Today’s blog starts off with a puzzle.
What do manchester, children’s wear, coffee, jewellery, luggage, women’s wear, menswear, undergarments, shoes and embroidery have in common? I’ll tell you the answer to that a little later in the blog.
We rolled out of Mitchell at about 8.55am – about 30 minutes after our effort the day before … but then we had nowhere that we needed to be and all day to get there.
The Major Mitchell Caravan Park in Mitchell was a nice little park, although a bit random in the layout. There seemed to be vans everywhere, at all angles.
I’d suggest that it was organised chaos, except it wasn’t really organised at all 🙁
Probably the biggest drawback of many small town caravan parks is also it’s greatest draw card – they are located right on the highway. Easy to find, but the sound of road trains rolling through the centre of the caravan park all night (… well, that’s what it feels like!) can keep you awake 🙁
One of the great things about travelling around in the van is that you stay at a different place – and see different people – every day. That means that there is no requirement to make any special effort to think about what to wear … I can wear the same things every day and nobody will ever know!
I do draw the line at socks and jocks – but everything else can be recycled indefinitely! Bonus!
Maybe not indefinitely, but certainly until they are ready to be burned.
First stop today was Morven – about 1 hour from Mitchell. I’ll say that the reason we stopped was to get fuel, but the real reason was something else entirely. Faulty plumbing. You know how it is.
So we got fuel and then the second stop for the day was Morven (again). We saw a sign that said “Coffee van a head”.
That’s not a typo BTW. It was actually written “a head”.
I figured that they can’t be bad at both spelling AND making coffee, so we stopped.
It wasn’t the worst coffee I’ve ever had, but not the best either. No donut, and the price was more than the $3 coffee and donut special, but it was coffee all the same and came out of a fancy coffee machine that made all of the correct coffee noises.
Morven is a pretty little place, population approx 250.
Just the simple act of stopping increased the population at that moment in time by almost 1%! How’s that for having some significance and making a difference?
The roads were much better today. I watched the average fuel consumption fall from something around 20 litres/100km down to just under 16 litres/100km.
We sat on 100-110 km/hour and watched the red dirt and blue skies roll past.
It seems that there is an unwritten code of the road west of Roma that you have to wave to every driver of every vehicle that passes you headed in the opposite direction.
On today’s trip from Mitchell to Charleville I think that we sat behind a road train for a while, passed a Ford Ranger towing a huge dual axle van about 4 times (every time we stopped he went by again), and were overtaken by one vehicle.
That’s about it for people travelling from Mitchell west to Charleville. But it seemed that the whole world was travelling from Charleville back to Mitchell … so I spent the morning waving at every vehicle that was going in the other direction!
And I have to say that I was getting a little concerned that almost nobody was going to Charleville, but everybody was coming back from Charleville … and I had to wonder why …?
We rolled into Charleville at around 11.30am.
First thing that we saw was the Charleville train station. I thought about going in and saying hi to the locals … maybe tomorrow …
We went through town to the Charleville Bush Caravan Park – tonight’s stop – and dropped off/set up the van under a big, wide Charleville blue sky …
… and then headed back into town to see the sights.
We started off in the main street of Charleville and found a parking spot at one end of the street and went for a walk through town.
After a quick bite at the bakery, we went off to find the Cosmos Centre because we are going there tonight to do the Big Sky Observatory tour. Pretty excited about that, I have to say.
The Cosmos Centre and the RFDS Visitor Centre are located together on the road to Cunnamulla, and we thought it best to find them in the daylight, in order to make it easier tonight.
We started at the RFDS Visitor Centre …
… before heading over to the Cosmos Centre.
I’m really looking forward to the observatory tour tonight, but it doesn’t start until 9.00pm and goes through to 10.00pm or later … so you won’t hear about that until tomorrow’s blog.
So … the answer to today’s puzzle.
What do Manchester, children’s wear, coffee, jewellery, luggage, women’s wear, menswear, undergarments, shoes and embroidery have in common?
You can buy them all at R&P in Charleville!
That’s all for today. Tomorrow I’ll tell you all about the Cosmos Centre experience.
Ciao