. The town was fairly quiet as it was the local holiday for the Toowoomba show (which itself had been cancelled but not the holiday!). We spoke to a couple of the locals who said the town had definitely been struggling since the fires, especially with the coronavirus restrictions. So we were pleased to have a bit extra to be able to spend in this town. Thanks very much G&J for your support!

After we'd bought our drinks, Mim noticed that all of us apart from Matt had unwittingly bought drinks which matched our outfits!

Bek chose a Musk soft drink

Jude went for Blue Lemonade

Mim chose Portabello

Yours truly picked Cherry Cheer

... while Matt joined Mum with Portabello

We left Crows Nest and drove east towards Lake Wivenhoe. This massive lake was at the centre of the action during the 2011 Queensland Floods. It had filled up so much at that time that the operators had to release huge quantities of water downstream to prevent it from breaking and causing a massive flood, but even then the amount of water released caused considerable flooding. There were debates for years to come over whether the dam operators should have released water earlier so as to avoid such a large deluge. It was interesting to drive across the dam wall and see how low the water level was compared to how high it was during the floods!

We stopped for the night on the eastern side of Lave Wivenhoe. We were both still feeling a bit tired out so decided to stop early and get a good night's sleep.

Bek doing some artwork by the setting sun

-- Greg