Killarney, Warrick 2011

August 18^th, We left Evans Head this morning after Val bought herself $20 worth of prawns with her Co-Op voucher. We stopped off in Ballina to do some shopping before heading for Killarney, famous for its great waterfalls. It was featured on one of the Travel Shows on TV and looked well worth a visit. We stopped in Kyogle and had a very nice lunch at Dave’s Bakehouse. The “so called” highways from Kyogle to Killarney were atrocious, narrow, windy and so broken up in places that, at one stage, Val thought her head was going to leave her shoulders. We drove into Killarney to the Pub to pick up some wine and I pulled into a street parking spot only to find that I was too long and blocking the driveway to their carpark. There was plenty of room in the Pub’s carpark so I turned in and the Van mounted the gutter and, unseen by me, collected a cast iron street garbage bin that was concreted into the ground, which gouged a split in the aluminium wall of the Van, from about 1/3 from the front down to nearly the door, ripped of the wheel arch dress pieces. We discovered later that the wall had been broken right through in some places, that was when Val looked into her shoe cupboard and could see outside. You can imagine how upset we both were. We bought our wine and put $20 through their Pokies, without any joy, then drove out to the Queen Mary Falls Caravan Park and booked in for 2 nights. I had a bit of trouble getting the Van unhitched and noticed that the body of the car was sitting down on the rear RH side. I had to jack the car up to get it free from the Van. Looks like I’ve got a suspension problem to deal with to-morrow. When Val went into the Van she found a lot of things stored on the bunks had been bounced onto the floor and her “Turbo Oven” bowl was smashed into pieces. To top our day off, when I tried to get TV I found no signal for digital and unwatchable picture on analogue. Luckily we had some DVDs to watch. We won’t forget our trip to Killarney, in a hurry. We hung our thermometer outside and last time we checked, it was 3 deg.C, BRRR!

August 19^th, Val woke up at 8am, gasping for breath and realized that her breathing machine was not running. We had a widespread power “blackout” in the area that lasted till 1pm. I rang in a claim on our NRMA Insurance, for the damage to the Van and replacement of the Turbo Oven, so now we need to obtain a quote, with photos, to complete the process. We drove into Killarney Township to do some shopping and I took the car to a local mechanic to get an assessment on the rear suspension. He couldn’t find anything broken and told me the coil springs had collapsed and need to be replaced with long “heavy duty” springs. We are leaving in the morning so that will have to be fixed at our next long stay. We stopped on our way back to look at Dagg’s Falls, which were very good. We sighted a couple of small Kangaroos on our trip back to the Park and this area is full of all types of birds. I walked down to see the Queen Mary Falls while Val put away the shopping and started preparing dinner. It was starting to get very chilly out but the view at the Falls was spectacular. The nights were very cold here so we had to get out our fan heater to warm up the Van. We had been told by the Manager, that there was a Caravan Repair place at Warwick, only 43klms away.

August 20^th, We packed up and drove to Warwick and our 1^st stop was the Information Centre, only to find that there wasn’t a Caravan Repair place in this Town. As it was Saturday and nothing could be done till Monday, as far as repairs to our vehicles, so we decided to stay in Warwick and have a look around. We looked over 2 Caravan Parks and decided to stay at the Kahler’s Oasis (Big 4).

August 21^st, It was raining steadily all morning and Val’s head cold had freshened up again. While waiting for the rain to stop, I picked out a few sightseeing places that looked interesting. There wasn’t a lot of things open on a Sunday. The 1^st was Australiana Park and when I got there it was only a Playground Park with a football Oval. I went on to Rosenthal Lookout, which was a 2 story tower with a viewing platform a fair way from the Town Centre. When I went to climb the Tower steps I found the gate was welded closed, so I assumed that they didn’t want anybody to have access. I was now getting a little dejected, but carried on to have a look at the Queens Park Rose Gardens. When I got to Queens Park I actually drove past the Rose Gardens without seeing them. It was a large Park, with another Football Oval and picnic/BBQ areas bordered by the Condamine River. On the way back around the Park I came across the Rose Garden. Have a look at the photo below and you can see how I missed seeing little stalks sticking out of the garden beds. On that note I headed home and the rain started up again. We leave for Toowoomba in the morning.