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Every cloud has a silver lining.
It has rained since we left Sydney but here we saw that ... the sun does shine. It was late Sunday as we settled down in a rest area for the night when we caught this glimpse of sunlight.
The place called Hebel has only a pub and a general store. But they do have a sense of humour. It's just as well because it is 14 degrees at lunch time, and my sense of humour is numb with cold.
These old larikins at the Hebel pub told me that they knew of a place that is ALWAYS warm ... called Lithgow !!!!
This looks like a picture of a puddle! agreed?
Well, it's actually the first bit of blue sky we've seen today.
Next stop Lightning Ridge where all the caravan parks are deep in mud. We spent a couple of hours "wandering the streets", then headed out of town for St George.
I
In case you are short sighted ...
(like most of the Lightning Ridgeans)...
that sign says...
"PLEASE DONT PARK IN FRONT OF MURAL".
It's now late at night on Thursday 7th June and very little has gone to plan. We've had a long list of problems with the new Paramount Studio caravan and a couple of them have stopped us in our tracks. Over the last five days, the battery charger from "Enerdrive" had a fault and for a while it looked as though we were going to Brisbane to get that sorted out. However, the tech at Enerdrive was smart enough to seriously suspect a faulty solar panel controller (a Plasmatronics PL60) as well the battery charger. It was decided that I should head for Toowoomba Auto Electrics to get it checked first. The Enerdrive tech sent a new battery charger to Toowoomba so we didn't have to go into Brisbane. Ashley at Toowoomba was very "switched on", and so was Chris at Enerdrive.
At Toowoomba, Ashley found that the solar panel controller was indeed faulty and a replacement is being "air bagged" from Melbourne - but it may not arrive here until Tuesday. I took delivery of the replacement battery charger and swapped them over leaving the faulty one at the "Enerdrive dealers workshop" in Toowoomba. I'm holding my breath to see if the replacement is good. We are now here in the "Jolly Swagman Caravan Park" waiting for the replacement solar panel controller to turn up. I still have a sneaking suspicion that the faulty solar panel controller may have caused the problem with the charger.?.?
While all this has been going on, we have heard stories about the poor road conditions out west, and we have been watching the temperatures at places like Birdsville and Boulia. Cutting a long story short .... we are currently going north. We will probably do the inland trek on the way south instead.
10th June 2012
I thought this was a historical model of how things used to be at Spring Bluff - because the station has a "visitors book" and no ticket office.
Then a twin engine locomotive with 100 empty cattle trucks rumbled through and destroyed the serenity for five minutes. It was so cold I had trouble getting back to sleep !!! (13 degrees).
It says 21% - that means every five paces forward, you climb a little over one meter.
On the right, coming down that hill is a police motor cyclist chasing somebody!
< Another year >
< Index page (& map) >
< Part 1 >
< 2 > < 3 >
< 4 > < 5 >
< 6
> < 7 > < 8 >
< 9 > < 10 >
< 11 > < 12 >
< 13 > < 14 >
< 15 >