This holiday period we were all set up to drive back up to Hervey Bay in QLD, similar to our September 2019 trip. I’d serviced the car and made a few changes to fix some minor niggles. We’d removed the old bulky stereo for a brand new bluetooth speaker. I’d installed a new battery monitor that displayed on the outside of the van to monitor the solar charging state. But you can’t control the weather and you can’t control natural disasters that have completely taken over the country.
About a week out from when we were supposed to drive up to QLD from the ACT, we looked at the forecast temperatures for the route we had planned to take. First stop would have been around Dubbo if we took the inland roads. That first night, we would have been looking at temperatures of 44 degrees Celsius, dropping to 32 overnight. Not ideal for sleeping in a tent with a 12 month old. We looked at the standard coast tracks that we usually take. The weather was better there, with tops of around 30 degrees, but we would have had to dodge bushfires and extreme smoke the entire way. So we decided to do the responsible thing and booked some plane tickets instead.
We had a great time in Hervey Bay as usual, though I think we had enough of cricket on the TV by the end. We managed to miss almost all the massive smoke that hovered over Canberra which we were very grateful for. We brought back some P2 masks from QLD for friends and family just in case.
Ollie flew as well as he usually does, mostly sleeping and only being angry at being confined to one seat, rather than angry that his ears are popping or that he’s in a strange place surrounded by strange people. He’s getting better at being in the pool and ocean, but its still not his favourite. He does like the warm ocean water better than a cool pool, but I’m not sure how he’ll react to NSW South Coast swimming temperatures.
A big thank you to Mum and Dad who had a very full household over the christmas break. With the bushfires affecting most of the national parks near us, our usual campsites are all closed or completely gone. We’ll have to look for some new locations to head out to in 2020.
Thanks for reading.
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