Black Beauty

It felt like ages to be on the road again. More than three weeks have passed since our ’tipping the car’ story in Northern Queensland.

The reconditioned motor we have put in sounds a bit different, less noisy and we wonder if it’s as strong as our ‘original’ motor?

During these few weeks in Cairns we stayed in a nice Airbnb which was only a two minute walk from the garage, where Romani worked for almost two weeks and managed to repair all the damaged bits and pieces and even our rooftop tent!

But cities aren’t the real thing for us and finally the 20th of January we waived goodbye to Cairns.

But first we needed to drive back to Townsville as to pick up some parts for our compressor and it was with a sigh of delight that that same night, 300 km from Townsville we where able to make camp in the bush.

As we had lost over three weeks of travelling due to our tipping over, we needed to start making a bit more of a travel plan. But I’m not good at that as I do like to just change from time to time. 'It goes how it feels' I like to say.

One day I plan North but we end up East. Romani doesn’t mind and leaves it up to me. (I have a great husband:)-

The plan was to go to New Zealand too and leave our truck with a friend in Melbourne but that was to far and we still wanted to visit friends in Brisbane. Therefore I asked friends in Brisbane to store our truck in their place, which was no problem for them so I thought let’s do a bit of a drive inland first and visit Carnarvon National Park before heading to the big smoke.

But boy it was hot!

Somehow we arrived at a different entrance at the National Park as planned and the signed said ‘Ka Ka Mundi’, it felt we arrived in nomand’s land.

Small sand-tracks, yes very beautiful but I had no idea where we would end up and it just felt a bit eery. Maybe we had to get used to being very remote again, I don’t know but we both felt a bit off.

The only most beautiful thing was that suddenly, out of nowhere, this beautiful black stallion appeared out of nowhere and paraded in front of our car, it was just magic!

This Black Beauty made up for this eery feeling and for the hundreds of flies which attacked us as soon we made camp that night.

We noticed our little shower did not work anymore that night and Romani tried to fix it, but this time without success and all these flies did not help either.

We decided to give it another try and use another entrance to the National Park. I did not really research it and it appeared there are four+ entrances. Anyway we had a good time but the heat was too much and we where to lazy to go for a big walk.

Luckily there was one creek we where allowed to swim in and spent the afternoon being lazy and cooling off before driving to Brisbane.

On our way we visited a friend in Roma and later on camped in Boondooma which was actually quit nice as we stayed at the Boondooma Homestead. I think we both didn’t feel like going to Brisbane and therefore we stayed another night. It was just a really nice and relaxing place and I enjoyed to wonder around while photographing this historic Homestead, while Romani was doing some maintanance on the truck.

My heart was pounding while we drove though the heavy traffic in Brisbane on the M1 Highway, all that traffic and driving an 80 km an hour did not help too.

Romani hates to drive in the big cities and we feel we have a lot of haters on these highways as big trucks are sometimes so close behind us that I can only see their front grill in the mirror!

It was great to see our friends again and had a great first night. The next day we decided to take our big and heavy toolbox of our roof rack and than re-arranged all the tools and pushed the rooftop tent towards to front of the roof rack.

This to create a better balance, as this truck is high and the wheels are narrow. I have now this fear of tipping!

Somehow the next days the dimensions somehow changed and we decided to move on, which was a bit unplanned and therefore needed to find another spot to park our truck. Thanks to Google I found what I needed after spending one night at the Gold Coast, which was also not planned at all!

Sorry to say but we hated the Gold Coast. A cement wall of buildings surrounding the beaches, cold and totally impersonal. I never camped between cement buildings like this before and was so happy to leave the next day. After parking the truck for 28 days we jumped the next day on the plane to New Zealand.

We miss our friends in New Zealand as we have lived there for over 12+ years, this is over 15 years ago and as we still have our family home there...

Can I feel it calling?