3 weeks!… sometimes it doesn’t seem that long, but then again sometimes it seems longer.
It rained overnight. A lot. I woke at about 5am, and listened to rain for what seems hours… trapped in my prison. Next time – limit fluids before I go to bed… I was busting!
Over the last few hours (and I suspect the next few days) I’ve been focusing on the weather and the threat of storms and subsequent flooding in SE Queensland… pretty much on my route. Some good advice from fellow OzSToc members, forecasting sites, etc. has left me with a suck-it-and-see approach.
It doesn’t seem to matter which way I go, there may (or may not) be trouble. The rain itself doesn’t worry me, and the winds don’t seem to be too strong, but it’s flooded roads that I need to watch for. I’ll never be trying to ride through those roads, but it’s the 200km u-turn I want to avoid.
So after studying the radar, I decided to head to Bundaberg as originally planned. I expect to get rain, but it’ll be intermittent and won’t interrupt the ride. As I was about to leave Yeppoon I noticed couple with a Yamaha Tenere 1200 in the caravan park. I got chatting with them and it turned out they were from the Sunshine Coast (ie. locals). They also gave me some good advice especially that Gympie floods if there’s any amount of rain, and also some nice roads to the south. They recommended Bundaberg then head south-west.
Anyway, off I went via Emu Park – a small sea-side town just out from Yeppoon. The ride was nice:
One of the attractions in Emu Park is the “Singing Ship”. It’s a monument commemorates his exploration of the bay in 1770. Interestingly, the monument has several organ pipes built into the structure that use the sea breeze to create “music”. There wasn’t much wind when I was there, but enough to generate a low-pitch (almost haunting) tone.
Onwards to Bundaberg… I decided to go via Gladstone… it was about the same distance, but more of a back-country road, so it took a little longer. I had plenty of time so what the heck. I must admit some of it was a little too “back country”. The GPS (& phone) had some trouble in 1 or 2 places along the way, but I made it in the end.
On arrival at Bundaberg I found a campsite along the river. I’d ridden with a headache for pretty much the whole trip (lying in bed for too long methinks), and the thought of dealing with rain both tonight and in the morning had me wanting a cabin. This site wasn’t the best – primarily servicing an itinerant workforce for sugar cane farming, but they had a cheap-ish donga. Good enough for me. After swapping a broken TV then failing to fix a broken air conditioner (I paid for it, I wanted it!) they moved me to another unit and after a short walk around the river I settled in for the night.
The Bundaberg Rum distillery:
