Entry 14 – 18th Nov. to 4th Dec., Sunshine Coast, Queensland to Canberra, ACT.
We only needed one night at the township of Beerwah after collection of our caravan from the manufacturer, to complete our testing of the caravan’s new equipment and other repairs. Once again, we were very satisfied with Bushtracker quality of workmanship, reiterating the value of travelling a long way for their service.
Our next target location a couple of hundred kilometres down the road was the town of Dalby where our tow tug had been booked for a service. We set camp a bit out of town in a bush setting at Lake Broadwater.
Mary continued with further testing of our new oven’s capabilities.
Our tow tug was provided with new filters, oil, and new exhaust hoses, a requirement for the current emissions regulations, the first time we have experienced fitment of new exhaust hosing as part of a vehicle service, naturally at our expense. With the caravan re-connected we were on our way, heading south, pleasingly a few hours earlier than we had expected with an early completion of the tow tug service.
At Goondiwindi we returned some borrowed audio books to the library and set camp at Moree, in New South Wales located another 130 kilometres down the road. We chose to utilise a caravan park with four hot artesian pools. It was 5.30 pm at arrival time and the temperature was still 36 degrees, with our priority to activate our caravan air-conditioner to provide an acceptable sleeping temperature. We do like our artesian waters, immersing our bodies in the artesian pools, starting in the 34-degree pool, next the 38-degree pool, finishing with some laps in the air temperature pool. It was a most relaxing way to finish our day.
We were a day in-front for our current location than where we thought we might be. We do like our artesian waters and decided to stay a second day, because we could.
We continued travelling south, focused on driving over the next three days, staying overnight near roadside stops. Our first night was at a location a bit north of Dubbo at Eumungerie campground providing power and toilets for $10 a night. We do enjoy a bush setting like Eumungerie campground, leaving our curtains open, waking at day light, enjoying views of silhouetted trees around us highlighted by the rising sun.
Day two we drove through some low-lying clouds with periods of heavy rain, our first bit of good rain for a few months.
Day three we arrived at our destination of Canberra, parking up in the front yard of our son’s home. That was, after trimming a few low-lying tree limbs, hindering our access to his front yard.
We spent a week enjoying the company of our Canberra family. Naturally with the rest of our time, utilized ticking off our son’s wish list for home maintenance.
During our time in Canberra, we closely monitored the various state border crossing requirements due to the ever-changing covid-19 impacts, in preparation for the choice of our travel route home. Normally, we would travel through Victoria on our way home but at the time, our home state of South Australia border was closed to people from and travelling through Victoria. 2020 our return trip to home required us to travel a route further north, circumnavigating around the state of Victoria to get home. We had still been required to apply for an entry permit to get back into South Australia, under covid-19 conditions. Yes, we were stopped at the border at a police check point and they established we did have an appropriate permit to enter.
We had a good run home, taking five days of driving to arrive back at our home. Though it was a long boring period of just driving. Every now and then we would get a glimpse of the activity in the nearby paddocks for this time of the year with bumper year for crops being harvested from the paddocks.
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