Misadventures in Oz

All good things come to an end, right?

We’ve had a pretty easy run most of the way up the coast.

Hostel owners have welcomed us with more than open arms. Benny has held up surprisingly well with two US drivers who could maybe change a spare tire if they pooled their knowledge and prayed to the spare tire gods.

We hadn’t even gotten lost.

Until yesterday.

We had every intention of leaving Emu Park and heading up to Mackay. We woke up early, said our goodbyes to Paul and Mandy, our fabulous hosts at Emus Beach Backpackers Resort, and were feeling confident with a 9AM start time that we’d make it to our next destination swimming in time.

We hit our first hiccup when we couldn’t get our accommodation in Mackay sorted out in time. But that’s ok, we thought, we’ll hit Mackay on the way back to Sydney, so we’re not repeating all of our stops. That meant next stop: Airlie Beach. We had to be there Sunday night or Monday morning anyway to catch our boat, The Pride of Airlie, for a 3-day sailing trip out to the famous Whitsunday islands.

Simple enough, right? There’s like, one road that leads up the coast, so a change in destination like this doesn’t really change our driving plans other than extending them a few hours.

Except for the accident.

Not us, and not a bad one. In the States, because nobody was hurt, it would have been cleared from the road in 20 minutes and everyone would have been on their way.

Things don’t work that way here. We were told immediately that it would be a few hours before they were able to clear the debris from the road.

The one road that heads north. We were also told that there is a route we can take, around the Capricorn Caves, that would drop us back onto Bruce Highway a couple kilometers up the road.

Perfect. We thought. Perfect. A small scenic detour and we’d be on our way. Airlie Beach? Here we come.

Except for getting horribly and horrifically lost.

We weren’t the only ones to think it would be a good idea to save a bit of time and head around the accident, so we were feeling pretty okay in a 2 – 3 car caravan taking the same route. Until I realized with a sinking feeling that there were no cars in front of us. And none behind us. And no houses or farms or signs of life other than livestock and fences to be seen for kilometers on end.

We were still heading north, so this didn’t feel like the end of the world. Our travel maps didn’t zoom in far enough on the area (if these roads were even represented on maps, which is definitely not a given), so we were completely dependent on a wonky GPS who couldn’t tell us if were even on Earth much less where exactly in the backcountry of Queensland we were clipping along. Heading north until we got somewhere seemed like a great idea until we got to a fork in the road. Both options looked like they led to a little remote shack in the woods. And I’ve seen Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

This is the part in the story where I start to get nervous.

We decide to follow the signs directing military vehicles where to go figuring if the military has to go there, it can’t be that bad. And there has to be a there there. Unfortunately, following those signs only led us to scarier terrain, including a crossing over rocks and creeks and uneven roads that I had absolutely zero confidence that our little Toyota HighAce that could would make it through.

Well we did. Barely, but we did. We also came upon a field of cattle who looked too skinny to have been taken care of by anyone in a long time. When they started getting up and running and making a formation that looked like they were about to start chasing us, it was time to turn around.

Screw finding our way or cutting out traffic. We had been driving for 45 minutes and there were absolutely no signs of life other than killer cattle.

We made our way back to the start of our misadventures to find that the accident still hadn’t been cleared from the road. Deciding to turn around and get lunch, I slowed down to ask a police officer how long he thought it might take the crews to clear the roadway.

“This is a highway. You can’t stop here.”

No shit. Even though, you know, there’s nobody behind me because they’re all stuck behind a semi truck that you are all taking your sweet time to clear from the road, no shit.

I put my foot on the gas a little bit to speed up to a slow roll and asked him the question again. I think this probably pissed him off so he just mumbled something and I took that as a hint to, um, not antagonize the authorities in a foreign country.

After eating lunch and crossing our fingers, we returned to find Bruce Highway, and our path to salvation, cleared. At this point I’ve been behind the wheel for a solid 4 hours with another 4 of driving ahead of me. No es bueno. It’s another hour and a half before I tell my pride to shut up and hand over driving duties to the other Bobbi. It’s a minute and  half before I’m cuddled in the passenger seat with a pillow and my stuffed emu, fast asleep and dead to the world.

As you can imagine, by the time we made it to Airlie Beach, I can’t muster the strength to care that we don’t have a place to sleep or two mobile phones between us that have a signal or have a battery. I can’t bring myself to care that it’s about to rain or that I just drank a bottle of water and sleeping in a campervan means that you don’t have a bathroom at ready disposal.

I just want to sleep and be happy that the man whose house we drove up to to ask for directions didn’t kidnap us and lock us in his basement.

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