After a bit of a sleep in and a slow pack, we finally got moving from home at about 11am. The kids settled in, reading, sleeping and generally just chilling.
Through the Tunnel and out onto the Pacific Highway we were hoping that the late start would allow us to avoid the worst of the holiday rush... Things were looking good all the way from Brisbane until the end of the 110 km zone before the Gold Coast. Then we reached the first of the car parks.
I think most of the problems in this area were caused by road works and changes in speed limit 80, 100, no 80... no 100, well maybe try 70. Enough of this, lets get something for lunch.
Into the second carper at some unknown shopping centre... bit of fun finding somewhere to put the van, but wedged ourselves in three free spaces between a couple of cars. I decided to stay with the car to make sure that somebody did not jam us in just for the fun of it. The girls and tim headed off to get the makings of lunch.
Time to be a good little driver and do a halt parade service on the rig. Oil good, coolant - well there is some in there somewhere, now to check the tyre pressures. Truck, good, van all good..... hang on what is that? hissssssssssss - bloody valve had decided to jam open after I checked the air pressure. what the heck? !@#@@.
Well I'd been planning on trying out a wheel change on the van, just to ensure I knew what I was doing, here was my chance... Nice level area, solid ground, what could be better..
It all worked out pretty well. Dig jack out, jack up wheel, drop wheel down, loosen nuts, jack wheel up, get spare of back, swap wheels, put wheel on back. pack up, all good. Just got to find a new valve core and valve tool to swap out the valve on the spare and we should be great.
A bit of wandering around looking for somewhere to have lunch, and we decided that the Gold Coast region did not know what a park was. We decided to brave the slow traffic and head south, time was getting on.
We found a nice little rest stop about 20 km into NSW and stopped for a much needed feed. Was a popular stop with a coffee/pie van and a lot of travellers and a couple of trucks. Bit windy but a much enjoyed lunch.
The rest of the trip went fairly quietly (although windy) apart from some discussion as to if we had actually booked into the caravan park at Grafton and looking out for the place we saved a field of sugar cane from burning down about 6 years ago when we were down here for Christmas with Mum Dad and Rob.
After spotting the place where we fought the fire (cane field now harvested) and braving the kinky bridge on the entry into Grafton we found the caravan park just in time (office was closing at 5pm) and got a powered sit for the unheard of price of $22. Don't think the girl could count, or she just wanted to get home, as she did not charge for the kids.
Well tomorrow is totally unplanned, we are trying to get another 400 km or so south, maybe stopping at a national park for the night. We will see what happens.
No comments:
Post a Comment