Galah Cockatoo
It rained last night, and it rained again several times during the day. Sometimes the rain was quite heavy, but it generally only lasted for a few minutes, and then would stop quite quickly. Since it was never very windy, for the most part the rains were just gentle and warm, falling straight down.
We continued on our drive north through Queensland. Much of the country we travelled through looks uninhabited, with large stands of eucalyptus trees. Occasionally there were agricultural clearings, sometimes with grazing cattle, quite a lot of sugar cane in some parts, and we saw one very large banana plantation. We also saw a large orchard with some type of fruit or nut trees, but we aren’t sure what they were.
This morning we bought a large mango from a fruit stand set up at one of the service stations. We asked the man selling them to pick us one that would be good and ripe tomorrow, as we really have no idea what a good mango looks like. He checked over several and then settled on one, so we will try it tomorrow, and see if his judgement was good.
We stopped in mid-afternoon at the very small town of Bororen. There is a fairly inexpensive caravan park here, and although it is quite close to the road it isn’t too noisy (the highway is not nearly as busy here). The A1 road is now just two lanes, but for the most part it is an acceptable road, though occasionally it seems pretty rough. I’m not sure if that’s entirely the road or if part of it isn’t the pretty stiff suspension in our motorhome. The road does seem to have a lot of roughly patched potholes though. Yesterday we bought a convex mirror for Enid’s side of the van and mounted it under the other flat mirror. That gives me a lot better view out to the blind spot. However, the whole mirror assembly wants to turn in to the side of the truck, and I think that’s due to the vibration. I’ll need to get some better wrenches so I can tighten the mirror more thoroughly. On my side I looked out this morning and saw a piece starting to fall off the motorhome. It’s the cover on the propane water heater. When we stopped to fix it I found that a screw had fallen out, and the other was loose. I’ll have to get some new bolts, but for now I’ve taped it in place with duct tape.
As we drove into the town we saw a large number of rose colored (Galah) cockatoos. I tried to take their picture later after we had set up, but they were pretty high in the trees. Unlike the sulphur crested cockatoos, which have a most horrible grating screech for a call, these rose colored ones have a rather pleasant call. There are also a lot of very brightly colored green and red lorrikeets around. They fly very fast and are very attractive birds.