Road Trip No.1

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Keeping the flame alive

It's June 2025 and my back was still mucking up so leaning, bending, lifting was off the cards. I find walking small distances a good way to keep the back relaxed, the only thing that stopped it from being aggravated was laying on the floor and watching the footy or sitting up straight like I had a pole up my you know what. The best way to stay up straight is with a small pillow in the small of your back I have found, and this seems to assist recovery time.

Being a stubborn male, I thought maybe I can use a pillow while I drive a car so came up with the grand plan to take the lady of the house out for the day and go for one of our usual big day's out sightseeing and decided to go to Hervy Bay, the last time we had been up there was around 2019 before the pandemic. 

A 3-hour drive and the drive up caused me no harm, but the road coming in from the west seemed a bit flogged up and I came unstuck a little here hitting massive impressions in the bitumen and being thrown around by weight transfer. Thankfully we had left early so we had the beach to ourselves and went for a stroll, this seemed to loosen things up in my back. 

After taking some pictures and playing around under one of the jetty's, we headed to the car and had a bit of lunch and decided to take a drive around, unfortunately Hervey Bay is no longer a small little seaside town with a farming backdrop and you can really see the impact the population growth, development and progress has done to the area. The area is still lovely but in reality, I just felt like I was driving around a Brisbane suburb, and the Australian way of life and heritage elements were starting to disappear.

A little disappointed, the sun was just starting to dip in the later part of the day, so I suggested we take a detour after Gympie and drive the mountains home and stay off the highway as the Bruce Highway turns into a parking lot in the late afternoon. Yes, it was going to take longer, but at least we were still moving and could stagger breaks.

Afternoon smoko time arrived, so we turned into Imbil and for some reason I have never looked to the left as you go past the Pub. Below is a couple pictures of what I found, a possible future inspiration for scratch building??
























We both had a nice time driving around in the hills and agreed, we would come back up and poke around in the area again for another day trip. I'd hadn't been up around Amamoor for a long time and wanted see if we could try our luck at spotting a Platypus in the creeks so in early August 2025 on our way into Amamoor I thought I turned into Queen Street, Brisbane there were people everywhere. 

We were unsure what was happening, so I parked the car and we walked over towards the crowd. Low and behold the Mary Valley Rattler was in town and was being reconfigured to go back into Gympie. I turned to my wife, and she was smiling away as there was a little child just as excited as me watching the old loco blowing soot and clunking around. Below are couple pictures I almost forgot to take.


With a glorious day in front of us, we pushed on into State Forest Park, we never saw a Platypus on the rest of our drive, but then again there is always another day to go for a drive. 

Until next time, see you at the next blog!


Little Shunter
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