Our departure from Mirani went smoothly with us driving out by 8:30 am after our goodbyes to our good neighbours Bob and Gwenma. Our first day was planned to take us as far as Gladstone to stay at Mick & Mandy's Motel - Amber Lodge Motel Gladstone. We didn't anticipate so many short stops with the kids but with everyone trying to recover from the flu it was hard not to.
We made it to Rockhampton by 1 pm and had lunch with the kids having a good break from the car. The road between Mackay and Rockhampton is very much a sub-standard highway and I'm not surprised that the kids felt all shook up in the back of the Hilux.
By the time we got to Gladstone we made our fist stop at a chemist and sorry to say Karen (the GPS lady) you can't drive down a one way street even though you insist on doing a u turn when possible. Kira was starting to show signs of having a really bad cough and Andrew needed antibiotics so we stocked up while we could and then made our way to Mandy's.
We found the motel with little help from Karen (GPS lady) and realised that we were going to have some difficulty parking the caravan and car in the carport so Andrew decided to drive the car back out forwards and try reverse the caravan back up into the check-in carport area. Unfortunately the car wasn't put into 4wd to do this wonderfully planned maneuver and trying to reverse a caravan up an inclined driveway does not work. Just talk to what is left of our clutch about it. Black smoke started wafting out from under the car and then Andrew gave up and drove the car around the block so the clutch would still be in some form of working order the next day. The car did get parked head first in that left us with the option to reverse into traffic the next day.
Mandy did say to us as soon as we got there that she wasn't going to have any part of the communication of trying to get the caravan parked up. And apparently there is selective hearing for the word STOP!!!!
Besides our arrival dramas we got to have a lovely dinner made by our hostess Mandy while we all sat around trying to recover from our day. Mandy was so lovely to give us one of her Motel rooms to stay in for the night even though she could have been booked out ten times over.
The next morning Declan and Kira were waiting to say good morning to Mandy and Zaydan (Mick and Mandy's son) and were disappointed that they didn't get to stay and play more.
No comments:
Post a Comment