Set up next to the Billabong, fire well under way and enough wood for 3 nights !

We’ve had a bit of a rest for the last couple of days while we waited out the bank holiday weekend and chilled out. On Sunday I replaced the pinion oil seal on the front diff and as far as I can see all looks fine with no play in the pinion bearing. The seal was a bit worn, not sure why it would be after only about 14000 miles but we’ll see how the new one stands up to the job.
We packed up and headed south and slightly inland this morning. As Pam described it, the weather is looking a bit British at the moment – overcast and windy, threatening rain. On the plus side it’s still warm and despite the grey skies we’ve not actually had any rain. Temperatures are in the low 20s during the day, dropping to a low of around 14C at night.
We covered around 230km today, most of it down the Bruce Highway that, once again, was a pain to drive on with constantly varying speed limits and roadworks dotted all over the place. As a result we only managed an average speed today of 68km per hour, still better than UK roads but not what we’ve been used to here ! The good news is that the front diff is no longer leaking oil so the new seal has worked for now.

We managed to put a reasonable dent in the wood store by the end of the night 🙂

Arriving at Cobb & Co. Nine Mile we booked in for the night and also bought some wood so we could have a camp fire. The wood was delivered to our spot once we’d chosen where we were going to camp and there was plenty of it ! As a result we’ve had a long evening sat around the fire, something we’ve not done as often as we would have liked to on this trip. I got the fire going using my trusty Swedish Firesteel in true Ray Meers fashion. Previously when I’ve done this I’ve used bunched up loo roll (unused !) to get the flame going with the steel but this time I used a cotton wool ball, another Ray Meers tip. A LOT simpler and quicker than using paper, 1 or 2 strikes of the steel and the cotton was burning with a good flame.
Anyway, Cobb & Co. Nine Mile gets it’s name from it’s historic location as the site of the old Cobb & Co Horse Change Stables. It was the first stop on the stage coach run from Gympie to Noosa (9 miles from Gympie) which ran from 1878. The 50 acre camp site is excellent, very laid back and having arrived just after most people had left, we had our choice of quiet isolated spots. We chose to set up next to the billabong. They had over 500 people staying here over the weekend so glad we arrived when we did.
Tomorrow we have a slight change of plan in that we’re heading to a site very close to Australia Zoo. It’s not that far from here but we’ll be taking the.more interesting back roads and avoiding the Bruce Highway as it’s doing my head in. It might also give us a chance to spot some Koalas in the wild. That will mean a very relaxed day tomorrow and we can get into Australia Zoo nice and early on Wednesday.