Day 104 - Don't like trucks? (Stop buying crap, problem solved!)

Gayndah to Eidsvold 75km

We hemmed and hawed over today's route.  Should we stay on the A3 and take the longer and less likely to be flooded road to Eidsvold, or risk the back roads?  We decide compromise is the answer, and take the back roads to Mundubbera, and get back on the hwy from there.  Luckily for us the back road, after being destroyed by flooding in 2010, and again in 2013, has been rebuilt, and the dodgiest bits moved further from the Burnett River.  So it is smooth sailing through overcast skies, the rain, miraculously holds off.  The road climbs above the river to Wains Lookout, and we get a little patch of blue sky right above us.  Enjoy it, because that's it for the day.

It seems too quiet given that it's picking season for citrus.  We suspect the labour shortage is really hurting out here, lots of fruit on the ground or dumped.  Surely this does not help the current mouse plague, seriously the furry little scurriers are everywhere.  Kerstin does her bit and takes one out with her bike, just rolls right over it, splat.  

The rain continues holding off as we roll into Eidsvold, named after Eidsvoll, Norway.  It's a convoluted story involving the seven Scottish Archer brothers, some dodgy land grabbing and likely the dispossession of the Waka Waka people.  Although nobody mentions this bit, we might say squatters but usually the lense of history upgrades them to 'pastoralist'.

We stay dry just long enough to get the tent up in the very tidy council run caravan park.  Which, charmingly, works on an honesty system.  Just put your money in an envelope and pop it under the door.  Sadly this is as long as the weather is willing to hold, and we get wet on our search for dinner.  The supermarket is closed (Sunday), the pub is closed (renovations), so we plod through rain and associated puddles to the BP on the edge of town.  And are rewarded with freshly made hamburgers and chips.  We wrap our dinner in a free copy of 'Big Rigs' newspaper, to keep it dry and warm, and scurry like mice back to the caravan park.  Where we not only thoroughly enjoy an excellent dinner but are also pleasantly surprised by the proper journalism of Big Rigs.  Remember when newspapers used to give you facts and then informed opinion without Murdoch bias?  (News Corp sold off the paper in 2020.)  Reassured by full bellies and an expanded knowledge of trucking, we repair to bed.