A pair of Victorian grey nomads have spoken of their horror at watching their caravan and car disappear in Queensland’s Inskip Point sinkhole on the weekend … but also of their enormous relief at getting out uninjured.
It seems that if Dieter Gass had not got up to take his dog, Georgie, for a late-night stroll, both he and wife Jenny might have still been in the van when the waters claimed it.
As he walked around the campsite in the moonlight, Dieter saw the sea foam bobbing in a circle far closer to the caravan than it should have been. The couple had set up camp more than 100 metres from the tide mark.
Dieter immediately raised the alarm and Jenny leapt from the van in her pyjamas. Just 25 minutes later, the massive sinkhole had claimed the couple’s pride and joy.
“He took the dog out to go to the toilet and there was a sinkhole 20 metres away from us,” Jenny told the Sunshine Coast Daily. “It was 20ft deep. It was like a cliff.”
As other campers fled to higher ground, Dieter desperately tried to hook the caravan up and pull it to safety.
“But the angle of the car…the ground started to come away from him,” Jenny told the Sunshine Coast Daily. “But he got away.”
The couple described their van, which they bought a couple of years ago with an ensuite and a slide-out bedroom, as ‘home’.
They believe their insurance will cover their lost vehicles, but the van’s contents were valued at only $1000. They say they have lost everything from wedding rings to clothes and medication.
