23 June 2026

June 23, 2026

23 June 2026

23 Jun 2026

Back on the road again today and a 7:30 am start to the day. Today is driving from Gympie to Goondiwindi for the night, via Kilkivan, Nanango, Cooyar, Oakey, Texas and Yelarbon. Basically, another long 565-kilometre day and a whole lot of hours. The days take a bit longer too, as you will usually end up having a chat to someone about the car no matter where you park, which is always good. I stopped at Nanango for a quick visit to the bakery and some fuel. I then stopped at Cooyar for a break and to eat the bakery items from Nanango. Had a conversation with a fella at the park about the car and his Citroen DS he has in the garage to do up, very interesting.

Kilkivan

The route through Oakey to Texas I have done before in the car, though I did use GPS at one stage, and goodness knows where it took me, but I sure hadn't been that way before. Mind, all the road surface was very new and smooth, which made a nice change. I stopped in Texas to get some fuel, 315 kilometres from a Morris Minor fuel tank; it was getting dire, great mileage though.

Texas, Queensland

It was 3:30 pm and the days are getting dark by 5 pm, so time to be getting along. I am not sure why, but as I was driving into Texas someone flashed their headlights at me, between there and the petrol station I didn't see any reason why they would have done that. So as I turned off to head to Yelabon I thought that I had better just stop to check the lights, only to discover that I had no headlights at all, both high and low beams were out, only parking lights left. The dilemma here was, do I spend who knows how much time trying to fix the lights now, or press on and try to race the setting sun?

I decided the best bet was to race the sun, as who knows how long it would take to trace the problem with the lights (this isn't the first time for a mysterious headlight outage, it did it years ago too and that took days to trace). It is only 63 kilometres to Yelarbon from Texas and then only 35 kilometres more to Goondiwindi, so push on we did.

At least the roads were quiet (fantastically quiet!)

We stopped at Yelarbon to see the Silo art and happened to come across a Minor (Series 2, a 4 door even!), hopefully being restored. Then quickly pressed on to Goondiwindi, made it just as the sun was dropping to the horizon, so managed to get some pictures of the "Once Upon a Time" art installation pieces, then hightailed it to the motel for the night just as it was getting dark. Really lucky timing!