Westwards

Tom and Maggie

Had a good sleep at Lisa's and packed the car and said our goodbyes and headed into Brisbane. It was a revolting day, thick grey cloud and drizzly rain. That coupled with the dreary 'we could be anywhere' drive through the suburbs into Brisbane, we really thought we had been transported back to the UK!

How far?

Although there was quite a bit of traffic, we made it into Brisbane in good time and dropped off the hire car ok. We then headed to a cafe whilst we waited for Martin and Vanessa to arrived - they were driving out from Chinchilla to pick us up - completely beyond the call of duty and very very kind of them - it is 390km from Chinchilla to Brisbane - Martin drove the return trip in one day, I guess in a big country your perception of distance changes.

We headed straight out of Brisbane on the road towards Darwin - a mere 3,400 km away! Looking at that road sign made out trip to Chinchilla seem just down the road!  Unfortunately the going was quite slow as the whole road between Chinchilla and Brisbane seemed to be dug up!  Oh hum. We stopped off for lunch at Picnic Point in Toowoomba - another lunch with a view this time from the top of the Dividing Range down on the plateau when had just driven through - you could see the long straight road heading a long way in the distance back to Brisbane.

Silly sign with two boys

We had lunch - once again it was fantastic - we haven't had a bad meal out yet, except for a rather average Japanese lunch on our first day in Manly.  Steak sandwich for me - complete with beetroot of course, really good flavoursome sausages for Matt and some really naughty cakes again (no wonder Australians are getting fatter - lots of really good food and cakes to die for!)

Sipping a Babycino

We then headed out West again through lots of roadworks towards Chunchilla.  The landscape was flat and pretty featureless - mainly huge farms, mainly growing crops or beef.  There really was very little in the way of settlement - just farmhouses scattered and the odd very small settlement.  We did see 3 huge coal trains on our way though - shame Tom was asleep at that point - we videoed them for him.

We finally arrived in Chinchilla around 5pm.  It was dark by then so we couldn't see much - except a huge MacDonalds (can't be that. Remote then).  We got to Martin and Vanessa's house dumped our luggage and then headed out to Vanessa's parents' house to pick up Ben and Mia.

Heavy machines as photographed by Tom

I think Tom was quite overwhelmed at first as he was very quiet, but slowly he came out of his shell and before too long (once back at V&M's house) he relaxed and was playing nicely.  Ben is almost 12 and Mia 9, so there is quite an age gap -  but they are really nice kids and will happily play with Tom at his level.

After soup and a BBQ all the kids went to bed in the same room.  We didn't hear a squeak from them.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Chinchilla