2 Aussie Nomads

I feel like I need to explain something that I said in yesterday’s blog, specifically about the “deafening silence” at Dunblane. It’s actually quite strange, because normally we have a “noise floor” (to use amateur radio terminology) where there is a constant level of background noise.

Even now – sitting in the van at Winton – I can hear cars and trucks going along the highway, providing some constant white noise. Plus there are trees blowing in the wind, and people talking nearby.

Noise.

But when we were at Dunblane, there were virtually no trees on the property, so no wind noise, and the road to Winton was so far away (maybe a kilometre away) so no noise there either.

So in the absence of any background noise, you just have this aching silence.

And in the silence, any occasional noise that you do hear – like the bed squeak when you roll over, or crickets chirping – just seems so much louder and intrusive. Not necessarily in a bad way, though. Just different.

Maybe the sound of that alleged beeping in the middle of the night too?

When we rolled into Winton (population 1600) yesterday afternoon, it was about 30 degrees. I couldn’t get out of those jeans and into shorts fast enough! By the time we rolled out of the caravan park into the Winton town centre around 4.45pm for the night’s fun, Elsie’s thermometer was reporting it was 38 degrees outside.

So off we went to the Opera in the Outback’s first event (that we planned to attend) called “Sing, sing, sing”. It was intended to be a mix of operatic performances by Opera Queensland (OQ) professionals, with the opportunity for us non-professionals to join in.

And hopefully we will not spoil it 🙁

Most of the pieces that they encouraged us to sing along to were pieces that you would likely know, such as Habanera or Figaro, mashed up with Australian classics, like “Click go the Shears”.

It was all very interactive, and a lot of fun.

The event was held at the Royal Open Air Picture Theatre in the centre of Winton.

The host for the night – a guy named Jason Barry-Smith – was very flamboyant, and seemed to me to be something of a mix between Mr Humphries (from “Are you being served”), and Zsa Zsa Gabor, with his constant encouragement that our singing was “Fabulous, darlings”.

The event started at 6.30pm or so, and finished up just before 8.00pm. We sat in old-fashioned canvas seats, and the BBQ they put on was sausages and onions on bread at $3.00 each.

All in all a fun night.

I think I have said already that we are staying at the Winton Wanderers Caravan Park, just outside of Winton. A new, and very pretty little park with flat, level, drive-through sites and excellent facilities.

We woke this morning to a beautiful sunny day.

After breakfast we did a run into town and a look around and to walk the main street. Also to figure out where tonight’s opera is on, and to see if we could spot any of the pop-ups that OQ are putting on around town during the day.

We were told of a new coffee shop in town called “The Lost Poet” and decided to support local enterprise. Nothing is more than a 5 minute walk in Winton, so we left Elsie where she was parked in the main street, and went for a walk.

Within 5 minutes of sitting down in the Lost Poet, OQ started up a quick performance.

After coffee, we kept walking around town.

There is quite a bit of history in Winton, including Arno’s Garden and Arno’s Wall.

Nope, I don’t really get it either. Arno was either a genius who was way ahead of his time, or a lunatic.

I can only suggest that Mrs Arno must have been a very patient woman, because if I did that at home, I’d be very divorced.

In terms of other history in Winton, Banjo Patterson was probably the headline act, although there were several other things of note that happened here.

There are several pubs in town (I’m thinking 3), and The Gregory Hotel seems to have a bit of a chequered history, with it being knocked down or burnt down several times.

Seems to me that if you book a room at the Gregory, you’d better have your life insurance paid up to date, and your affairs in order.

Or even if you just go there for dinner.

So we had a wander around the township. Such a pretty little town.

It’s hot out here at Winton. 31 degrees.

Back to the van for a rest and some lunch. We decided to have dinner for lunch, and then take some snacky stuff for dinner tonight as it is a BYO food event.

Tonight we are off to see “Do we need another hero?”, which is tonight’s show by OQ. This one is a freebie but tomorrow night is “Dark Sky Sernade” and we paid about $120 each for those tickets. It is out at the Age of Dinosaurs, about 25km out of Winton. That one should be a great show.

MBW is catching up on MasterChef, and I’m looking at emails. All boring stuff, really. Sorry.

That’s about it for today. I hope you are enjoying tagging along.

Ciao

#Retirement2024

#VanLife

Today was a day of firsts. I’ll come to that in a moment.

I barely slept last night. I was up late doing some things and by the time I crawled into bed just after 10.00pm, MBW was already snoring softly.

MBW gave me a copy of “The Tattooist of Auschwitz” as a retirement gift, along with a few other things – chocolate, Minties, and a hat.

So by the time I crawled into bed I was still a little wired and not really ready for sleep. So I pulled out the TToA and read a few chapters. By the time I was ready for sleep, I couldn’t get to sleep.

Argh!

It was really dark in the middle of 40,000 acres. About as dark outside your head with your eyes open, as it is inside your head with your eyes closed.

This dark, in fact. I took a photo of how dark it was just so that you could see for yourself.

BTW the quote under the photo above comes from a line that Sylvester Stalone delivered in the movie Rhinestone.

