{"id":5917,"date":"2025-04-12T03:54:19","date_gmt":"2025-04-12T03:54:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=5917"},"modified":"2025-12-24T21:52:43","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T21:52:43","slug":"10-back-to-the-coast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=5917","title":{"rendered":"10. BACK TO THE COAST."},"content":{"rendered":"

From Toogoolawa, we stuck largely to the main roads – but there was one exception.\u00a0 \u00a0We’ve been caught out here before!\u00a0 Approaching Peachester, at Cedarton, the sat nav insisted we branch off onto the “Commissioners Flats Road”.\u00a0 This took us off a fairly straightish, widish road (highway 6) onto a narrow winding road through the boondocks.\u00a0 After twiddling us through miles of (admittedly very pretty) countryside, it dropped us back onto the main road at the top of the hill in Peachester.<\/p>\n

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OK, so it may be shorter, but the local speed limits are lower, and anyway it’s impossible to reach the limits.\u00a0 AND there are ongoing roadworks on that route!\u00a0 As I said, we did take that road a decade or so ago – and said then it was a bonkers route.\u00a0 It still is!\u00a0 Ah well, I don’t suppose that issue will bother us much in 2035!<\/p>\n

On a separate trip into the hills, we tangled with the bikers at the Garage Diner in Palmwoods …<\/p>\n

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… and bicycles in a now back-to-normally-packed-with-no-parking Montville.<\/p>\n

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This is the new trend.\u00a0 We’ve had E-bikes.\u00a0 Now we have D-bikes (Decorated bikes).\u00a0 It’s all the rage up in the high ground!\u00a0 There are a few A-bikes about too!\u00a0 Abandoned in the bushes.<\/p>\n

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From Montville, along the ridge, we arrived at Mapleton.\u00a0 Turn left here for the Obi Obi road down the back of the range to Kenilworth.\u00a0 This is a not-to-be-missed gravel road that winds perilously down to the plains beyond.\u00a0 Fortunately, it’s a one way “road”, but it was showing signs of severe wash-out following the recent rains.\u00a0 So dead slow in many places.\u00a0 There is little to nothing by way of guard rails to stop cars plunging into the abyss!\u00a0 However, on the plus side, there were Bell birds chinking away all round us like a party of otherwise silent wedding guests toasting each other with their champagne glasses.\u00a0 But louder!\u00a0 Then there were the whip birds whipping away in the undergrowth (zzziiiiiiEYUPP tic tic).\u00a0 \u00a0Oh, and that’s another car behind us.\u00a0 What’s he doing on OUR road?\u00a0 We squeezed over to the inside of one bends and let him pass on the “dangerous” cliff-edge side.\u00a0 We are so polite!\u00a0 But I’m not hanging one of Robin’s wheels off the edge.<\/p>\n

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On the road to Kenilworth we managed to rack up the 100,000th kilometre on Robin’s car.\u00a0 (We haven’t been responsible for all of them though!).\u00a0 The road crosses and re-crosses the Obi Obi Creek at least four times on old wooden trestle bridges.\u00a0 These are narrow, one lane bridges with minimal to almost zero edge protection.\u00a0 And each one comes with it’s own warning.\u00a0 “Narrow bridge, no passing or overtaking.”\u00a0 Well it’s hard enough to pass a person on the bridges, let alone a slow moving 4×4!<\/p>\n

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But I suppose it gives work to road sign manufacturers and several local authority personnel (planners, financiers, project managers, lollypop people, safety officers, sign installers, sign maintenance folk and so on!)<\/p>\n

The bakers in Kenilworth specialise in doughnuts.\u00a0 Sugary ones, very sugary ones, and extremely sugary ones.\u00a0 Shiny ones, coloured ones, and plain ones…<\/p>\n

… and blooming great big ones like these one kilo jobs!<\/p>\n

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Their advertising slogan borrows something from Crocodile Dundee!<\/p>\n

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Now it’s Sunday!\u00a0 Sunday evening means frisby on the beach at Cotton Tree.\u00a0 Ultimate!\u00a0 Robin and Jack’s sport.\u00a0 A sort of cross between American football, basketball and netball – played with a frisby.\u00a0 At the end of the afternoon as the sun fades gracefully away in the west.<\/p>\n

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The view of Maroochydore nearing the end of play…<\/p>\n

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… and looking out to sea over Pincushion Island.<\/p>\n

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Tuesday sees us watching Jack playing water polo in his school’s magnificent olympic size pool.<\/p>\n

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We come home to find that Speedy (the chook) has gone on strike!\u00a0 Looks like it’s small eggs for us!\u00a0 Birmingham gets millions of tons of garbage plus rats in the streets.\u00a0 We get micro-eggs!<\/p>\n

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But more significantly, the radar is showing reds, purples and dark blues over most of eastern Australia.\u00a0 Again!\u00a0 These are indicators of serious rainfall.\u00a0 Upwards of 200 mm rain in 24 hours.\u00a0 This much rain, over so large an area, on already damp ground WILL cause flooding.<\/p>\n

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Near the coast this will dissipate in a few days, but inland, huge tracts of relatively flat land will remain under water for weeks.\u00a0 Part of the inland area will feed into the Murray Darling River system, but floods in the “Channel Country” in the southwest corner of Queensland will end up in Lake Eyre… in about mid June!<\/p>\n

In four days (from 23 to 26 March) parts of southern and south-western Queensland had more than their annual average rainfall.\u00a0 Almost one million km\u00b2 of country is under water.\u00a0 To put that in perspective, that’s about four times the land area of the UK.\u00a0 Bigger than France and Germany combined.\u00a0 Bigger even than Texas!\u00a0 Very, very few people live in the area, but there are a lot of beef cattle out there.\u00a0 And many tens of thousands of these will have perished in what has been euphemistically described as “an abnormal weather event”<\/p>\n

Not only that, but Robin’s pool has now been upgraded to an infinity pool!\u00a0 Again!<\/p>\n

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The dam in the bottom corner of the property has filled and flooded onto the corner of the lawn as the overflow heads off across the road outside.\u00a0 Robin decides it’s time to remove the electric pump from the dam to prevent water damage ???!<\/p>\n

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After the deluge ended, we went out for a drive on the few passable roads to check on the ones that weren’t!<\/p>\n

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… and there were LOTS of them about!<\/p>\n

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There were a few hardy pedestrians stranded too.\u00a0 These two were obviously waiting for lunch to be delivered by helicopter!<\/p>\n

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But the skies eventually cleared and “normal” (if anything can be called normal in this country!) conditions returned.\u00a0 \u00a0The surf is still breaking over the newly formed sand bar just off the mouth of the Mooloolah River.\u00a0 That’s where a lot of the beach sand has ended up!<\/p>\n

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And the skies are blue over Mooloolaba once more.\u00a0 In the past, we have stayed in the smallest of these three tower blocks at the river mouth.<\/p>\n

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The sun had set early on one of the fishing boats …<\/p>\n

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More ultimate<\/p>\n

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And more sunsets …<\/p>\n

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… as seen from the spectator zone!<\/p>\n

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All we need now is a few days peace and quiet in Brisbane!\u00a0 That’s where we are heading next!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Toogoolawa, we stuck largely to the main roads – but there was one exception.\u00a0 \u00a0We’ve been caught out here before!\u00a0 Approaching Peachester, at Cedarton, the sat nav insisted we branch off onto the “Commissioners Flats Road”.\u00a0 This took us… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thailand-and-australia-travels-in-2025"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5917"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5959,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5917\/revisions\/5959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}