Day 56 (March 27) - Lake Wivenhoe to Brisbane

Today was a pretty uneventful day. We left our free camp near Lake Wivenhoe around lunchtime. We headed south as we were hoping to pick up a light bar for the Pajero from the 4WD Supacentre in Brendale, but when we phoned them from Fernvale we found they were out of stock.

While we were there we had noticed a 4WD track off to the side of the main road, so figured as we had a bit of time to kill (we weren't due to arrive in Kallangur until after 5) we may as well unhitch the van and VERY GENTLY give it a go!

Here's a quick video of some of what we did. We took it pretty easy, but it was challenging enough for us to enjoy it as first-timers!

From there it was a pretty seamless drive into Brisbane and to stay with family for the next couple of weeks until we get a clearer picture of how the Coronavirus restrictions are developing.

-- Greg and Mim

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!

Day 53 (March 24) - Lightning Ridge to St George (Qld)

We know from our noodling times in Coober Pedy that morning and afternoon light are best for catching glimpses of colour amidst the mullock heaps, so we got up about 6:30am.

The lighting at this time of morning was magnificent! The gorgeous sunrises and sunsets, added to the new arrival of red earth, was a reminder how far north we'd come in the past couple of days.

Unfortunately the flies were as bad as ever here! This is
before sunrise!

We shovelled down some breakfast, broke camp and headed to the Grawin opal fields. These are located some distance from Lightning Ridge, but we had learned there were two very large mullock heaps which are probably the best places to find opal, whereas the small heaps in the town of Lightning Ridge itself are very well dug over by tourists.

Day 52 (March 23) - Abercrombie River to Lightning Ridge

Our campsite at Abercrombie River was a lovely one! As mentioned yesterday, the road seemed to become a minor road, and the campsite was set back a little way from the road. This meant there was minimal interruptions from road noise.

We found on exploring our surrounds that the Abercrombie River was flowing slowly and was lovely and clear. The river itself is quite a long one, so saying we camped at the 'Abercrombie River' is a bit like trying to pinpoint a campsite by saying it's on the banks of the Murray! Our site was about 1/3 of the way between Curraweela and Gurnang.

The surrounds were lovely and peaceful and the water was definitely clean enough to drink.

March 22-23 - Coronavirus lockdown travel plan update

While coronavirus has been known of for approaching three months now, the situation in Australia really only started to escalate around when we were in Melbourne around 8-12 March. There were vague, even fanciful, suggestions at the time about Australia closing its national border, and I considered whether state borders might also be considered for closure. In the back of my mind I was considering where we would want to be if this happened, and the answer was Queensland, for a few reasons. In no particular order:

1. it’s further from Adelaide and harder to explore at a later date than Victoria or NSW
2. it’s a very large state and if we had to be marooned somewhere we may as well be somewhere with plenty of spots to explore 
3. while we've been through parts of Qld on our first trip, there were many areas we missed, and others we'd love to revisit
4. the weather is much nicer, especially in winter, and we really did our packing with warm weather in mind

Day 51 (March 22) - Cobargo to Abercrombie River via Batemans Bay and Goulburn

We got up a bit early to get ready for the meeting. As mentioned in yesterday's entry, I’d phoned Sister Jenny McDonagh from the Bodalla ecclesia last night and they welcomed us to join them for the meeting, which started at 10:30am (Bro David Archer’s CALS diary to the rescue again!).
We left Cobargo around 9:30 and stopped briefly at a Woolies to get some things for lunch. Mim managed to score a couple of rolls of toilet paper from a friendly person who had a large packet – this store ACTUALLY had stock, but ran out before Mim could get any, so thanks to this lady whoever she was!

From left: Sis Peggy, Bro Dan, Bro Michael, Mim, Bek,
(Front): Judah, Matt, Sis Jenny, Sis Faith, me

At the meeting we sung a couple of songs from the Praise The Lord book and listened to a talk by a Brother Art Kursk from California. The meeting was only five local members – Bro Michael and Sis Jenny, her sisters Peggy and Faith, and her son Bro Daniel, but it was a nice group to spend the morning with.

Day 50 (March 21) - Mallacoota to Cobargo via Eden and Bega

Saturday 21 March

We had to head off by about 11am so there was time for waffles for breakfast. After we moved out from the caravan park we stopped in the town to do some shopping.


Mallacoota was the first town we'd come to which had been visibly affected by the bushfires. It was also highly publicised in the media as it was the town where people gathered on the beach during the fires and were evacuated by the Navy.

Remember this? This was Mallacoota three months ago.

So we were keen to do some shopping in town.