Friday, May 13, 2022

Day 18 – Emerald – Yeppoon

Now that was a daunting drive. Left Emerald around 8am, determined to give it a go. Was it raining? Yes. Was it heavy? No. Did the Qld Traffic App say the road was closed? Yes. Did that deter us? No … well, not much. Within 30 minutes of leaving, we did have to drive through flood water with traffic control guys directing so only one lane at a time could slowly crawl through. It was flowing pretty fast and was maybe the deepest water I’ve ever driven through – I felt OK about it as I was being directed to do it. There was also another scary moment when a very wide load forced us to the very edge of the bitumen – no way was I getting into the mud – and only just squeezed past.

I was pretty happy to make it to Rockhampton in one piece. It didn’t rain all the way, but it was enough to be annoying without wipers! Ironically the back wiper still works. Maz suggested I reverse all the way – haha. The elation of making it to Rocky wore off very quickly when we discovered that the part had not arrived at Nissan. “Could be in Brisbane,” they said. “Might be here by Monday”. Gaz did well not to follow up with his musings of last night, and we disappointedly got back in the car as, you guessed it, it started raining again. Yeppoon is about another 30 minutes or so and we made it there OK, grabbed some groceries and then unpacked, ate lunch and settled into our cabin.

We caught up with the others who, of course, arrived yesterday. They had been into Yeppoon looking at the shops, having lunch, and generally checking it out. Gaz and I relaxed for a while, me reading, he watching the races, when I said “this is crazy – we need to go for a walk, we’ve been sitting all day!” We drove the very short distance to Mulambin Beach and walked down on the beach to check it out. There was actually a bit of blue sky which may be the first we’ve seen in about a week, maybe more. I was fascinated by the sand, which is not what I’m used to. It’s much denser and mud like. Vicky explained that it’s because of the reef – the surf can’t pound it to fine sand. I had never heard about this – I think the furthest north I’ve been on the coast is Noosa.




After our short walk, it was back to the cabin for pre-dinner drinks and nibblies, followed by fish curry for the others and pizza for us (we are curry wimps). Another very pleasant evening of conversation before we all dispersed to prepare for another day of adventure and excitement tomorrow. Thanks goodness we’re here!




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