Finishing up in Armidale
Posted by Sarah O'Neill , Friday, 1 April 2011 02:00
Because we were staying an extra week our accommodation was not secured, so we were told we would have to move into a different apartment (across the road) on Tuesday, and we could only have that until Friday morning. So Ben's boss was going to get us a hotel for the Friday night in a town about an hour away as there was no more accommodation in Armidale due to graduations! However, it all worked out that we could stay in our lovely apartment the whole week, and even Friday night which was fab! It meant I didn't lose a day lugging our stuff around on Tuesday, and a day with no base on Friday, which was much nicer! The week passed very quickly and we didn't really get up to much except enjoying the luxury for a few more days before getting back to camping! On Saturday we began our road trip again! We had planned everything very precisely to make sure we had enough time since we had stayed in Armidale an extra week, driving for around 5 hours each day to get north to Airlie Beach for our Whitsundays cruise on Wednesday. We left at about 10am and drove for about 4 hours to get to Toowoomba, our stop for the night. When we arrived it was a lovely hot and sunny day. We chilled out for a bit and then pitched the tent. Headed to the shopping centre for dinner supplies and had a quick tea of sausage sandwiches before heading to the cinema to watch 'Limitless' which was quite a good movie. Headed back to our first night in the tent for a while! On Sunday morning we were packing up the tent and as I was carrying the bedding to the car I turned my neck and something hurt and I knew it was not good! I could not turn left very far at all without it really hurting! With breakfast I took some ibuprofen and hoped it would ease, but it did not! We drove for about 6 hours to Gladstone for our second overnight stop on our way north. My neck was agony and the ibuprofen seemed to do nothing, so after four hours I took some Voltarol, we stopped for lunch at a service station and Ben bought two pie, and even though I wasn't at all hungry, he made me eat mine, which was a good thing! I just did not know what to do with myself, sat in the car I could not get into any position which relieved my neck at all, I even tried rolling towels to support it, and nothing helped! I decided to drive for a while to see if that took my mind off it. Concentrating on driving meant I wasn't dwelling on it, but I was still soooo uncomfortable! The weather was a bot iffy all day, overcast and cloudy, but no rain. When we eventually got to Gladstone I was crying to Ben, out of pure frustration and pain, I just did not know what to do with myself. He got out some different pain killers, Codeine, which can make you drowsy, and I gave them a whirl! Thankfully they gave me some relief, and I was a bit more myself. Although it was still painful, I felt so much better which was such a relief! Just had to make sure I did not turn my head left! The evening came out much nicer and the sun appeared for a while before it got dark. Now we are back in Queensland we don't have long evenings at all, dark around 6pm which sucks when camping! We skyped with Carol and Mike in the camp kitchen which was nice after two weeks as they had been away. After that we had dinner, which was easy as we had frozen leftovers from meals we had made in Armidale and managed to keep frozen in the esky and camp kitchen freezers, curry and spag bol. I didn't sleep to badly considering the neck problem! Now counting down the nights in the tent, and times we would have to put it up and down!
Sarah
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