Not only was it dark, but it was super quiet. So quiet in fact that it was deafening. So deafening in fact that I needed to put in my earplugs just to blot it out.

Yes, I know that sounds counterintuitive, but you’ll have to trust me.

So with my earplugs in, and it not mattering if my eyes were opened or closed because it was just as dark either way, I tried to go to sleep.

And I tried. And I tried. And I tried.

Somewhere around 1245am two things happened. Firstly, my bladder started sending messages to my brain, and they were messages that couldn’t be ignored.

And secondly, my legs started to cramp. Badly.

So I got up, put on a pair of shoes and went outside to stretch my legs and to also take a tinkle.

Now I don’t want to bore you with the moment-by-moment minutiae of daily life, and I certainly don’t want you to think that I am some kind of weird pervert who pees outside, but you need to understand a couple of important things here:

1. The toilet canister light hadn’t come on yet and I could feel it in my water that it would come on at any moment, so I was trying to avoid that at all costs
2. When you are in the middle of 40,000 acres and it is just before 1.00am, and it is super dark, the risks of being seen taking a tinkle outside are so small that they are insignificant. Probably close to zero. Maybe actually zero.

So that done – legs stretched, cramp relieved, and bladder emptied – I crawled back into bed.

And finally went to sleep …

… until about 30 minutes later, when I was right at the bottom of a nice, comfortable REM cycle, MBW shakes me awake and says “something is beeping”.

And then she rolled over and promptly went back to sleep, while I lay there for another couple of hours listening for an urgent screeching of the smoke alarm (or whatever it was), and wondering how I’d missed it. In fact, I couldn’t help but wonder if someone would find our cold, lifeless bodies in the morning because some catastrophe had happened and I’d missed the warning beeps.

But there was no beeping. Nada.

I finally got back to sleep some time later, and – despite only having had a couple of hours sleep – managed to wake in time to see the sun rising in the east. As it does every single day.

And it was a very pretty sunrise, so I took some photos of it to share.

It looks a bit like a sunset, except on the other side of the sky. Funny that.

The other thing that I really wanted to do before we left was to get the drone in the air. The batteries were charged and so I got it set up only to find that the app on my phone was outdated and needed to be reinstalled..

And that was a serious exercise in frustration when you have limited internet access, and the app isn’t available on the Google Play Store. Almost as frustrating as being at work. Sorry 🙁

Anyhow, after lots of jiggery-pokery I finally managed to get it sorted out and the drone was in the air.

The photos are terrible, and that is a combination of inexperience, the sun being low on the horizon, and trying to avoid overhead powerlines.

By breakfast we had run out of water in our tanks, and the toilet light was on, so we ate breakfast, hooked up, and headed into town.

The Barcaldine showgrounds have a dump point and a water tap for filling your tanks – both completely separate and with no risk of cross-contamination. Completely unrelated.

I know I shouldn’t need to say that, but I feel that it is an important point. I must say however that I was curious at the pair of BBQ tongs that someone has left at the dump point, and I am still trying to figure out their purpose in the emptying of a toilet canister.

Hmmm.

Anyhow, toilet canister empty, hands thoroughly washed and sanitised, and here we are filling the water tanks.

Thanks Barcaldine for being such an RV friendly town, and providing such great facilities!

The trip today is from Barcaldine to Winton, a distance of approximately 300km and just over 3 hours travelling time. It is made up of a 1 hour run to Longreach (home of the Qantas museum), then a further 2 hour run to Winton.

The roads were great. Wide, smooth, fast. Plenty of room to pass a B-Triple coming the other way, without fearing that you were about to be run or blown off the road. Plenty of room for overtaking, too.

I had a constant feeling that we were climbing all day. Elsie’s fuel economy reflected that fact too, with the tank registering just north of 20 litres per 100km.

If you do the maths and convert that to a cost per kilometre, it’s … nah. Experience tells me not to ask a question if you don’t want to know the answer.

So while I felt as though we were climbing all day, Wikipedia tells me that Barcaldine is 267m above sea level, Longreach is 191m above sea level, and Winton is 188m above sea level.

That means that … we were actually going downhill overall. Interesting.

We wanted to stop at Ilfracombe – about 15 minutes before Longreach – to have a look at a quirky little pub called the Wellshot Hotel.

And to get a caffeinated beverage.

After a broken night’s sleep, I needed all of the caffeine that I could get 🙁

The other significant event that occurred at Ilfracombe was that I finally had mobile access (thanks Woolworths Mobile!), so I was able to port my service over to another carrier that covers more of the Australian population than any other.

I’m finally back in the land of the living and contactable. Hooray!

It was quick run into Longreach for a quick walk around, and so that we could fuel up Elsie for the next part of the trip to Winton.

Longreach is yet another very pretty little outback Queensland town.

We rolled into Winton a bit after 2.00pm and headed straight for our accommodation for the next 3 nights – the Winton Wanderers Caravan Park. It’s about 5km outside Winton on the way to Cloncurry.

We are here in Winton for the Opera in the Outback, and we will get to see 3 separate events over 3 nights, starting tonight.

