2026-05-09
I had a rather long sleep last night, and woke around 7ish, getting up about 20 mins later to prepare breakfast (coffee and banana-bread crumpets). After breakfast, it was time to pack the remainder of the things in the caravan and car. (future me: yes, I forgot some things, but nothing important). I then checked the tyre pressures on the van and prado and pumped them all up to 40psi. Then disconnected the mains power from the van, and hooked up the electrics to the car, confirmed the fridge was now running off the alternater and set off at approx 9:30am.
Of course, it was market day in Samford, so I had a bit of a slow trip through the village, but after that the traffic wasn't bad, and I made my way out of town without incident. I had decided to go via Toowoomba to avoid the roadworks on Cunningham's Gap and also decided to do the (tolled) bypass as it's a more gradual climb and avoids driving through Toowoomba proper. What I didn't factor in was that the bypass entrance is before Withcott, where I'd thought of stopping for some lunch. That meant lunch was somewhat delayed. The far side of the bypass has recently been resealed (tar and sprinkle) and as such there's a fair bit of time spent at 60kph. Once past there though I sat on about 92kph and got about 19L/100km for fuel economy. Meanwhile, my stomach was rumbling, as I passed the turn to Pittsworth. I probably should have taken that turn but decided that Millmerran wasn't much further and that'd do.
As it turned out, that was a good call. There was ample space in town to pull up, and across the road was an open café, Forage Kitchen and Coffee Bar. Highly recommended, the haloumi wrap was delicious, as was the iced cofee I had with it.
Back on the road, I chose the fork that went through Inglewood instead of continuing down the Gore Hwy. This is a less travelled route, and while the road was bumpy in places, there was very little traffic heading south, and not much more heading the other direction. Interestingly, the old finger wave/salute isn't common out this way. With only one guy responding, and one other initiating. I rolled in to Yelarbon at around 14:30 and proceeded directly to the Yelarbon Recreation and Camping Reserve, which appears to be a council camping park, staffed by volunteer caretakers. Nothing flash, but the sites have power and are level and the park is next to a lagoon with ample bird life.
I didn't bother to unhitch, since I'm only hear one night, but I did disconnect the anderson plugs to the van, since I don't need the van sucking my starter battery dry. After the brief setup, I grabbed the camera and went for a walk to the lagoon, observing a range of birds.
From there, I wandered up to look at the mural painted on 8 large silos.
There was rumour of a pub, so I wandered down the main street and found it. It is a hotel/motel, low brick construction, with a fair number of people in the beer garden. I didn't stop, but made my way back to the van to contemplate dinner. I'd just decided to cook rather than go to the pub, and had meat defrosting in the microwave, when the neighbours pulled up and Daphne hooroo'd. I went out and she explained that she had starlink but couldn't get it working with the tv and wondered if I might be able to help. (the joys of being in IT, no matter where you go, someone will somehow find you for tech support). I agreed to take a peek, and it turned out the issue was that while the smart tv was online, they couldn't work out how to mirror their iPhone to the TV to get foxtel. A bit of mucking around later and I had the mirroring working and explained how it worked. By then Les has arrived and so we all had a bit of a chat about the starlink, travels, etc. They offered to shout me a beer at the pub, which was mighty tempting, but I'd already decided to cook in the van.
Speaking of cooking, it was time to get on with that. I made a basic meat sauce in the multicooker, and boiled some water on the electric hob for the mezzelune pasta. It was at this point I discovered that I wasn't actually sure if 1 or 6 was the hottest setting on the hob, and the manual (yes, I actually read the manual) was not at all informative on that front either. Figuring it made more sense that 6 was the hottest, I went with that (even if it was rotationally in a position exactly opposite what our Bosch cooktop uses at home). Luckily that was correct and the water eventually boiled (that hob isn't fast, being only 1000W and a regular electric element). One of the things I forgot to pack was a good hard cheese like Parmiggiano Regiano, but dinner was tasty enough anyway.
While cooking I popped outside to look at the lovely pastel sunset.
After dinner, I washed up, showered and then upon returning to the van noticed that Orion was clearly visible, and remembering that Comet C/2025 R3 (PANSTARRS) was currently in Orion, I decided to break out the tripod and have a crack at it with the Birding lens. This isn't the greatest option for astrophotography as it has a fairly slow aperture of ƒ/6.3 at the long end, but that long end is 600mm, which kinda makes up for it. What that meant though was very high ISO shooting at relatively quick shutter speeds (2.5secs) so as to avoid too much star movement as I don't have a tracking mount for the camera. I would usually use the 200mm ƒ/1.8 but I didn't bring that on this trip. The final shot wasn't too bad though, you can see the green comet and its tail.
And now, it's nearly 21:00 and I'm thinking bed sounds like a good plan. Tomorrow it is onwards to somewhere around Coonabarabran or Parkes or something, depending on how far I want to go.