Tuesday 3 August - Day 3
Kingaroy - Emerald

The weather was beautiful when we arrived in Kingaroy on Monday night and we thought we might actually enjoy a sunny holiday. We should have known better. The weather forecast for Kingaroy was 4% chance of rain ... and predictably, we woke to rain on the roof! Not heavy - but the sun had certainly decided to hide. All yesterday was bleak, wet and windy (but fine and sunny today.) We spent last night at the Roma Gun Club (lovely large spacious sites) and drove today to Lake Maraboon, outside Emerald.



The road from Roma to Emerald was long, straight and mostly flat but very few pull-off areas to have a break. When we finally came across one we stopped for morning tea (and enjoyed Mum's beautiful homemade biscuits) ... along with what looked like the whole caravan park! We definitely felt like the poor cousins next to all the other huge rigs. 

Merril loved this sign which was on the playground at Rolleston and had to snap it! It is her sign of the day! There were even a couple of big Tonka trucks in the playground for the kids. You would never find that in Brisbane!
     

We will stay here at Lake Maraboon for a few days. Darryl (note Darryl - not Merril ... she has been there done that) wants to go to the gemfields, and we need to go into Emerald for some supplies.

Monday 1 August - Day 1
Brisbane - Kingaroy

Finally our holidays have commenced, although we were off to a very late start. Someone (who will remain nameless) decided that the gardens had to be weeded and mulched before we left ... and the house had to be clean ... and ... and... and. Anyway, we managed to be ready to leave about 2pm.

Earlier in the day our friendly neighbour came over and recommended that we turn off the water to the house while we were away, in case of burst tap plumbing (tails) which have been known to go without warning and cause a lot of damage. Unfortunately that meant that all Merril's watering system setup was now wasted. (Sigh ... thanks Sharon for agreeing to water my pots.) So as we were about to leave, we went to turn off the water at the main, only to find that the tap was jammed.
Back inside we went, turned on the computer, modem etc to phone Urban Utilities. Our late start was now even later after listening to their wonderful hold music!

When we got to just north of Caboolture, we stopped at a servo and noticed that one of the small roof domes had popped open! Thank goodness we had some wonderful duct tape handy in the boot. It is now taped up until we can get it repaired along the way.

Our original plan was to stay in Roma for the first night, but instead we are in a lovely campsite at Kingaroy Showgrounds.

Early start tomorrow and we should be able to make it easily to Roma.
Unbelievably for us, the weather is beautiful and sunny - there is just a lot of smoke haze from burnoffs.