I'd arranged with the boys to be picked up just after 10. finding cover from the rain I sat on my bags to wait only to receive a message saying their battery was flat! an hour or so later it was fixed and we were on the road. We stoped at Josephine Falls on the way-the boys hadn't seen a waterfall in the whole time in Oz. useless! they were amazed by it!
The journey to Brisbane is about 1700km and would take around 19hours. We planned to take the Bruce Highway all the way along the east coast.
Dad, you'll probably want to get your map out!
The rain was hammering down and flooding the roads. We were trying to get down to Tully however we seemed to be in banana farm country getting more and more remote, debating whether or not we missed the turning our mind was soon made up for us; the bridge was completely gone! turning around we found the junction we'd originally missed, we took the right turn only to hit a 'road closed' sign 300m off the junction. we stopped and stated at the bridge we needed to cross that was now 2meters under water. One of the neighbours came out his house with some photographs of the bridge back in 2010. If you look on the pictures, imagine the water was up to the blue sign on the left! the man, stood in his hat, checked shorts and topless moobs on full show, informed us that we were 'on the wettest highway in the world' and we'd be stuck here til Sunday! on this note it would have been nice of him to offer us a cup of tea and a pitch for the weekend. instead he went back inside!
We headed back on ourselves again and took a detour round to mission beach. this is somewhere that everyone goes so we thought we ought to see what the fuss was about-its hard to see when it's lashing down! We debated staying here for the night but decided as the water on the way in was nearly hitting the roads we'd probably get stranded here too so we went back out on the main road we headed for Tully. Emma and Dai were ahead of us so we kept in touch to see what roads they were taking. I don't know if Dai forgot to tell us or it was miscommunication but when we arrived in Tully the roads were flooded, the town wasn't far off being washed away. The Bruce Highway was also closed at this point. We fuelled up and got supplies as if we weren't going to live til the morning. We asked one of the road men what the craic was and told him we were trying to get to Byron Bay. 'HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Great place. if you ever get there!....naaaah, you're guna be here for atleast 3days. unless you go back to Innisfail and get inland...oh, you just came from Innisfail? HAHA'
We left the laughing roadman and headed back to Innisfail, across to Millaa Millaa then down to Ravenshoe. It was near 7pm, it was still chucking it down, there were millions of toads on the road. the condition of the road was getting worse and the headlights were dim so we pulled in next to a shiney gold Landy and called it a night. Not long after we'd pulled in a car came in, a girl ran out to our window in the rain to compare map notes. She told us they were on the Greyhound Bus (like national express) trying to get to Airlie Beach (Whitsundays boat trips). The bus got to Tully in the floods and couldn't go anything further and refused to turn back to Cairns (apparently the water goes down as quick as it goes up). As they only had 5 days off work they were desperate to get to their whitsundays trip so hitched a lift back to Cairns and hired a car and were hoping to get to Airlie Beach by 10am!!! baring in mind there are about 3 roads along the coast and they didn't know where they were already they probably didn't make it!!!

We set off at 6am and stopped at the next fuel station. The battery was flat again! lucky we were at the garage though so were able to jump it. Our next destination was Charters Towers. The ladies in the garage told us there was no way that road would be open and to take the Hervey Range Road where we'd have to cross 3 rivers. gulp!
Crossing over lots of fast rising creeks we reached the first river. the water was high but not on the bridge. yet. we got half way across when a truck coming the other way flashed us down 'the next bridge is 3meters under water!' b*****! Charters Towers it is! At the first bridge we waved down an on coming car to ask what the road was like ahead. he said it was fine and looked a tad confused as to why we were bothering to ask. he clearly didn't know of the palava ahead!
We made it to Charters Towers easily, with half a tank left we pulled in to the next fuel station, you never know when you might see one again on these roads! as we really were in the arse end of nowhere the fuel was ridiculously expensive...we decided to risk it and pushed on the 170km to Clermont. It was risky but we made it. just! fuelled up again we pushed on another hour or so to Emerald where we stopped for some grub. my first Red Rooster, a chicken fast food chain.
As the quality of the roads were much better we drove on until about 10.30pm. we pulled up with the lorries at a fuel station and got some sleep.
We caught up with Emma and Dai too, we'd now overtaken them as they'd headed back across to the coast but got stuck at Rockhampton. they said they were parked up in floods with 50other campers and been told to wait 24hrs! they'd also spoken to a chap that had come from Innisfail where there was so much rain, there were crocs in the main street!! glad we made the decision to stay inland!

The next morning we fuelled up, again, for the last leg to Roma then on to Brisbane. still in the rain!

It certainly was an eventful journey; the lady at one of the garages told us to follow North Queensland Flood Update on Facebook. A picture had been posted of boats at Airlie Beach smashed up against the rocks. if those girls did make it, I think their trip was probably cancelled!

We saw lots of animals along the way, kangaroos, wallabies, tree kangaroos, toads, dingos, emu's and one-humped camels!

We also had a stone hit the windscreen which put a massive crack in the window. it started right at the very bottom, by the time we reached Brisbane it had forked and was nearly at the top of the window!

AND we saw the ending of a bush fire, crazy considering how much rain there'd been. driving through the trees it looked like there were lots of little campfires, it was quite eery in the dark, as if there were little elf people living there...perhaps we were getting a tad delirious at this point!!

To top it all off, I have impetigo! I think it stems from the eczema I got in New Zealand! I don't know where I caught it but being stuck in a camper for 3 days with no pharmacy in sight didn't help; plus Woolley and Bostock probably have it too now!

Was their news about cyclone Oswald at home? it's all over the news here, I think we were lucky to get out of it, although it's still raining in Brisbane!