Saturday

I managed to get away from the Coast at 9 on Friday as planned and to miss any morning traffic on its way to Brisbane. l also managed to miss the first turnoff to Warwick - thank goodness there was another less than a kilometre along the highway ... via Dinmore. It was an interesting drive up the Cunningham Highway. Even though it's similar landscape to the Ipswich Highway, it was vastly different. It took me past a sign to Amberley Airforce, then a plane mounted on a pole, a speedway, a street (or perhaps a lane) called Goebels and various villages. It was dry and clear and then it started to rain, lightly at first and then a little heavier. By the time I made it to Cunningham's Gap it was teeming down. I was glad there wasn't too much private traffic on the way through - the trucks were more than enough.  But it does make you realise how dependent we are on our road infrastructure for moving freight around the country!  

My reason for taking the long way to Toowoomba via Warwick and Allora.was to hopefully photograph fields of sunflowers.  While I did see one lot of them - could there have been sadder looking sunflowers? - the rest of the acres and acres of sunflowers had been razed to the ground. You could see where they had been only because those paddocks were now empty.  Could I have managed to go the wrong way by mistake ... no ... the Locals had done a great job of signposting the Sunflower Way (that would be Route 11 to the rest of us) and it was no problem to follow except for the van with trailer in tow that was barely going 75km in a 100km zone.  At one point I was reminded of an Australian film which featured something similar and had brothers and their fertilizer business - specialising in a type of Blood & Bone with one of the key ingredients being tourists! 

I pulled into Toowoomba just after lunchtime and within a few minutes had managed to meet my sister roadside around the corner from her place- completely unplanned and unexpected.  She was on her way to work and let me know that Mi and Ka were coming for a sleepover.  Yippee! They are such great fun! Tonight we played "phone" where someone hides the phone and then we sound the phone finder tone from my Gear watch and we look for it.  They loved it and it took them ages to want to do something else - colouring.  Ka and Mi are both very good at it - and they both have colouring supplies at Granma's - each has their own - which means there are no arguments over their favourite colours.  

After a while they took themselves off to the television and managed to watch the same show without argument over the controls.  Not bad give they are only little, separated by only a couple of years and boy and girl!  

On the road again!