I got up and left Lake Maraboon and headed South on the Great Inland Way towards Roma.\u00a0 I had the whole petrol dilemma again and realised that I still hadn’t learnt.\u00a0 At least I now knew that I could do around seventy kilometres once the petrol light had come on.\u00a0 I think I was actually using the nearly running out of petrol thing to inject a bit of excitement into the driving.\u00a0 This section proved to be a -very- deserted section of road.\u00a0 I had got better at overtaking by now and actually trusted the road trains when they indicated right to signal to you that it was safe to overtake.\u00a0 It’s often very hard to see past road trains and, if you drop back far enough to see then, by the time you get close enough to overtake, the straight section of road has run out.\u00a0 On the dreaded Charters Towers stretch it was night time and it took me some time to figure out what the road trains were doing.\u00a0 I swore at them for indicating right without actually turning a fair few times before I figured out that they were actually trying to be helpful.\u00a0 Then I questioned whether they were trying to lure me to my death by indicating when another road train was coming.\u00a0 Eventually I trusted one of them, although I did it so hesitatingly that when I got half way passed them a bend arrived.\u00a0 They then started helpfully flashing various other lights at me in case I hadn’t realised I was heading towards a rather sharp bend, rather too fast.<\/p>\n
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After some time, several road kills (not mine) and plentiful gallahs and cockatoos later I arrived in Springsure.\u00a0 There was little of excitement here other than a petrol station, which I chose to ignore, so I carried on to Rolleston where I did fill up!\u00a0<\/p>\n
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The drive from Rolleston to Roma was long.\u00a0 I listened to the radio which quickly turned from current hits to old……(use your own ryhming slang).\u00a0 Actually I did like the country stations.\u00a0 For a while they felt very apt for my trip through Australian nothingness.\u00a0 I particularly liked one song about, “Brother Bill and brother Jack der der der der put the roo in the sack”….l kid you not!\u00a0 Actually it reminded me of my Dad.\u00a0 Not that he’s a kangaroo hunter or anything, just that he likes country and has some eclectic music.\u00a0 He has one record of people playing flute like instruments whilst wearing baskets on their heads.\u00a0 Adds to the acoustics or something.\u00a0 Anyway, enough on that subject.\u00a0 Actually, maybe not quite, one station I found on AM reminded me of my Mum with Elton John, the Beatles and other classics.\u00a0 While I’m still on this subject yesterday I managed to get some Happy Hardcore which not only made me laugh for a good 10k but also reminded me of my brother.\u00a0 Just before I leave the subject of the radio, which I’m sure must make thrilling reading, a quick moan about the fake football, I mean Aussie rules (AFL).\u00a0 At one stage there was nothing other than about twenty channels dedicated to Aussie Rules commentary.\u00a0 Maybe it was the equivalent of the F.A. Cup or something but it was seriously doing my head in.\u00a0 One more thing, can anyone tell me the difference between FM1 and FM2?<\/p>\n
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Okay, enough now.\u00a0 Can you see what happens to your brain on long, monotonous drives?\u00a0 Actually you get to the stage where you think, “Oh my God this is dull”, and can’t take any more fake football commentary and then you see an amazing bird, remember how beautiful the vast emptiness is or see a\u00a0 mountain in the distance.\u00a0 That or you play the road kill game, i.e. trying to figure out what the animal was before the road train hit it!\u00a0 There is a crazy amount of roadkill here which reminded me of the worrying absence of it in Asia…..mmmm Thai Green curry!<\/p>\n
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One continuous source of amusement were the signs.\u00a0 The kangaroo signs may seem straightforwards but I started to question the distances.\u00a0 Basically there’s a picture and a different distance written underneath it.\u00a0 Now you can see how this makes sense with cattle.\u00a0 For example a sign with cows on and 3km underneath would normally coincide with you driving over a cattle grid and then another in 3 kilometres.\u00a0 This doesn’t really work as well with wild animals and isn’t one of the core traits of a kangaroo that it can jump?\u00a0 Okay, maybe I am being overly cynical here as I can concede that kangaroos, for example, do tend to travel in certain ways and\u00a0cross certain open sections to get to areas to feed and the like.\u00a0 Certain signs though like “kangaroos, 300m”, made almost no sense to me.\u00a0 Maybe the signs are -for- the kangaroos so that they know how long a section they are allowed to cross the road for.\u00a0 Okay, so now I’m just being facetious.\u00a0 I also had the thought about the anal American who measures the distance and then prays he’ll hit a kangaroo five metres outside the 3k so that he can sue!<\/p>\n
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Another sign which I didn’t really understand was “koalas 5km”.\u00a0 Although I may not have appeared to take the whole kangaroo and road thing very seriously hitting one is deadly serious, often for both parties.\u00a0 Now explain to me firstly how hitting a koala can hurt you and secondly how you’re meant to hit an animal whilst driving which is a tree-dwelling stoner?\u00a0 Having thought about this I wondered if it was one of those signs which countries have to make themselves proud of their fauna and heritage.\u00a0 If it was the latter it was a bit stupid as it meant that I spent the next 5km staring into the trees trying to spot the koalas they had so helpfully told me were abundant in the area and consequently paying no attention to the road.\u00a0 Thank God there wasn’t a kangaroo -and- koala sign, now that would have been dangerous!<\/p>\n
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Another sign which confused and amused me was a, “blind people crossing” sign.\u00a0 I was bemused on several levels by this.\u00a0 Firstly, was one to assume that there was an abundance of blind people in this certain village?\u00a0 It sure didn’t look big enough, or near enough to anything or anywhere, to have an eye hospital.\u00a0 Secondly how are you meant to tell from a distance?\u00a0 Do they wear signs out here?\u00a0 Also, what exactly is one meant to do with this helpful gem of information?\u00a0 If they were blind and deaf I could see how this could pose a problem but blind people are normally quite adept at such tasks as crossing the road.\u00a0 I expect this would be made slightly easier when firstly there is no other noise and secondly it’s hardly spaghetti junction with about two vehicles passing every hour.\u00a0 Now that really would be unlucky even for the blind, deaf and intellectually disadvantaged individual now wouldn’t it?\u00a0 Ow, I think I’ve spent too long in Australia.\u00a0 I’ll stop now lest I offend.\u00a0 Although\u00a0with the medium being text based and all I’m guessing that might be a tad difficult given the current subject.<\/p>\n
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Anyway, so I’m driving along for hours, going slightly insane and getting overly attached to dead animals and signage, when I arrive in Roma.\u00a0 Roma didn’t really do it for me so I continued to Miles.\u00a0 Yes I said, “to Miles” and not “for miles”.\u00a0 Although the signs again proved yet further amusement to my numb brain.\u00a0 I mean, imagine the hilarity when I saw the sign which pointed to miles and then had a number of kilometres next to it!\u00a0 Woah I seriously need to take someone with me on my next road trip!\u00a0\u00a0So I arrived in Miles and decided to carry on to Chinchilla.\u00a0 There should be no explanation necessary here as Chinchilla is perhaps the coolest place name ever.\u00a0 Well other than “Zelma” which is a place in Australia according\u00a0to Google.\u00a0 Once in Chinchilla I found a nice cheap caravan park ($15 a night) and settled down\u00a0for the evening.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I got up and left Lake Maraboon and headed South on the Great Inland Way towards Roma.\u00a0 I had the whole petrol dilemma again and realised that I still hadn’t learnt.\u00a0 At least I now knew that I could do around seventy kilometres once the petrol light had come on.\u00a0 I think I was actually […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}