Jumping ship

Ahhhhhh. We are centimetres away from turning tail and heading back to Sydney.

1) It's the wet season! My plan to speed things up a bit rather than meandering so much doesn't fit with Mother Nature's plans of raining a lot and often.

Why this is a problem: Today we headed from Hervey Bay (which I haven't even written about yet! And if I don't, there was some incredible nightly bat activity that I still want to research a bit. I'm talking thousands upon thousands of bats flocking south every evening at dusk. Anyway...) through Bundaberg and towards Town of 1770. What a name. At least, we intended to go to 1770, but we were thwarted by water on the road. We braved a few floodways, but then we came to one that the ute in front of us wasn't even willing to try and we realised we weren't going to make it. We chatted with said ute driver and he shared his local knowledge with us - there are at least four more parts of the road that would have water over them at least as high as this between where we were and Miriam Vale which was at the Bruce Highway, our outlet. We weren't going to make it to 1770, and we weren't even going to make it through that way to Rockhampton. We had to turn back towards Bundaberg and cover that almost 70 kilometres all over again. Bummer. Annoying. Frustrating. All of that.

Also a problem because: That leak upstairs? It is a leak. Nick took some duct tape (the white kind, classy folk that we are) to the seal on the outside, hoping that this would at least temporarily alleviate the problem. When we stopped for lunch, however, he checked for water upstairs and found it. Plenty. We need to have it seen to by a professional, and we plan to do that tomorrow morning.

And one more wet season issue: Laundry is expensive. We'll pay the $3 to wash a load rather than hand washing - that's worth it to us, especially as we recycle our clothes as much as possible so don't create that much laundry. But the standard fee for drying is $1 for 10 minutes! Robbery! Tonight, for the first time, we are paying to dry our clothes because it has been raining since we left Suzy's house and nothing will dry. My Ergo got soaked through on the Fraser Island tour bus and won't dry. All of the towels we have been using to soak up the leak upstairs (under some plastic to keep the mattress dry) are in need of washing and drying. We are paying $18 for two loads of laundry.

2) F*&^ing mosquitoes. They are getting worse and worse. Maya and I look like we have gnarly skin conditions. It's gross and itchy and annoying and uncomfortable and maddening and frustrating, etc etc etc. And it isn't going to get any better in the direction we're going.

3) The beaches are from here on up are unswimmable, or so we're told. Stinger season, mate, from Rockhampton north. No fun. Oh well, it's raining anyway. Who wants to go to the beach?

4) Long stretches of driving ahead. There was a whole lotta nothing between Bundaberg and Rockhampton, just 340ish kilometres of driving. This is the longest we have gone in one stretch (besides from Sydney to Urunga), made especially long by our backtracking. We could have stopped, there were a few tiny places along the way, but we just weren't interested today - we wanted to get to a place where we could have our leak seen to. That place was Rockhampton, nothing closer. It is equally far to Mackay, then to Townsville, then to Cairns. Cairns is still over 1000 kilometres away! 1000 wet, dreary, wet, humid kilometres. The long distance driving part isn't the most fun in the world, and even less fun for the kids, especially little Eli. I can either be sitting up front with Nick, keeping him company on the lonely roads, or sitting back with the kids trying to keep them entertained. I find that I much prefer sitting up front. I just need to work harder on finding the joy in sitting in the kiddie section.

5) Close quarters. I'm not naming names, but one of my children is really hard to be around this closely for this long. Okay, maybe two of them. It's not doing any favours for our marriage either.

We're not going to give up the dream just yet though. I just don't know how we can keep it up when it is seeming more like hard work than the rewarding adventure we had hoped for. We're going to stick it out to Cairns. We're looking forward to the Whitsundays and the reef, and I'm still holding out hope that some Cape York miracle tour will fall in my lap. I think after that though, we might retreat with our tails between our legs. Maybe we'll say hello to our friends in Sydney and keep heading south. Not sure yet.