But first, let me tell you about today’s firsts:

• It was the first time that we emptied the toilet canister
• It was the first time I had mobile coverage since driving out of Roma
• It was the first time I had the drone in the air
• It was the first time that someone spoke to us on UHF Channel 40 and addressed us directly, due to the signage on the back of the van.

We have a sign on the back of the van that says 2AussieNomads.com UHF40, and we got a call from someone that I didn’t even realise was behind us saying “Supreme 2 Aussie Nomads, I’m coming past you …”.

Not exactly something to celebrate, but that’s why you advertise who you are and what channel you are on. It makes it so much easier for other road travellers to communicate with you.

We are off to “Sing, sing, sing” being put on by Opera Queensland tonight at the Winton Royal Open Air Theatre, so that should be a fun night … I hope.

You’ll hear about that tomorrow. It will be an early night tonight after the opera.

Ciao

#Retirement2024

#VanLife

Pfft.

I’m going to say it again. Pfft.

Last night’s “sunset from the tub full of hot artesian basin water” was a bust. Seriously.

Not the sunset’s fault. The sunset was spectacular. Indescribably beautiful.

Here is some proof, even though the photos simply do not do it justice. You had to be there to see it.

The problem wasn’t even with the tub and the hot artesian basin water. The problem was with the pump that pushes the water from the bore to the tub. Although technically there was nothing wrong with the pump either.

The problem was that Ergon Energy had a “significant outage” that plunged all of the Barcaldine district into the dark ages. Literally. A network outage that started about an hour before sunset and lasted until about an hour after sunset.

No electricity = no pump = no hot tub full of water.

Just the sunset. Which was spectacular.

As I said, the power did eventually come on and we filled the tub and went for a plunge anyway, but it was very dark, with a cool breeze blowing. We had a nice soak after dinner, then put on some warmer clothes and went and sat by the fire for a while and drank coffee.

And listened to the cows mooing, and the sheep baa-ing.

And nothing else. Not a sound. Well, maybe a few crickets.

We also spent some time looking up at the Milky Way and named all of the constellations that we could. Beautiful.

I wonder what the poor people are doing?

Monday morning, and we woke to a beautiful day. Sunny, warm, blue skies.

We had no particular plans for today, and David (the lucky guy who owns these 40,000 acres) was dubious of our claim that we would be happy just sitting around, reading books, and napping.

He proposed an alternative plan. A self-drive tour of his property.

All we had to do was follow the road leading out of camp towards the shearing shed. Not the road that we came in on, which could hardly be described as a road, but the one leading in the other direction.

Which, as it turns out, was even less of a road than the one we came in on.

Lucky we didn’t bring the Ferrari on this trip – it would never have made it!

We followed the road for about 15 minutes, saw some kangaroos and emus, and finally made it across the train line (that’s the QR Travel line to Winton), and to the shearing shed.

David’s instruction was that we should text him when we got to the shearing shed, and he would give us instructions for the self-drive tour.

Although we texted him, unfortunately he was tied up and didn’t respond. We found out later that he was busy unbogging a bogged caravan.

Probably that turkey from Victoria that I complained about yesterday.

If a less than perfect road and no response from David were the biggest problems that we have today, then it’s a pretty good day.

We decided to head back into town (Barcaldine) to have a look around. It was only 5km or so and I think that Elsie appreciated the opportunity to let those horses run free, without Percy on the back.

In fact, we (I) had a bigger problem than just David not responding. If you cast your mind back a few days to when we went through Roma, that was the last time that I had mobile coverage. Several months ago I ported across to Woolworths mobile on the understanding that it was on the Telstra network, and to have the added bonus of 10% off one shop at Woolies each month.

And given how much we spend at Woolies each month, that meant that the Woolworths mobile plan would pay for itself!

Bargain. NOT!

Roma was the last time that my phone connected to a network and I was able to send or receive calls and text messages. MBW’s phone still works and is getting good reception and decent internet, but mine?

Nada.

Here we are, centre of Barcaldine, underneath a Telstra mobile tower, and no mobile coverage on my phone. Zip.

It turns out, as my learned oldest son informs me, that Woolworths mobile is on the Telstra Wholesale network, not the “real Telstra network”.

And he’d know, because he works for them.

So that means that I am doomed to no mobile coverage for most of this trip. Unless …

We went to the local Barcaldine IGA and got me a Boost Mobile SIM card. Boost are on the “real” network. MBW is on Boost, and she gets good reception and internet – remember?

All I had to do was to activate the SIM and my phone is alive again. Except …

To activate a SIM, you have to be able to receive a text message with a code in it. To receive a text message, you have to have mobile coverage. And I don’t have mobile coverage.

Bugger.

So we had a quick poke around Barcaldine, got some groceries and some more cash, and headed back to camp for a quick lunch.

By this time it was hot – about 30 degrees, so we changed into shorts and T-shirts, had a quick bite of lunch, and headed back to the shearing shed for the self-drive tour, take #2.

With instructions from David, and in possession of the black folder that gives us the detailed directions, we headed off.

