February 8.9, 2009
Made our way up the main coast road (which is nowhere near the coast). Drove over 800 kilometres in the last two days through a lot of nothing. The scenery changed from hills to grass lands with scattered trees.
The number of dead kangaroos on the road increased the farther north we went as did the isolation. Stopped at a few small towns and found only the pub, a school and the police station. Good thing for us that we weren’t in trouble – the police stations all had a closed sign on the front door!
Made a very tough decision today in MacKay. The plan was to go to Townsville (about another 500 km) and then out to Magnetic Island on the Great Barrier Reef. I hadn’t made the Reef the last time and was really looking forward to it.
The reality was that most of northern Queensland is flooded. The road between Townsville and Cairns had been cut off for days and the road from MacKay to Townsville supposedly had only one lane open. Since we are driving a Kia Rio that has maybe six inches of water clearance it didn’t help matters.
For the last 400 km, we have passed lots of signs that warn of the roadway flooding. On the helpful side they do put measuring posts on the roadside so that you can see how flooded it is. Starts to make you understand why a lot of the trucks have their exhausts re-routed to the roof.
It has also been raining non-stop for the last five hours and the forecast is for continuous rain for the next week. Guess the Great Barrier Reef will have to wait. We will start back down the interior toward all those fires raging in the south (did I mention those) near the border of Victoria and New South Wales. At the motel, we are staying in tonight we heard about a woman who was stranded in Cairns because of the rain while her home burned to the ground in the bush fires of Victoria – quite the irony!
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