“No Room At The Inn” (For Our Tesla)
Part 3 of Tess’ adventures in the land of coal.
Driving an electric vehicle means that you have to plan ahead. One day, high-speed chargers will be ubiquitous, but we aren’t there yet. We were invited to display our Tesla Model 3 at the upcoming Gladstone Ecofest and thought that it might be nice to have a little holiday on the way. I decided to book a cabin at the caravan park in Biggenden. I rang and asked if we could have a cabin for one night and could I please charge my car. After a brief hesitation, I was told they had no vacancy.
We left it a couple of days and then my wife rang, didn’t mention the car, and all of a sudden there was plenty of room at the inn. This was great, as we wanted to wander this quiet and picturesque town and also wanted to walk in the Mt Walsh National Park nearby.
We charged up at the Tesla Superchargers in Gympie (2 hours north of Brisbane) and then headed off the highway and into the hinterland. Here, the problem wasn’t lack of chargers, but almost lack of road for over 20 km. Recent floods had damaged the road, and the bridges and we had a slow drive off it, avoiding potholes, slowing for roadworks and watching the deer and cattle grazing beside us. If we had known it would be this bad, we probably would have chosen a better road further north.
It was great to see water flowing in all the creeks and fat cattle grazing in the paddocks (if you can call them that when there were no fences). We were made welcome at the caravan park. Although, I didn’t mention the car and enjoyed a comfortable walk around the town.
Our drive to Mt Walsh was exciting — with water over the road in three places. I walked through in my Norway boots to check the depth. One Mazda obviously didn’t make it. A 30-minute walk up Mt Walsh was enough for this old man.
When we booked out, I noticed that although the park was full of vans, we were the only ones staying in the cabins – the other two were empty. What prompted the “no vacancy” response when I mentioned my car? There were external power points and plenty of powered caravan sites. Obviously, power and accessibility were not the problem. Did they think the car might spontaneously burst into flames?
I didn’t ask, because as a stranger in a strange land, I did not want the confrontation and the possibility of nowhere to sleep that night. We had enough power to get back to the civilisation and security of the highway and the Queensland Electric Super Highway.
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