The self-drive tour is the opportunity for us city-slickers to get out and have a look at how the other half – our country cousins – live. On our little 400m² blocks, it is quite hard to comprehend the size of David’s 40,000 acres. And I’m sure that we only saw a small part of it.

It is also an opportunity to let Elsie do what she was designed to do – go off-road.

It also turns out that David is smarter than the average bear. The self-drive tour is constructed to be followed as though we are working for him and doing a property check, looking for issues with the fence, checking the water tanks/troughs, and checking for any evidence of his sheep being killed by wild dogs.

His instructions are quite specific about how to check the water level in the tanks, and checking the condition of some of the equipment that he has around the property.

In one of the photos above you can see the dog fence, designed to keep wild dogs out, and to keep his sheep safe. And they are designed in a compartmentalised way so that if a dog does get it, it is confined to one small area and can’t go any further.

In fact, the dog fence surrounds and protects several properties, covering several hundred thousand acres.

As a part of the tour, you are asked to send him any photos or reports of any issues on the property. Seems like a very clever way to get people to see a part of his world, and for him to get property reports without having to have to go out and do it himself 🙂

The tour took us about 2 hours to complete, and we travelled about 15km, and it was well worth the experience!

Here is a fun fact – I read somewhere that David has approximately 10,000 sheep on his property, and that he also has more kangaroos than sheep.

Once we’d completed the tour, we headed back to camp for coffee and a rest. We spent some time looking around the camp, and checking out the neighbours.

It is obviously lambing season because there are lots of these little fellas running around the paddock.

I had wanted to put the drone (Sam’s drone) up to get some photos this afternoon, but it seems that I neglected to confirm that the batteries were charged before I left home, so I put them all onto charge ready for tomorrow morning.

Fortunately we have power here at this campsite, so while we are very remote, we still have the ability to run 240V appliances, and charge drone batteries.

I busied myself with getting the tub ready for sunset tonight, given that Ergon Energy had lifted their game and we had power restored.

Last night we found that the water – while it comes out at about 45 degrees – it is not quite hot enough to be really relaxing. David has a hot water donkey that you can hook up to get the water even hotter.

That was all a bit of an exercise in frustration because the water pressures are not great, and so it was hard to get the water flowing effectively through the donkey, and the hoses are old and cracked, and the connections are bad … but being the resourceful people that we are, we found a way.

Where there’s a will … as they say.

Tonight we got to sit in the hot tub and watch the sun go down … and what another spectacular sunset it was.

Sunset was about 5.47pm tonight, so you can see how that unfolded – from the luxury of a hot tub.

Dinner, coffee and a sit by the fire for a while. What better way is there to end the day?

Tomorrow we are packing up and heading off to Winton, about 3 hours away. Fortunately Woolworths Mobile considers Longreach (on the way from Barcaldine to Winton) worthy of their mobile service. So we will stop there briefly to start the porting process and bring me back into the 21st century.

I’ve been cut off from the world for so long that I have been practicing smoke signals, just in case.

Winton is the place where we will stay for 3 nights, and we will get to experience the Opera in the Outback. It should be amazing – even though we are not opera buffs.

Winton is also the place where the water smells awful, full of sulphur … so we will be stopping in town (Barcaldine) to top up the tanks so that we have sufficient clean water to get us through the next few days.

We are still having fun, and hope that you are too!

Ciao

#Retirement2024

#VanLife

Every good road trip needs a good theme song.

Normally my go-to road trip theme song is “On the road again”, by Willie Nelson. But I have used that one a few too many times already.

This is a long road trip, so maybe a long theme song. Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”, or Billy Joel’s “Piano Man”. Or maybe Don McLean’s “American Pie”?

Without any consultation with MBW, I’ve decided that the theme song for this trip is Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t worry, be happy”. Or perhaps the lesser known “Don’t HURRY, be happy”. We have all the time in the world, and only a few key (booked) places that dictate our direction and speed.

Last night we went to the rodeo. It was a fun night, but it got cold out under the stars. And then it got colder.

For some reason, I thought that the rodeo was starting around 2.00pm, and we would be home for dinner. As it turns out, we didn’t get back to town until around 9.00pm, and by then I needed coffee badly.

I would have done anything for a coffee at the rodeo, but that was one beverage that was simply not on offer.

So we got back to Percy around 9.00pm, and had a late coffee, then I did the blog.

One of the goals of this trip is to do things as cheaply as possible. That doesn’t mean that we are trying to be cheap or to cut corners, just that we are trying to live as cheaply as we can.

One of the ways that we can do that is by staying at showgrounds or public camping areas at little to no cost. Like the last two nights in Augathella (only $10/night).

But staying in public camping areas at little to no cost also means that we are generally off the grid – we have no connection to water or power and we just use water from our tanks and power from our batteries.

Like the last two nights in Augathella.

But being off the grid is a double-edged sword. No power or water hook-up means little to no cost, but it also means that we have no possible way of running a small electric space heater to warm up the van when it is cold.

And it was cold last night in Augathella. Very cold.

MBW put an extra blanket on the bed, had a hot shower (gas heated), and hopped into bed. I then disrobed ready for my hot shower and noticed that the fridge was flashing an error.

