Thursday August 18th
We awoke to a windy & chilly morning for our final time at Maraboon, the plan was we need to be on the road by 0830am says the chief,out of Emerald we headed toward Blackwater a coalmining town. Heading toward Blackwater it was very cloudy and overcast. I work with a girl who's husband is currently working at Blackwater in one of the mine's. The scenery is very vast with rolling land and many gums, dry paddocks with some wheat farming. 32kms north of Blackwater we passed a very large escarpment (see photo)Some of the names of some mines we passed were Ensham Mine,Yarrabee Mine,Curragh Mine,and the Blackwater CHPP Mine and I guess this was only a handful of what is out that way.We passed the longest coaltrains we have ever seen Brian reckons they would have been over 2kms long and each train had 3 locos pulling the wagons, the locos were one front and rear and one in the middle and they would need all the push power they had to move that monster train, we saw a couple actually moving and to be honest you had to look so close to notice that they were even moving. Just 15kms out of Blackwater the sun finally came out. We stopped at a small place named "Dingo" to refuel and have a cuppa it was 1045am, we could smell smoke however could not see anything, with fire season in full swing they are doing a lot of burning off as prevention. Driving on we were heading toward Rockhampton through undulating hillside with tussock and shrubland it was very very dry we were 80km inland from Rocky by this time. We entered the Rockhampton Shire at 11136am the sky was much lighter now weather wise, just out of Westwood we saw the remains of the huge bushfire they had last week. Heading on toward the small township of Stanwell we had to drive past a huge controlled burnoff the heat from the flames was so hot (see photo)At 1235pm we turned south from Rockhampton and headed for Gladstone, by now the weather was just great very warm and sunny we had to do alot of pull overs to allow very large wide loads pass, some of these loads take up both sides of the road and you have to pull off or get hit a risk we would not take. At 1.15pm we had travelled a total so far of 2420kms with no hickups. Brian decided to fuel up on the way to the overnighter to save time in the mornings. We finally arrived at the Benaraby Rest Area at 2.15pm where we were stopping for our final night free camping. Caroline and Alesha arrived armed with dinner for us all, we had a nice meal around 5.30pm and sat inside the van and chatted over a cuppa before the girls left for home around 7.00pm - Brian and I were in bed by 7.45pm. Catch you in the morning, I think it is going to be a very noisy night as we are directly beside the main H/Way and the trucks going past are non stop.
