Queensland Vacation-the (safe) Journey Home

We enjoyed the nice warm weather in tropical Queensland. In fact, it is possible that I threatened repeatedly not to get on this morning's flight.  The hot weather notwithstanding, the flight was a horrific 6:10 take off. Shudder.

The weather back in New South Wales has been deteriorating for a few days now and we've been watching with concern.

There are calls of snow all across the east coast, including parts of the north that never get snow.  The discussion amongst the Aussies was downright adorable.  People saying things like "when and where is the snow likely to hit? It is a 24 hour drive to Brisbane but I want to show my kids the snow". So cute!

So we got on the plane knowing that we might not make it all the way to Mudgee. The alarms went off at 4:45, the taxi came at 5 and we were on the flight in good time.

 I turned my phone back on in Sydney and received this from a friend:

This was what we've been concerned about. The road from Mudgee to Sydney is not an enjoyable drive on a good day. The Blue Mountains are high, the climbs and descents are steep and windy and there are only two lanes for most of it.  Once you add snow to that mix, the fun really starts!  Not only do they not salt/sand the roads, the cars don't have snow tires tyres.  At least this road has mobile phone reception for most of it.

We made the decision not to stay in Sydney and we hopped on the train.  It comes once an hour and is a very pleasant journey.  The traffic and snow started as we neared our station.  We snapped a selfie of the snow so that we were not the only ones not doing so.

Dave went to go pick up the car from the random house that it was parked at (THAT story is another blog post) and we hit the road.  Thankfully this traffic was heading the other way.

Not sure if they were all just trying to get to Sydney, or if they were coming to see the snow?  Snow isn't actually all that uncommon in this part of Australia.

 This was really the worst of what we encountered.  I drove since I have 20 years of driving a manual transmission in the snow under my belt.  To be fair, I learned to drive on a manual transmission Toyota Camry...so this was pretty familiar for me.

We took it slow and got home safely.  We are now rugged up (dressed warmly and under blankets) by the fire with tea.  Hopefully the "alpine conditions" as they are apparently called, wont last long!