No gas available. The first gas bottle had run out of gas, and they have to be manually switched across from the empty one to the full one.

And that has to be done outside the van. Where it is cold. And I was already undressed.

Sigh 🙁

So I got dressed, went outside, switched the gas over, got the fridge and hot water going again, and started the process of my hot shower all over again.

If every road trip needs its own theme song, some days need their own theme song too. And today’s theme song would have been “Blue skies, smiling at me”, by Willie Nelson. Or perhaps Jimmy Cliff’s “I can see clearly now (the rain is gone)”.

It was a picture-perfect blue sky outback Queensland day. Clean air, birds singing, and a slight chill in the air.

Perfect.

Today we are heading towards Barcaldine (or Barcal-dine, if you are talking to Larry). Larry is yesterday’s news. I’m not explaining Larry again.

Dunblane to be precise. Dunblane Queensland, not Dunblane Scotland, just to be clear.

About a 3 hour trip north, through Tambo and Blackall.

We paid our $20 donation before departing Augathella, and we were rolling out the gates of the campsite around 9.00am.

The streets of Augathella were absolutely deserted. Not a person to be seen anywhere, and I had to wonder if the Apocalypse had occurred and I’d missed it because I wasn’t paying attention.

And then I remembered the rodeo. And the drinking. And I figured out where everybody was hiding this morning 🙂

The drive was nice. The road from Augathella to Barcaldine is another one we have driven before – not that I remember it specifically – but it is not a bad road. A bit bumpy in places where Elsie gets thrown to the left, and then to the right while Percy is being thrown the other way. So a few moments of brief but intense excitement where I wasn’t sure whether we would become airborne, or the ESC would kick in and we would come to a screeching stop.

But we made it through.

The road to Barcaldine is basically broken up into 3 x 1 hour sections. 1 hour to Tambo, another hour to Blackall, then a final hour to Barcaldine.

We stopped once briefly at a rest stop to empty out the grey water tank, and then kept going until we hit Tambo. Gave Elsie a big drink and then went in search of coffee.

Tambo is a pretty little township that is barely more than a main street with a pub, and not much is open on a Sunday morning. We did manage to find a little coffee shop and stopped to give ourselves a big drink and something to eat.

It had become quite overcast again and quite cold, so we put on jumpers and warm clothes.

It all feels a bit silly to have to slow down to 40km/h to drive through a little township, and then speed up to 110km/h again a few minutes later.

On our way out of Tambo, a couple of things became immediately obvious.

Firstly, the skies were clearing again and we had blue sky and fluffy white clouds.

And secondly, the roads were getting much better … except for when they were bad, and then they were very bad. I’m sure that you know what I mean, though.

I’ve said before that I am happy to puddle along at 95-100km/h, yet the roads were (generally) so smooth and good that every-so-often I would find myself doing 110-120km/h without realising it.

We pulled into Blackall around 12.30pm, noting that our check-in time for tonight’s (booked) stay is 2.00pm. We needed some groceries (salad stuff), so we stopped at the local IGA to get a couple of things.

The Blackall IGA is like stepping back in time. Each checkout had two people manning it – one to ring up your purchases, and one to pack them into a bag. And then if you needed help with your groceries, someone would carry them out to your car and load them for you.

I haven’t seen service like that since I was about 12 years old!

We only bought tomatos and a bag of salad, so we were able to cope with them ourselves, despite being retirees.

Blackall is another pretty little country town best known for … what? You will need to read to the end to find out!

The trip from Blackall to Barcaldine was uneventful, except for a turkey from Victoria towing a van who had a bad habit of slowing down to 80km/h every time there was oncoming traffic, and then speeding up to 110km/h when there wasn’t. That makes it very hard to overtake, especially when they hog the centre lane making it impossible to see what’s coming, and give you no clues if it is safe to overtake.

But I overtook him anyway and left him in my dust.

Turkey.

Tonight we are staying about 10km outside of Barcaldine at the Gretel Cattle Yards.

David (the owner) has 40,000 acres, and I reckon we have about 5,000 of them to ourselves … complete with a tub that is filled with hot artesian basin water. That’s where I will be sitting come sunset.

I’ll put up some pictures tomorrow, but for now this is a few pictures of the road in, and camp for the next couple of nights.

It’s an early blog today. I need to get that tub full of hot water.

Now for the answer to tonight’s quiz: What is Blackall known for?

Answer: The Black Stump. It was used as a geographical marker way back when, and colloquially anything west of that is “beyond the black stump”.

That’s where we are now.

Ciao

#Retirement2024

#VanLife

Rain, rain, rain.

I didn’t think it rained much in these parts, but the heavens opened last night. Although I seem to recall reading recently that some of the roads we will be travelling have been closed due to flooding, so perhaps I should have paid more attention.

In any case, we woke this morning to discover Percy was surrounded by water. The view from inside looking out wasn’t promising.

But outside it was even worse. We were surrounded 🙁

I think I finished last night’s post by saying that the pub was in full swing. It all got a bit crazy around 10.00pm, with a woman screaming out something like “will you all just cut it out”, followed by cars revving, and then screaming up the road.

