Uralla - a very small town in the New England Tablelands
(read: high altitude lands) was a painful shot to our tropical arms. If we
thought we were cold in Springbrook, we didn’t know
what cold meant.
We knew we were in trouble when we started seeing our breath
before the sun was even down. By 8:00pm
we had endured enough of the torture of sitting in the cold without a fire, and
went to bed.
So began the rummage: going through every item in the van,
evaluating it for its insulating capabilities. If jackets could be worn, they
were. Hats, gloves, scarves, and multiple layers of clothing were donned. Heck
– if I could have figured out a way to wear the coffee maker, I would have.
Anything that could be used as a blanket was. All the towels, extra clothing, and even our emergency space blanket were
neatly laid over us so as to reduce the level of agony our poor tropical asses
were suffering through.
They say you sleep well when it’s cold. They’re lying.
Finally (and gratefully) waking up to the following day was
a testament
to surviving the night. This time when we looked at our
thermometer, it wasn’t 18 degrees, it was minus 1 degree.
And we later learned that Uralla made it down to minus 4 that night. The van
was covered in ice, and the surrounding grass had that “lovely” frosty look to
it.
Take a look at a map, and you’ll also see that Uralla is
still considerably farther north than our final destination of Melbourne.
There has been talk of aborting the drive south altogether, going north to wile
away the time, and then driving like madmen over the last two days of our trip
to finish off in Melbourne.
But in the end, we decided to stick with our plan. We are
after all, Canadian; we should be able to take an Australian winter in
stride...shouldn’t we??? (ha)
So to all the people who told us prior that “Australia
isn’t that cold” in the winter (and there are lots of you): try camping in
it!!! We have almost a full month more to go; we basically live outdoors. Good thing that over time we are acclimitizing (slowly), and we've got lots of layers to make things bearable!
