It was a comical start the morning – I wanted to go to the toilet but couldn’t – a ghecko had climbed into the toilet door (it was a sliding door), and I wasn’t allowed to shut it until the ghecko was safe and sound!  Meanwhile I was nearly resigning to hanging a towel over the door, but fortunately we found it and was able to close it.  And the circus didn’t end there, I was going outside – only to be greeted by a cane-toad sitting on the front step!  I closed the door in disgust (I didn’t want it to come inside!)  And we pondered the best way to get rid of it.  It did move a little, but we wanted to get rid of it – they’re poisonous and can squirt poison through their skin.  Also, they’re a pest in Australia and something that kills our native fauna, so we were actually wanting to kill it.  We had to get it in a different position though, so a few stones from the carpark got it running away from the motel rooms.  However, Matt Smith got first prize – he threw a stone that hit the cane-toad on the head – to which it made a hollow “donk” and the cane-toad made a funny head action which had us all in hysterics and stitches laughing!

Today was going to be a driving day, the trough was advancing north into the tropics, and there was the possibility of another system entering NSW in the next day or two.  We went back down the highway through the detour where we had lunch at Theodore.  Theodore had mobile reception, so we thought it’d be a decent place – it wasn’t too bad, but it depends on your definition of mobile reception.  If there were more than three of us using the mobile – the line would drop out for all of us!  It didn’t make much sense, I’m not sure why it happened but certainly it wasn’t built to cope with such a heavy load (ie, 3 mobile users).

We decided to stay the night in Toowoomba, so we booked accommodation and got takeaway for dinner, having a quiet and early night as we were all very tired after the past week of constant chasing and driving!  However Matt finally got what was coming to him – he had pizza for dinner that night, and of course – got an upset stomach afterwards!  Macca and I had no sympathy for him though – he had it coming!

We were faced with a difficult decision on this day – the floods had now receded in the inland regions of Queensland, so the option to head west to the inland trough was now a possibility.  The potential for a trough in NSW was also present, although there wasn’t going to be anything significant for a couple of days.  With a discussion with Doc, and a look at things on Nick’s laptop, we decided to start heading west and then re-assess the situation from there.  Today would judge and dictate whether the inland trough would be slipping too far west (ie, towards the Northern Territory) to chase, or if it would be OK.  Jimmy and the others left first, we were a little further behind this time as both our cars were getting low radiators so we had to fill up some coolant and water at the servo.

We arrived in Roma a bit after lunchtime, we couldn’t see much to the west, a bit of Cirrus but it didn’t appear to be anvil Cirrus.  We grabbed some lunch and went to the park where we called Doc and discussed the situation.  He said that storms were developing, but they were well west of a line from Charleville to Longreach, and the trough was only going to slip further west over the next day or two.  We discussed this among us, and we decided that since Jane and Clyve had left from Victoria and the ACT recently, that we’d head down into NSW.  Doc also had a spare day or two, and we tentatively arranged to meet around the NW Slopes and Plains/Central Tablelands region for some convective (heat of the day) ranges type storms.  We contacted the police station first in Roma to discuss road options to get us towards Goondiwindi.  I was getting a little weary, so Macca offered to drive.  We obtained a route through Surat, and continued through there – however we came to a hiccup.  We were told the road was totally clear – however it wasn’t!  A large portion (about 100-150m) of the road was underwater, but it didn’t look very deep.  So Matt and Macca decided to walk across to the other side and see whether it was passable.  The signal was it wasn’t too deep, so we decided to go in one car at a time.  Both of us got through without any problems – and we had a bit of fun going through it too!  Both the cars on video sounded like Bathurst! 

Back on track, we headed down the highway – things were shaping up for a good sunset, with a reasonable amount of mid and high-level cloud around. 

Just enough to possibly scattered some good red colours, so we decided to stop and wait off the highway to see how it went.  It was certainly worth the wait!  The sunset was magnificent, it was so dynamic the way all the photos turned out to make it look as if there were several sunsets over several days at the same location – rather than one sunset that constantly changed!  All up, the sunset alone was worth the 500km detour!!!

We booked accommodation in Goondwindi – and then got McDonalds for dinner (first time we had visited a McDonalds!)  Macca of course decided to do some US driving, and drove on the wrong side of the road trying to get out of the carpark/complex though!

With the recent rain and floods, the mosquitoes were viscous!  There were literally hundreds of them buzzing near the screen door trying to get into the cabin, we weren’t very keen to go outside at all so we stayed inside!  You could hear them buzzing away though.  I also discovered that walking on a rollaway bed is not a very good idea, I was trying to take a shortcut rather than walking around the table.  Of course, m1v1 = m2v2 in my situation being a rather large person, was not in my favour.  The result was a rollaway bed flying halfway across the cabin, and me landing on the table!  Fortunately we had a screwdriver kit, and I was able to put the table back together as best as possible.  The thing that was broken the most was my pride!