My world walk blog Australia 44

Higgins Storm Chasing.

 

March 4th, I only walked sixteen kilometres. I had gotten off to a late start after the great fun night in Michael O'Shea's Windsor Hotel Bar in Dalby. It was a pretty hot day, about 32C with high humidity. 

Leaving town at 11 am I walked north-west first on a service road for a couple of hours and then I  joined route 2. 

A friendly Filipino couple and their young daughter stopped to give me a bottle of water. They also offered me transport. I thanked them for their offer and politely refused. Though I was pushing seven litres I took the water they offered me and drank it while we chatted. Never refuse water is one of my rules.

A few minutes later they made another u-turn when they realised they hadn't taken my photo. They have been living in Australia for nine years and are currently working a farm near Warra, a good days walk away. We exchanged phone numbers and I accepted an invitation should I reach Warra the following day. There is one problem though. Their farm is a few kilometres off my route. Perhaps we may be able to find a place in the town for me to leave Karma, my cart and then I can commute back to my route. We will see.

 I had been watching the weather forecast closely on an excellent weather app called YR. I have also been following weather warnings on Higgins Storm Chasing Facebook page. It seems there are serious storms battering parts of Queensland at the moment and record flooding to surpass the previous record flooding of 44 years ago is predicted. The area of concern seems to be in a location several hundred kilometres further north of me. Many people have mentioned in the Townsville region. I read that if the flooding happened that there could be road closures for a week or two and I don't want to contemplate that. 

A half-hour after my new Filipino friends left I noticed that YR was warning of heavy rain and just as was predicted it started to rain. Except for a few drops at first, I didn't detect a warning in the sky. I was extremely fortunate that directly across the highway from me there was a large storage shed with a sheltered area about 200 metres off the road. So, I rushed across the road and down a slightly muddy track and just got under the shelter before it rained torrentially. That's where I'm camping tonight.