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Day 1 Toowomba

After 5 months or so of our new caravan sitting on the driveway, save for three little trips where we went mostly just to check that everything works properly, we set off on our big adventure – six (-ish) weeks on the road.  A couple of weeks to get to Adelaide, a week in the City of Churches Supercars, and a couple of weeks meandering back through Victoria and coastal New South Wales, to get back home in time for Christmas.  We have done a heap of trips over the years, in tents and two variations of pop-top vans, but this marks our first time in a real-life grown-up (self-contained van) and more importantly, without the safety blanket provided by travelling in a group.  Will we survive without breaking down?  Will we survive without killing one another?  All will be revealed through these pages…

The best things about being (semi) retired, is that we are no longer dependent on school holidays.  This means that we can take out time, rather than our usual four days of seven hours driving each day, four days in the actual place we were visiting, and then four days rushing back in time for school, and usually two days of marking beforehand.

So, this trip we have planned around short journeys, with most stops of at least two nights, so that we can take the time to smell the roses – or jacarandas as the case may be.

Day 1 was a very short jaunt to Toowoomba, with the main purpose being to catch up with one of Mark’s mates from the Uluru Astronomy Hub days (sorry Wendy – but we will catch you guys at the muster in May).

Toowoomba is a place I have been to a heap of times before.  I remember, shortly after I returned from Mt Isa, Dad thought I was an idiot for going ‘all that way” to Toowoomba for a twenty-first birthday party, but when you are used to driving from Mount Isa to the Sunshine Coast, two- and a-bit hours to Toowoomba is nothing!

Anyway, as I said, I have been there plenty of times before, but clearly never by the Esk-Hampton Road, because I’m sure that if I had, I would have recognised the locale of Perseverance.  The very name sounds like it should be the setting for a Taylor Sheridan western, complete with gun slingers and public lynchings and saucy barmaids.  But no.  All that comprises Perseverance is a public hall, and a massive culvert (under construction.  Google describes the Perseverance Hall as “nestled in the heart of Ravensbourne” with a population of 72.  If this is the heart, I’m not entirely sure where the rest of the body is (The population of Ravensbourne is only 307.  Don’t get me wrong – I think this is great!  I love that only a little bit out of Brisbane there are tiny little communities like this and just know that I hope they don’t get developed.  The Perseverance Hall is hosting a trivia night in November, and now I wish I knew this when we were planning our trip, because I imagine that would be a real hoot, with volunteers manning the bar and charging genuine 1973 prices!

Anyhow, all of the times I have been to Toowoomba, I don’t think I have ever been when the jacarandas are in bloom, and as we drove in I was instantly reminded of Bruce Dawe’s poem “Provincial City” – ‘the jacarandas hang their sheets of blue water in mid-air…’  This in turn reminded me of my confusion many years ago as a young teacher in Mount Isa.  The poem was used as an unseen text in an English exam and the kids were asked to explain the metaphor in that line.  More than half of my class started rabbiting on about atlases, with one elaborately explaining how a truck laden with atlases had crashed and the port had captured the moment where the truck disintegrated and the atlases flew through the air before crashing to the ground,  This was one of the first times I was forced to consider ‘point of reference’.  Mount Isa High was full of young teachers setting English exams for whom jacarandas were a common sight, while most of our charges had never left Mount Isa, and their only point of reference was the class sets of atlases they used in class – which coincidently had a blue cover!

We checked into the Big 4 Caravan Park in Harristown for the night.  Our intention had been to stay at the showgrounds, but half-way to Toowoomba, Mark realised he had forgotten to fill the water tanks in the van, and not knowing what the water situation was at the showgrounds, chose the safe option.  Amazingly, even though there were three groups of people watching, Mark managed to back the van in perfectly first time.  “You can tell you’ve done that a few times,” our neighbour said.  Well, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt them.  And then a lady who had a neighbour who owned a Snowy bailed us up for an hour, and after that it was time to catch up with Mike.

Mike suggested Thai for dinner, and it didn’t really bother me too much because it was mostly going to be me feigning interested in telescopes and nebulae, but genuine interest in Mike’s recounts of his minglings with the King of Bhutan.  We ended up at Dee’s Vintage Thai Restaurant in Ruthven Street (which I think is the only street in Toowoomba).  Talk about genuine 1973 prices!  Well, maybe not quite, but two courses for three people, including a bottle of wine, was $104.  The mains were so big that we all took home leftovers, and the owner brought over the ‘doggy-bags’ automatically. The, when I went to pay, I handed over $105 in notes and he gave me the $5 note back.  “No, I discount you!”  But perhaps the loveliest thing about this restaurant, was that someone  had the job of making origami water lilies out of yellow serviettes and gently placing them in every wine glass on every table. Hunger sated, we bid our farewells to Mike and headed back to the Big 4 to call it night.

Oh – nearly forgot.  We think we have officially become “good nomads” (nobody needs to mention the grey).  We knew we would encounter a lot of truck and we weren’t, disappointed, so when one was up our backside, we used the trucking channel 40 to call him around.  As he passed us, he gave us a hearty toot of his horn and wished is the best for our holiday.  We were a little bit chuffed – plus we have seen Stephen Spielberg’s early ‘made-for-TV’ movie Duel, starring Dennis Weaver, and an angry pair of hands driving an even angrier truck.  Much better to get on their good side!