Another big Friday night at the Augathella pub.

Our Ying and Yang was a bit mixed up last night. Or perhaps we reverted to our traditional sleeping roles … MBW put her head on the pillow and was instantly making sleeping noises, while I tossed and turned for a couple of hours.

Despite me being awake and MBW being asleep, she reported to me this morning that the fun at the pub got even wilder around 1.00am, with more shouting, and engines revving, and cars screaming, and tyres squealing.

I’d obviously managed to fall asleep, because I missed all of that. Or maybe it was the earplugs that blocked out reality.

It turns out that I didn’t hear the rain either, but apparently it rained heavily during the evening. There was plenty of evidence of that when I woke.

Today was intended to be a quiet rest day in Augathella. We only had two things that we really needed to achieve today: getting milk because we were getting low, and getting coffee from the local cafe because … well, because we needed coffee and we are not connected to power, which makes the coffee machine kinda useless.

So that was it for the day. Coffee and milk.

We had a surprise FaceTime call with a couple of our favourite little people (Teddy and Lili), so that topped up our emotional tanks for the morning before we set off in search of coffee and milk.

The “Friendly Grocer” – staffed by not-so-friendly people, as it turns out – advertises that they are open “5.5 days/week”, so we had a working assumption that if we hadn’t purchased milk by 12.00 noon, we wouldn’t be purchasing milk any time soon.

So off we set.

We were also aware that the rodeo was on tonight, and the lady in the butcher said it was an easy walk to the rodeo place, just up the road. So we thought that it was worth an afternoon’s entertainment.

We successfully achieved the coffee and milk tasks, and headed back to Percy … only to be greeted by a male voice calling out “anybody home?”.

Meet Larry. Larry is a retiree (like us, it seems), who gets around in a triple axle van and he makes and sells caravan accessories like A-frame covers, clotheslines, spare wheel covers, and stickers for your van.

Larry went to great lengths to tell us that he has a ”lady friend” but she is away at the moment, and that he likes to meet up with other 40+ solo travellers for companionship.

To be honest, it all sounded a bit creepy to me and I felt like I was being groomed for something unpleasant, but maybe I imagined it. Although in retrospect, I think that Larry was pretty harmless.

Larry also gave us a status report on the rodeo. He’d ridden his bicycle over there this morning and that “he’s seen more action at a funeral”. Noting that this was only about 11.00am and the rodeo didn’t open until 12.00, and didn’t start until 2.00pm, that may have been a harsh assessment by Larry, but it certainly had me questioning whether a Saturday night rodeo was worth the $15 each (“cash only”) for the outing.

The funniest part of the whole experience though, was Larry’s inability to pronounce words correctly.

Every time he said rodeo, it came out as rode-ao (as in Rodeo Drive), and every time he said Barcaldine, it came out as Barcal-dine (rather than Barc-aldine).

You had to be there. But I thought it was funny.

So the afternoon was just another happy retiree experience: having lunch, reading our books, having a nap, and talking about bowel movements.

Or maybe I imagined the bowel movement conversation …?

So at about 1.30pm, we started the 15 minute trek to the rodeo. Which took us closer to 30 minutes. It seemed that the butcher lady lied to us.

We watched the peewee barrel races (I think that’s what they are called when you ride your horse around three barrels and back to the finish line), then the juniors, then the adults.

If you look closely in that top photo, you can see a second set of legs behind the horse’s front legs – that was mum holding the kid so she didn’t fall off.

And the girl in the second photo was more interested in waving at the officials than anything else.

As the contestants got older and more experienced, there was more speed, more excitement, more spectacular falls, and more swearing.

Like the lady whose horse decided that it didn’t want to play this silly barrel game, and just wanted to run full speed around the outside of all the barrels with the rider screaming “I can’t stop this $#*&ing horse …”. No points for that effort I’m sorry to say, but it gave us a giggle.

So that was the barrel races, and then we had a 30 minute break (that lasted 90 minutes) before the main event. If I heard the ringmaster say “we are not too far off starting now …” once, I heard it a thousand times.

The main event. Bull riding. Bronco riding. Bareback riding.

Danger. Excitement. Broken bones. Clowns. Injuries. Spectacular falls into the mud. Ambulances.

The main event was to be conducted in the main arena, so we grabbed ourselves a couple of steak burgers, and settled in for the night.

I’ve never been to a rodeo before, but at least now when I say “it’s not my first rodeo”, I can say it truthfully.

I’m really not sure how to describe the evening, except to point out a few of the things that stood out. There were flies. Lots and lots of flies. And I reckon I inhaled more passive cigarette smoke tonight than I have previously in my whole life. It seems that the usual rules of smoking don’t apply in Augathella.

The bar was the place to be, but there was no real surprises there, given our experience with the pub last night.

I also felt a little under-dressed, as I had neglected to pack my boots and spurs. I also neglected to pack a decent jumper, and the night grew steadily colder.

