Well, we managed to escape the smelly house and returned to the caravan park for a few days, long enough to figure out where we want to go from here and spend a couple more days with Kathy's parents. As it happens, the day we departed the house it rained. Not too big of a deal, we thought. We parked next to Bob and Chris at the caravan park and set up the camper between showers, which it seems we are getting quite used to doing.... That was last Wednesday, a week ago, and we are still here, thanks again to the rain....

On Thursday we went fossicking in the creek at Sapphire again. We went to the same spot on the riverbed where we had some success previously. We spent about 3 hours there and did manage to find a couple more small rocks to add to the collection. We made a bit of a video showing the process of extracting sapphires from the riverbed, which should be on our blog. During the time we were fossicking it was cloudy and we had a couple of light showers pass through. No sunshine for the second day.... Kathy and her mum returned to the creek later in the arvo and found a few more sapphires, but still only small rocks. We had plans to do some grocery shopping in Emerald on Friday and then head north through Clermont on Saturday. The trip into Emerald went as exciting as you could imagine, and then it rained on Friday night...

Saturday morning was quite wet. As packing up wet was losing its charm by now, we decided to stay an extra night to make sure the camper was dry. We went back to the creek for one last dig in in a different spot that Kathy wanted to try. This turned out to be most unproductive, no sapphires and we got rained on enough to make us give up and go back to the caravan park. On Saturday night the rain settled in and the next couple of days were passed idly in the caravan park while the persistant drizzle slowly become a steady rain. Yay, rain...

There has been a substantial downpour here since, actually, most of Queensland has copped a good soaking again with this rain system. It rained steadily on Sunday, Monday was mostly dry but cloudy, then it poured rain on Monday night and hasn't stopped. It has actually been quite cool here and we have felt the need to reach for jeans and a jumper on occasion, which is just wrong... we are on the Tropic of Capricorn!!! The creek that we had been fossicking in, standing in water no deeper than our knees, has been filled to capacity overnight. There is water laying around everywhere and all the gravel roads have become very muddy.

Today we went for a drive around the area to see how much effect the rain had. The creek has risen to a minor flood level and is flowing fast, no more fossicking in there for a while... We drove out to Graves Hill for a look, just another "shacks-ville" locality, then over to Rubyvale. It was a bit of fun driving along the muddy roads and through the flood ways on the road which are now actually in flood. It gave us something to do for the morning while the rain continued to bucket down. This arvo it has been pouring, torrential rain that has exposed a few new leaks in the camper (no suprise there, really...).

Needless to say, the rain has held us up here for a bit longer than anticipated. We have decided that heading north from here and getting closer to the coast again is not a good idea, Townsville and Mackay have had a soaking and will no doubt have more to come. At the moment there are plenty of road closures up that way that may take some time to re-open again. Instead, we are planning to head west to Barcaldine, then north and up to Hughenden and Richmond. The roads to Hughenden are gravel and have been affected by flood waters (or, muddy and cut up) but are still open to "high clearance 4WDs" according to the RACQ road conditions website, so we'll see how we go. It'll be a bit of an adventure at least. We'll have a look around Richmond for a few days and then hopefully continue north toward Cairns, weather and roads permitting.

As I have been writing this it has been bucketing down rain, but now it has actually completely stopped for the first time in 3 days. Still no sunshine though.... Hopefully we will see some of that tomorrow or Friday, dry out and be able to leave in a day or two.... hopefully....