July 20

Last night when lining up the Prado and van ready for an early getaway, I noticed a whine coming from the transmission. The last time the Prado had transmission problems it cost just over $4000! Needless to say we had quite a “restless” night worrying about the possible repercussions.
As night became day it was obvious that the decision to move out a day early was the correct one – it was quite overcast and although rain was not threatening we probably would have spent the day walking around with bent necks from watching the sky. The other advantage of leaving early today was that it would allow me to front up to the Toyota dealer tomorrow and get the noise assessed. As well we still have the option of doing a car/van clean up.
The drive to Emerald was uneventful and was mostly flat with some quite spectacular hills around Springsure. You can run, but you can’t hide! We were stopped at a rest area taking some photos of these hills when a guy asked where we were from. The ensuing conversation revealed that he was from East Corrimal and travelled across to Broken Hill, up the Stuart Highway to Alice Springs, across to Mt Isa and then down to Emerald via Longreach. He had a time limit of 4 weeks and was travelling with his heavily pregnant wife and daughter (about 3 yrs old) in a Landcruiser and camper trailer.
On arriving in Emerald we went on a look-see tour. There’s not much to see, in fact it’s quite an uninteresting town. The Botanic Gardens and the historic railway station were probably the highlights. We were amazed to see that the railway line to Emerald was electrified! Perhaps it has something to do with the rail line being used for coal exports (?).
Wendy and her family lived here for a number of years while Ron worked on the gem-fields and I can understand their aversion to the area. It does have a Woolworths and Coles (both shut on a Sunday) as well as Maccas, KFC and Red Rooster (if that counts for anything). Petrol from Woolworths with a voucher is 154.9 cpl so I suppose it’s not all bad.
Not a good spot to be holed up in if in fact the Prado does have a major problem – oh well, fingers crossed!