Tuesday, May 22, 2018

EMERGENCY TRIP TO TOOWOOMBA....

We got an emergency call from my niece to let us know that my sister was gravely ill in hospital and so we just decided to pack up and head straight on down to see her...

Pretty stressful time, so we decided to head to Toowoomba on the shortest route possible which took us out west.  It would easily be 20 years or more since we have traveled this road, so it actually was a lovely outing for us.  As much as it was stressful,  I really enjoyed the time that Steve and I both had to just enjoy chatting and all the lovely scenery.  We live in an great state...

We had a quick toilet stop at Theodore on our way through.  the town seemed to be completely deserted and we wondered why until we started to drop through the other side of town when we noticed that the show was in town.  Apparently it was a public show holiday there.

By the time we got to Taroom we were ready for a coffee break and a chance to stretch our legs.
We parked the car in the main street, just across from a little coffee shop and right in front of us outside of someone's house was this cute little dolly sitting on the footpath... 

 The main street was lined with these lovely boah trees...  they bring back lots of memories from our trip up through the Northern Territory and the Kimberleys in the top of WA.

I also noticed a very special tree that was mraked by the famous explorer Leichhardt and is now so named in recognition of his exploration trip through Taroom back in the 1800s.

We stopped off that this great little cafe,  it was quite busy but mostly with tourists and grey nomads visiting town.  The food was pretty good, and the service was excellent.  We decided to have a pie and a hot chocolate.  I am afraid that the pie didn't live up to a lot of the pies we have had on our tours around the country.
Love the zebra and giraffe wood carvings on their wall
Bundy sugar too
Late morning tea... we have tasted better pies though
Great hot chocolate

 From here we had a pretty straight forward run into Toowoomba.  The road was great, not a lot of traffic until we got to Miles and then the rest of the journey was pretty slow as there are massive amounts of road works between Miles and Dalby.  We arrived in Toowoomba mid afternoon and headed straight to the hospital to see Jude.

She was a little brighter than we expected, and it was good to also catch up with my other sister Lea and her Husband Mal, who had also made the journey down.

Jude seemed to finally be responding to her medication so it was good to be able to have a good chat to her although she seemed pretty flat.

Steve really needed to get back to work, so we thought we would spend the morning with her up at the hospital and then head home again... 
 I was pretty reluctant to leave the next morning as Jude seemed really flat and looked very tired and exhausted and it was with a heavy heart that we took off again just after lunch.

The trip home was good, we decided to head home via Mundubbera and Monto, as it was pretty much the same kms but not quite as far out west.  We knew we would be traveling at night so we didn't want to travel too far out west as we had seen quite a few roos on the side of the road coming down and that was during the day. 

Our first stop was Mundubbera where we stopped to go to the toilet and we had planned to have a bit to eat from the bakery but it was shutting just as we arrived so dinner would have to be put on hold...

We were pretty impressed with Mundubbera though, it is a small town but we found it very neat and tidy,..
Tower outside of Mundubbera
  We got a little lost getting out of Mundubbera as our GPS wanted to take us a short cut which had us traveling along dirt roads along the river bank...  Quite a pleasant drive but I am sure it added kms to our trip and it definitely wasn't any sort of shortcut...

We had a pretty uneventful trip then until we reached Biloela where we needed to stop to refuel and also to grab a bit to eat for dinner as it was now after 7.30pm.  We had hoped to grab a bit of Red Rooster for dinner, when when looking it up on Google, found that the nearest store was in Gladstone almost an hour away.  It seemed we had two choices, either Domino's pizza or KFC, and as it had been a good decade since we have had KFC decided to stop here for dinner.

 I can see what it has been a good 10 years since we have had KFC and I am pretty sure it will probably be another 10 years before we have it again, as it all feels and tastes pretty greasy. 
Still our tummies were full and we headed off on our last leg of the journey home.  Even though it had been a pretty full on couple of days,  I am so pleased and so thankful that we made the effort to go down and spent that small amount of time with Jude.  I do worry about her...

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