Tenterfield to Nambour, Queensland via Brisbane
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When we checked in last night, we noticed a flyer for the Technology Center in town, which promised an Internet connection. We figured we could save some effort in Brisbane if we could upload in Tenterfield, so we went into town to find it. It was closed. It said it opened at 9. It was 9:05. They run a little fast and loose with their start and stop times here in Australia we’ve noticed, so Les went to do some grocery shopping while we gave them a little time to show up, which they did around 9:20.
I was hoping for a network wire I could just plug in, but they have their own network configuration and they guy said he “just had to do a little modification” to make it work. Well, it was a simple mod, and it did work, to a point. I could get to the Internet but still couldn’t upload. So we decided to give up and head to Brisbane. But on the way out of town I noticed I couldn’t log in to my system anymore. I won’t bore you with the details, but the changes the guy made had locked me out of the system without his password. So we had to go back. We corrected it (we thought) and headed out again, only to discover it still wasn’t working and we had to go back again. Finally got it squared away mostly, but Intel IT is going to be mad at me. They’ll have to reconfigure it when I get back.
So a brief moment of panic when I thought I would have to re-install from scratch. I’m now functional again but I won’t be able to get on the Intel network. But who cares, I’m not working :-). We can solve that problem later.
Tenterfield seems like a quiet little town, much like the other quiet little towns we’d been through. Les has observed, and I agree, that it’s what America probably was like in the 50’s and what many people still think it is. But Wal-Mart and Home Depot and fast-food restaurants have undermined these types of small Main St. businesses and you can see the early signs of it happening here. Too bad.
On to Brisbane. It was about 300 km away. The first 200 km were fairly nondescript. More farmland and rolling hills. We passed through a fruit and vegetable growing area, which was a bit unusual. We hadn’t seen very much of that before. In the same area, we came across the Fruitasaurus and the Big Apple. And in keeping with the tradition of photographing all oversized items, we stopped to photograph them as well.
Along the way we entered into Queensland, the 5th and final of the Australian states we will visit (out of 7).
About 80km from Brisbane, we came to The Gap. The Gap is where we exited (stage right) the Great Dividing Range that we were driving along the spine of, and headed down to the coastal plane. The Aussies never wind their way down a hill. It’s pretty much just straight down and this was no exception. The hills on either side of the gap looked like the mountain in Jurassic park. Very cool.
As we noted with the other cities, we got to about 30km from the city center before we really left the “country”. Then the businesses and strip malls and things started. We had a fairly easy time (compared to Melbourne and Sydney) of getting into the city center and found ourselves almost immediately on the street we wanted that had the coffee shop with the wireless connection. We found it easily and it really had wireless. We even found parking nearby.
We settled in to read mail, upload web logs and make phone calls. We can’t use the phone card at the same time, so while Les called home, I wandered around Brisbane and took pictures. I found Brisbane to be kind of a cross between Melbourne and Perth. More relaxed and less industrial than Melbourne but more business-oriented and larger-feeling than Perth. I liked it. The air was warm and a bit muggy (we’re headed into the tropics). The people seemed a bit friendlier than Melbourne (and much fewer smokers).
At 6:30 we headed out of town, hoping to get a bit out of the city and find a caravan park or rest stop. We of course hit rush hour traffic but it only lasted about 15 minutes. Not bad. We went out through a series of roadside businesses, fast food, etc. And stopped for dinner at Hungry Jack’s (aka Burger King). We’d been looking to give Hungry Jack’s a try (not sure why) and found it just like everywhere else. They even call french fries “french fries” and not chips.
We headed north to the “Sunshine Coast”, an area about 70km north or Brisbane famous for it’s beaches and resorts. No signs of caravan parks or rest stops. And then it began to rain. We had the rather humorous experience of passing the “Welcome to the Sunshine Coast” sign in the pitch dark in the middle of a squall.
Around 8:30 we managed to find a caravan park a little off the road and after rousing the night manager, were able to secure a parking spot. Once again avoiding driving all night or finding someone’s driveway to sleep in. The luck continues to hold. The rain is coming down pretty steadily. The first time since the Nullarbor. Queensland can be a bit rainy this time of year, but hopefully, it will pass.
Tomorrow we expect to pretty much drive all day and try to get as much distance towards Cairns as possible. We’ve been discussing and have pretty much agreed that the right answer is to just drive straight to Cairns and try to get there a little bit sooner than planned, and settle in and take it easy for a few days. We’ll have to cut down on the stopping for photographs, but the constant road tripping is beginning to wear. And we want to be fresh for New Zealand. Of course, we still have to figure out how we’re going to get around over there, but we’ll worry about that later.
We completed our 9000th kilometer today.
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