Last night we headed out to the local bowls club for dinner. We’ve noticed in a few towns that the bowls clubs have public restaurants. This one had the added bonus that, with presentation of our room key, we got members rates! We had a good meal, for once it wasn’t too large so we managed a desert between us.
After breakfast we headed out to another hot and soon to be humid day. The temperature was in the mid 30’s (C) mid 90’s (F). Again we had nothing planned for the day other than reaching our destination. We went through a few different types of scenery from twisty mountainous roads to rolling hills and then flat lands. Very shortly after we left the coast behind us we lost cell connection and therefore Google was of no use. This also limited our geocaching activities, we still managed to find one cache though.
As we progressed south westwards we came into coal mining country, there were numerous mines all over the country side. We never saw a wheel house, but there were plenty of slag heaps so I guess it was open cast mines.
We also saw many “Road Trains”, which are normal trucks (lorries) pulling 3 semi trailers giving an overall length of around 125ft.
We had to forgo our morning coffee due to lack of civilisation, and even lunch required a 22 km diversion off the main road. We reached Clermont, our destination, late in the afternoon; not an easy task when Google Maps refuse to work and the Garmin GPS refuses to accept the address. Luckily we found a map posted in a park which had the street we were looking for on it.
We found our bungalow, and moved in. It took all 3 air conditioners about an hour to cool the place down. During the cooling off period we headed into town to find a suitable place for dinner tonight…. there wasn’t one. We headed to the local grocery store to buy some food to cook. We also decided, purely in the interests of getting the blog published, that we needed to get another SIM card with a different carrier that had service in the town. I went with Vodaphone when we first arrived as it seemed like the best deal, unfortunately its coverage drops off in remoter areas. Telstra do provide service in those areas so we bought a data card to use. Panic over!
The town seemed very utilitarian, the basics were there in the form of a number of hotels (all full) and some bars, a grocery store, post office and a couple of other places. It seems to be a stopping place for truckers rather than tourists. The one splash of colour that it did have was some murals painted on old rail cars.
Tomorrow is yet another day with no particular goal, we’re just continuing South to Lyn’s cousins north of Brisbane, where we should be by Monday
