Saturday morning we packed up and left for something
new. We headed straight for
Gladstone. It was a few hours of driving
and everyone was pretty hungry by the time we got into town. I can’t say my first impression of Gladstone
was that great but the friendly owner of the local Fish and Chip shop improved
it. We then had to find somewhere to
stay… what a task! It appears that many
of the camping/caravan parks are filled with permanent residents. We have ended up at Tannum Sands which is
actually a nice part of Gladstone even though it’s about half an hour back to
the centre of town. We set up camp and
then ducked up to the local Coles as the cupboards were pretty bare. It was about 4.50pm Friday afternoon when we
go there and we thought we had plenty of time to get the shopping done, until
the announcement came over the loudspeaker telling us the shop was about to
close so head to the checkout to pay.
Well, we all ran in different directions to grab things that we needed
so that we at least had something for dinner and breakfast in the morning. It was very funny, the kids were even running
around trying to carry half a dozen things at a time until they could find me
with the trolley. Queensland – fancy
closing at 5pm on a Friday night. Even
the bottle shop was closing. Thankfully,
the pub next door was still opened for business. We had tacos for dinner and then went for a
drive into Gladstone to see what we could find.
The rain was pouring and the roads were quite flooded over. It was a waste of time going to Gladstone to
look around thanks partially to the weather and partially because there isn’t
much happening in this neck of the woods.
We got back and set the TV up for movie night in the van, this time
Josh’s pick and it was Avatar. Not
surprisingly, Josh fell asleep after his long drive today but the kids and I
stayed up for all 3.5 hours of movie and enjoyed it.
After Josh’s long snooze last night, he was first up
today. He pulled on the runners and went
for a nice walk along the beach while the rest of us had a sleep in. When he got back we all got up and had some
pancakes for breakfast and then headed into Gladstone to try and have a proper
look around. Sami hasn’t learnt about
car-sickness. She was playing her iPod
in the car and then got very upset telling us that she was bored and wanted to
stop. The tears started to well in her
eyes and she was screaming at me within this couple of minutes about her being
bored. Mothers instincts kicked in and
her breathing had changed. I could tell
she wasn’t well. I got Josh to pull over
at the first chance and sure enough she was feeling car sick… thankfully we
pulled over in time and she wasn’t sick.
We had to sit around for quite a while and Josh ended up taking her for
a walk up the street for some fresh air and to get her mind off it. In the meantime, Zoe was still sitting in the
car with her fingers in her ears as she didn’t want to hear Sami vomit. I told her it was over and there wasn’t to be
any vomiting this time. I gave up my
front seat to Sami for the rest of the trip into Gladstone and I took the back
seat. We found a lookout, I think called
Auckland Point Lookout, which overlooks the islands off the coast. The girls and I decided to walk down a
pathway, so Josh went to get the car, but we quickly changed our minds and
turned around after the kids claimed to have seen a snake on the edge of the
path. How did I miss that? We had an early lunch at a park and then came
across the Information Centre. We
arranged to do a couple of free tours over the next few days and then headed
back to the van for the afternoon. Late
this afternoon, we all put our joggers on and went for a walk along a
path/boardwalk heading north, and then followed the beach back south to the
caravan park. It wasn’t raining while we
walked but as soon as we returned, so did the rain. Great timing!
Another Monday, another school week! We did a few hours of school this morning and
packed it all away at around 12.00pm. We
had to get moving as we were scheduled to do a free tour of the NRG Gladstone
Power Station. A little bus picked us up
from the Information Centre and took us to the Power Plant. We had lots of little facts told to us from
Cameron, the tour guide, such as 4 million tonnes of coal and 245 million
litres of cooling water is used to generate electricity from this site per
year… amazing! We made the kids carry
clipboards to try and capture some of the information along the way so it would
feel like a proper school excursion and they both did pretty well but it’s a
hard topic to understand – even for me.
Upon returning to the van, we got the kids to do a bit more of their
schoolwork before having dinner and sitting down to watch MKR, our favourite
show on the road at the moment! The kids
are now sleeping and I’ve spent hours catching up on our blog – finally! We will be in touch again soon…
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