Non Essential Travel - Who Knew.

Well weather is starting to get wild, possiblity of a cyclone forming off Townsville, Queensland. Temps up to 46°C just about every day it is time to start traveling South.

Leaving Anabranch we start our travels towards Clermont, Queensland. We camped the night on a gravel pit just outside of Clermont.

Clermont area is well known for it gold fields. As I was leaving the gravel pit I noticed a piece of Quartz sitting on the ground with flecks of gold in it, a keeper in my books.

On we went traveling past the town of Emerald, heading to Surat where the Fishermen Rest Area would be the campsite for the night. Well unknown to us the area had a very recent flooding event with mud and debris everywhere, not to mention swarms of flies.

Well we had to stay the night, it was a nightmare, the bridge near by was lite up with lights very bright and trucks going over making a loud clanging sound as they went pass, most of the night very noisy. 

No sleep, then the council decided at daylight to start whipper sniper, lawnmowers. Flies so bad we needed net over our heads.

Well it's time to get going down to St George, then onto Inglewood, then down to the town of Texas, where we will setup camp. We like camping on the NSW side of the Dumaresq river.

Well we decided that will stay for 2 weeks, and do a full campsite setup annexe as well. It has been very hot with the setup.

Now the news is telling us that Queensland will be shutting its borders to help stop the spread of the Coronavirus in 2 days time. 

This is not what I wanted to here, as it took a lot of effort to do a full campsite setup.

Our friend Graeme was on his way up from Copeton Dam, also worrying about border closures. 

Well we both decided to head over into the Queensland side to be safe as we needed access to the town of Texas for our shopping supplies.

Which means packing up, but we have only just finished setting up and this was only the third day of being at that site, not happy.

Well no way to avoid it, packing up in the hot sun, was no fun, and very time consuming. This was not and easy job as I had fully setup. 

Now packed up, we drove to the Qld side of the river. It was now late in the day, so we swagged overnight and set up the next day.

Another extremely hot day and no available shade where we setup. This was another grooling setup as it was very hot day.

We decided to wait it out here until Covid 19 was under control and the border closures, would be open again. This was the plan. I took a couple of days to completely setup again.

It was about this same time the Police closed the borders and setup a checkpoint at the front of the campground.

Things started to settle down and we thought we would be here for the next 6 months. 

Then out of the blue a policeman was telling everyone here, he heard on the radio, the Council might be closing down the campground. 

The news was very upsetting but it was still just a rumour.

Then it came, the official announcement, the campground is closed and we had to move on the next day. 

Queensland Government had closed all National Parks, State Forest area and all rest area. Not happy as Easter was upon us and no non essential traveling was allowed. This is very upsetting.

My wife had words with the police who recommended the Aratula Pub who have free camping on their Private property. Finally some good news.

We made contact with them and they said we could stay until the Covid 19 is under control and travel restrictions lifted.

So now a 3 hour travel ahead over the Cunningham Gap to the other side where Aratula is.

So at least this time I can again fully setup and wait in self isolation without packing up again. 

Graeme our friend also made the journey to this place.

Well all non essential travel cancelled in Queensland with hefty fines if it is violated. So currently we are in self isolation mode.

So who knew this would happen, looks like we will be here awhile.