Its now nearing the end of May 2020 and although we have been stuck in Queensland now for some time about 7 weeks and the end looks not too far away we are still here. The restrictions are slowly lifting in Queensland and we are allowed to go 50 kms in lieu of 5-10 kms from our base on the Sunshine Coast.
We took the opportunity to drive to Caboolture on a couple of occasions to buy essentials since they were lifted and we live in hope that they get lifted further
I rang the local Police station to enquire about moving from the Sunshine Coast to the border with NSW so that we could start our trip home. The police advised that we could travel through Queensland as soon as the restrictions for travel are lifted further.
I also contacted the NSW government and enquired about travelling through NSW and they advised that we were free to travel through NSW as long as we were travelling home to SA.
About a week or so later the restrictions to travel were raised to 250 kms and we then decided that it was time to go home. We left the Sunshine Coast around mid June and headed towards Broken Hill as we would not be allowed to travel through Victoria and Mildura.
So we decided to drive a route that we had not been on before so we headed out to Kilcoy, Moonie where we stayed the night.
The sign out the front of the road house in Moonie
A sign out the front of the park painted in the form of a truck. At first it was deceiving.
The caravan park was a road house style park and we parked up the van in the area nominated to us and as the weather was reasonably nice we opened to van up and then set up the satellite TV for eception and then just vegetated until the next morning.
The next morning we left Moonie and drove towards St George and closer to the border with NSW which was open and had not been closed during the pandemic. It was very strange as every bordre was closed except NSW.
After we drove through St George we then headed South West towards Cobar which was our next stop over point where we stayed the night.
Cobar caravan park
The locals out back are pretty big on painting walls in caravan parks
The trusty old van and car in the park
We left Cobar the next morning commenced our journey West to Wilcannia which is about half way between Cobar and Broken Hill and as it turned out was a reasonable style caravan park.
Parked just outside the amenities block in the park
View of the amenities block
The BBQ in the kitchen area of the park
This park in Wilcannia is where Jim and Linda helped to build some time ago and it really looks very nice. It has a lot of motel style rooms and plenty of caravan spots in it and it is worth stopping at here if ever you are passing.
Next morning further west to Broken Hill which is the last stop at the border with SA. The trip was not a sight seeing trip as we had to get to the SA border in the most direct way so that we could get home. However we decided to stay a couple of days at Broken Hill before we had to isolate for two weeks in SA. We kept to ourselves and only went into town when we needed to. The park is kms out of town so we decided that it was safe to stay as we had isolated in Qld for about 10 weeks and we did not have nay of the symptoms.
There were very few people in the caravan park which was a very nice park as it turned out and had not stayed here before as it was fairly new.
The entrance to the caravan park off the main highway
This is the reception/hotel/restaurant building in the park
We were only 1 of three vans in the park at this time
On the 8th June we left Broken Hill and drove towards the SA border where we were stopped by the Police and our particulars were recorded and then told that we had to travel direct to Ardrossan and to Isolate at home.
At last we had made it home on the same day 8th June 2020. Our isolation started on 9th June until midnight on the 22nd June 2020. We had been in Queensland for about 10 weeks and although we were lucky enough to stay with a friend in her front yard in our caravan it was still an experience that would have been better as a social event and not a forced isolation away from home.
The two weeks isolation was good as far as we were concerned as it gave us the opportunity to get things done around the place including packing up a lot of our belongings in preparation for the cut back of our onsite van that has been forced on us by the local council. (A totally different story that I will share at a later time).
The two weeks passed without too much concern or issues and we were lucky enough to have the local Drakes Supermarket deliver our groceries during the isolation period.
After we concluded our isolation we decided to go down to Stansbury with the caravan and stay at Maree's sisters place as we had some repairs to the caravan to be done and Peter did the honours for us. We also decided that we would have a diesel heater fitted to the van for the colder periods and Peter would do that for us also so we ordered one and had to wait a couple of weeks for it to be delivered.
We stayed the weekend at Stansbury and then headed back to our home and parked the van up for a couple of weeks.
Our next project that we had planned involved driving up to Darwin so the Maree could attend her brother's scattering of the ashes into Darwin Harbour and a group of about 30 people were booked to attend and we would have a bang up party to see him off.
The pandemic was worsening in particular down South in Victoria and it appears that a second wave was about to be spread around the country.
See ya next post
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