The last two days were an attempt to catch up with the
schedule. Nothing really spectacular happened other than the radio antenna gained
independence - some extremely brilliant engineer put it on the left hand side, which is
pretty darn stupid if you drive on the left, so that an overhanging branch took it down.
Most Japanese and many other cars in Europe and the US also have the antenna on the wrong
side, which is not that obviously stupid because these places at least have roads wide
enough for two cars. Now I am with no radio, and the tape deck eats tapes. Lovely.
The scenery here at the
coast of Queensland does not change very much. It is still the impressively blue ocean and
sandy beaches on the one side, and the woods and grassland more inland. Other than that,
no big action and hence a good excuse for taking it a bit faster to catch up. Still I use
secondary roads whenever possible to escape rushing traffic. On one of these roads I saw
the sign of the day, "Jackass Creek". They label here every single body of water
that the road crosses, even if dry most of the year, and so you get to see "Mathilda
Creek" and "Mathilda Creek Overflow" literally ten meters further (both dry
and under the same bridge - speaking of useful driver information). I really made sure
that I got the sign on film and so I used two cameras. I think this sign would be
"rated R" in the US... Following the same topic, one of the last news before
Antenna Independence Moment was that the Australians are very proud to have the opening
night of "Female Perversions" before the Americans :-)
Earlier
I went a bit hiking in the Noose Heads NP just north of Brisbane. They have bigtime Koala
signs all around the place, but the only thing around were black turkeys and some
impressive iguanas which are perfectly concealed and you have to look twice not to step on
one. Plus the mandatory Beverly Hills style beach resort just a couple of miles away, full
of expensive shops, cars, and hotels and people who can only afford, but then of course
barely drive and surely not park their too big Mercedes. Let's get outta here.
In Brisbane I need to shop for a few things, such as postcards, and more importantly visit the Lone Pine park where you can find a substantial number of semi-wild Koalas. Since there were no really wild Koalas to be seen so far, and I promised a picture of a Koala to LHB, I better go there. In the lovely darkness of the night I went on to "practice" - to find the place so that I am ready in the traffic zoo of tomorrow. The travel guide which I have is dead wrong with the description where to find it, and with some common sense I figured that out before attempting to follow its directions; but now, find the real location! Being the Navigation Whiz (TM) that I am, with a map of the size of a cigarette box of the whole metropolitan Brisbane area and my compass I found the place within about 45 minutes and 30km of driving. Not bad I'd say. Dear Santa, please give me GPS for next Xmas.
As I
was heading south out of town to find a place to crash a friendly sign reminded me that
it's 1000km to Sydney from Brisbane. That's 333km every day from now on, given one day in
Sydney, and that's of course counting the direct main highways which I avoid like the
plague. Experience shows that for each map-km it's two real km with excursions and on
secondary roads. Joy!