At some point in the evening, MBW suggested that I walk back to camp and get the car and some chairs. Fortunately the nice man at the ticket gate – once I had divulged my plans to him to walk back to town – stopped the very next vehicle heading out the gate and instructed “young Luke” to “drive this man back to town”. So I didn’t have to walk after all.

Thanks Luke (who used to live in town but now lives in Cunnamulla, and who had no working seatbelts in his car.)

I can also report that they love the Land Cruisers out here. At least we fit it there.

Anyhow, the rodeo was probably what I expected, and far more messy that you see on television. MBW kept up a running commentary that “it doesn’t happen like that on ’Heartland’”.

This is how it unfolded for one rider …

Yep, it was all a bit of a blur. No points scored, and probably no likelihood of him ever having children in the future. Maybe not walking without a limp, either.

I expect that there are going to be a number of people feeling sore and sorry tomorrow, if the number of people thrown from a horse or bull and hit the ground badly is any indication. And then there was the one or two that needed medical assistance.

And I expect that there will be an ever greater number of people nursing very sore heads in the morning too.

It’s a funny thing – at home I never have cash and never carry it, yet in Augathella cash is king. Cash for entry to the rodeo, cash for the steak burgers, cash for drinks.

No EFTPOS, just cash.

I’m going to have to go in search of an ATM, because I only have enough cash left for the $20 donation for camping in this park for two nights.

We are off to Dunblane (near Barcaldine) in the morning, for a couple of nights of something that promises to be spectacular. But that will be tomorrow’s news.

On the bright side, with the rodeo on tonight the pub is closed, so it will be a quiet night in town!

And ever better news is that I can see stars in the sky tonight. Not a cloud to be seen, so hopefully we will have a couple of nice sunny days ahead (as forecast), and everything will dry out.

Ciao

#Retirement2024

MBW and I are like Ying and Yang.

One of us likes sultanas (bizzy-wizzies) in their breakfast cereal and raisin toast, the other doesn’t. One of us likes roller-coasters, and the other is always happy to stand and hold the bags.

One of us eats green peas, while the other doesn’t like them (… not that I ever get them because they are never served). Oops, sorry.

One of us sleeps well, and the other … well, you know how it goes.

History has taught me that while I will wake at 4.00am and say to myself, ”well, only two hours to the alarm .. I’ll never get back to sleep now” (glass half empty), MBW will wake at 5.55am and say ”beauty, another 5 minutes” (glass half full), and go back to sleep.

Seriously, MBW could sleep standing up in a hurricane.

But not last night.

Last night we stayed at the Wallumbilla (population 191) Showgrounds. $10 donation for water and power hook-up, remember? A bargain.

Turns out it was also close to the highway. Close enough that you could throw a rock and hit passing trucks. And that would have been like shooting fish in a barrel, because the trucks heading towards Brisbane were all frantically applying their compression/engine brakes to slow down as they are coming into the 60km/h zone into Wallumbilla. All night.

All. Night. Long.

But here is the funny thing. The one of us that doesn’t sleep well (me) put my head on the pillow and was off in the land of nod instantly and slept solidly for 8 hours or more, while MBW tossed and turned all night. I could speculate on the reasons for that – unconfessed sin, for example – but that would not be helpful or productive, so I won’t go there.

So I had a restful sleep, and MBW listened to trucks. (And me snoring, if you can believe everything that she says).

We were up, showered, fed, caffeinated, and rolling out the gate of the showgrounds before 9.00am, headed west again towards Augathella (population 328), home for the next couple of nights.

First stop for the day was Roma, to see the Pope. Kidding! The Pope lives in Rome, which is an entirely different place to Roma. A bit further North, and West I think …

We topped up Elsie’s tanks – just to take away any risk of running out of fuel in the middle of nowhere – and then went in search of Coles. Coles have a couple of specials on sale this week that we wanted to get.

Turns out that there is no Coles in Roma. The Project Manager in me really should have checked that before we left civilisation, so we took a detour to Woolworths instead to pick up some necessities.

Now, I know what you are thinking. We’ve only been on the road for less than 24 hours and you’d expect that it would have taken a little longer than that to run out of essentials … but alas, no. It actually didn’t take very long at all to discover that we had failed to pack any toilet paper. Not a single sheet of the stuff.

And I have to tell you, roughing it in the outback takes on a whole new perspective when you have no toilet paper!

So equipped with TP and a few other (slightly less urgent) essentials, we were back on the road, heading towards Mitchell.

Mitchell is a pretty little outback Queensland town where I would love to spend a week. It has artesian water swimming pools where you can soak those aches right out of your weary body, and it also has our favourite little outback supplies shop in the universe. Even better than Walmarts in the USA.

It had been predetermined that we would stop there, come hell or high water.

It is a rickerty old building with uneven wooden floors, and you can buy everything there. Well, maybe not everything, but it feels that way.

Cowboy/cowgirl clothes, boots, Crocs, Yeti drink coolers, hats (both Akubras and Stetsons), saddles and bridles, blankets, a gun safe, and stuff to kill intestinal worms in your livestock. Everything, I tell you!

