A Wild And Windy Night Drive To Tara
By traveltripz on Oct 12, 2007 in Tara, Australia
We loaded the car trailer with sheets of flooring to take out to Tara so that we can make a start on the Kitchen make over, and we packed the car with all the sundry food and other items we need to make life at least livable while we are out here for the next week and a half. The drive as far as Dalby was fairly uneventful.
We stopped for lunch at around 2:30pm at Wamuran and had the most delicious feed of fish and chips. Then back on the road again and 4 cd’s later we arrived at Dalby.
I picked a change of pace for the music this time. Usually my music consists of cd’s by Bollywood singers and the gorgeous Thai singer Tongchai MacIntyre, but this time we had Joan Armitrading, Warren Zevon, Elton John, Peter Blakely and The Delltones. Val and I went to see The Delltones in concert on Saturday night at the Redcliffe RSL and they were fantastic, in fact they were much better live than on the cd. Usually it is the other way around, groups tend to be better on the cd than in concert. Okay back to the story.
Once you leave Dalby for the final 88klm run to Tara, there are no street lights only reflectors on either side of the fairly narrow road.
It starts to rain just out of Dalby and then in the distance we can see lightening and hear the loud claps of thunder. This storm is really dramatic, the rain is getting heavier and there are drifts of foggy mist adding to the problem of seeing the road. Of course Val, being a man, hasn’t figured out that you are able to slow down when you can’t see. All the men in my household are speed freaks.
As we take the turnoff to Tara, the sight is very dramatic as the whole skiy is lit up with lightening streaks travelling across the sky, usually the forks head down to the earth but as well as that, these streaks spread out across the sky parallel to the earth. The whole desolute area is lit up and it looks eerily bleak and creepy reminding me of the movies ‘Wolf Creek’ and ‘The Hills Have Eyes’ (I’m a movie buff).
We finally reach our turnoff onto the muddy dirt road, full of water filled potholes. It doesn’t look as if the council have graded the road since we were last here in September. The car and trailer slip and slide across the road which is like riding on marbles. fortunately we are the only ones silly enough to be out in this weather. “You can slow down, you know,”I venture to comment. “I’m only doing 40klms “, is the retort. So we continue to slip and slide all the way to our gate.
While we are driving up the dirt (mud) road I am thinking ‘What am I doing?” Here I am a women who thinks roughing it means staying in a 3 star hotel and here I am on my way to a rustic cottage in the middle of nowhere with a 20klm drive to the nearest shop if you run out of milk, and 88klms to visit a shop that sells more than cow manure and gumboots. Maybe it’s good for my development.
So we arrive and finally get the car unpacked in the rain, settle down with a nice hot cup of tea and watch a couple of dvd’s before bedtime. The rooms are full of spiders, moths mosquitoes and gecko’s. Hmmm, great, not so much nature at your back door as sleep with nature.
I lie there and listen to the heavy rain and thunder and watch the sky being lit up by the lightening and think that this is almost like a scene out of War of the Worlds and finally drift off to sleep.
Next morning we are up bright and early to a beautiful sunny (stinking hot) day. A total contrast to the night before. The dam is nearly full which is great news, and the worms I put into the compost bin I started last time I was here, are still alive. So everything is great with the world.