MBW bought a nice pink checked shirt that I’m certain will appear in future photos, and it was also necessary because she’d forgotten to pack a decent shirt for the Opera in the Outback in Winton next week. Just like she forgot to pack toilet paper.

We were going to stop at the Mitchell bakery to get something for a snack, but we decided to keep moving towards Morven and stop at the coffee van that was parked at the side of the road last time we passed through Morven … maybe 2020? I mean, what could possibly go wrong with that plan?

Prepare yourself for disappointment (and no caffeine) Geoffrey, because the coffee van wasn’t there this time. What a surprise! And given that Morven has a population of only 125 peeps, it’s hardly like there is a plethora of other coffee shop options there. Sigh.

So we kept plugging along towards Augathella.

The roads are pretty long, straight and boring and given that we have driven these roads before – not that I can specifically remember them – there was nothing of note that we wanted to see or do. We have previously driven some of this road, but we passed the turnoff to Charleville and drove the bit towards Augathella for the first time ever.

A bit of rain – heavy at times – but nothing of particular note to report. Not much traffic.

Although the strangest and most unlikely things can bring humour to your day. There has been quite a bit of roadwork going on along these roads, so I can only presume that it is an election year.

Sorry, that probably sounded like sarcasm 🙁

Google maps is a wonderful thing, because it alerts you to speed traps, congestion, and road works. Except when you don’t have any mobile coverage (which was my reality for most of the trip today), in which case you have to look for ”roadwork ahead” signs, just like in the olden days.

Anyhow, we have had several occasions where we have stopped at a red light – literally in the middle of nowhere – to wait for traffic coming the other way to pass, so that it is our turn.

We came to some roadworks somewhere between Wallumbilla and Morven (can’t remember where sorry … a lack of caffeine will do that to you), and there was a set of traffic lights (red, of course), with a traffic control lady standing there with a clicker to make the lights change colour.

Seriously? I can get Chat GPT to write a beautiful poem for MBW for her birthday, but they can’t get a set of remote traffic lights to change by themselves without a lady in PPE with a clicker?

But the lady with the clicker wasn’t the funniest part. When she clicked and gave us a green light to go, she then waved us onto the wrong (right) side of the road to travel a couple of kilometres, while there was absolutely no roadwork happening on the correct (left) side of the road.

I mean, seriously? There was no digging, no people working, no roadwork, no machinery. NOTHING! We drove a couple of kilometres on the wrong side of the road looking at nothing happening on the correct side of the road!

And when we got to the other end of the ”roadwork”, there was another lady in full PPE, with another clicker, waving us back onto the correct side of the road.

I had to wonder if we were on an episode of ”Candid Camera”. It was really weird.

I needed a stretch after driving for a few hours with no break for coffee (sigh), so we determined that we would stop at the very next rest area that we saw. It was only another couple of kilometres down the road but was rather unequipped and uninspiring, with only a drop toilet and a wheelie bin.

I stretched, emptied the bag of rubbish in the car at the nearest wheelie bin, but couldn’t bring/brace myself to use the drop toilet, so we kept on towards Augathella. It was only another 10km or so.

The next act of complete randomness was signage on the road to Augathella that tells you that playing trivia can help you to stay awake.

First roadside trivia question: “What is the mascot for the Augathella football team?” Answer: The Meatant.

Next trivia question: ”Why was there only one trivia question?” They obviously don’t know much trivia around here, because they only had one trivia question.

Or they only want you to stay focussed for a very short time. Who knows?

Augathella (population 328) is another pretty little town in western Queensland. We have found a little public camping area that is $10/night donation for no power or water. Not quite the bargain that we got in Wallumbilla, but it is also not next to the highway.

There is not much to see in Augathella, but we heard that the local butcher is worth a look, so we did a wander up one side of the main street and back down the other.

We stopped at the local BoQ branch/Centrelink office and had a look at their gallery of black and white historical photos, but we had an attack of the guilts because we didn’t have any cash to make a gold coin donation.

As I said earlier, we are camped in the local park and didn’t even bother to unhook Elsie again, even though we are here for a couple of nights.

We stopped at the butcher to buy some steak and got a big lump of 1 inch thick porterhouse (to share, sadly) for dinner, and then went back for a nap (me) and for MBW to read her book for a while.

I ducked across the road to the pub to get a ”minimum chips” ($5) to have with our steak and salad was rewarded with a beautiful rainbow while I was waiting.

Dinner, blog and I am ready for coffee. I’m going to have to get out the generator and get some emergency power going for the coffee machine to work.

It turns out that the Augathella rodeo is on in town tomorrow (who would’ve known? Maybe that’s why there are so many vans here?), so that sounds like a bit of fun. I don’t expect that MBW will let me have a go riding a bull, even though I have the appropriate hat to wear.

One thing is for sure though – if we go to the butcher again tomorrow I’ll be avoiding the mince meat, because you never know what (or who) could be in it after a day of unsuccessful bull riders getting thrown off a bull and trampled.

Time for coffee. I can hear the locals across the road at the pub and I’m thinking of Lee Kernaghan’s ”Boys from the Bush”. I’m hoping that they won’t be at it for too long.

Ciao

#Retirement2024