I know that some of you have travelled with us previously.
Not literally travelled with us, because that would be weird. There wouldn’t be enough space in the car for all of you, and when we book a room to stay we only book for the two of us.
What I mean is that you travel with us vicariously through the blog.
So anyway, I know that some of you have travelled with us previously, and you know that at some point in the trip we give the car a name.
Elsie.
That’s what Kerri has called our car. Elsie.
Not exactly the type of name that belongs on the “King off the road”… but it does have her initials on the number plate, so I guess she gets naming rights.
I would have chosen Mustafa, but no, Elsie. Pfft.
I’ll leave it up to you to figure out why the car is called Elsie.
Anyhow, we loaded up Elsie (who calls a car Elsie???) and pulled out of the Charleville Bush Caravan Park at about 8.45am. We thought we’d mix it up a little today 🙂
Just hold that thought for a moment.
So I told you that we were going to the Cosmos Centre last night for the Big Sky Observatory tour.
$30 each. Not the most expensive thing that we are doing on the trip; certainly not the cheapest … but it was a fizzer.
We were due to start at 9.00pm sharp, but at 9.07pm we were still standing around while some of the staff had huddled discussions, and others Googled the weather on the computer.
Apparently there were clouds coming in and they did not feel that they could give us the “full experience” … so they gave us two other options – go into the other dome thing and look at “NASA imagery”, or get a refund.
So seriously … you don’t drive all the way to Charleville to get a refund just because there are “clouds”, so we went for the narrated NASA imagery option instead.
Fizzer 🙁
The shape of the dome meant that everything said had a terrible echo (… echo … echo …) and it was very hard to understand. And then there was the fact that imagery moved across the dome at a speed that made you feel like you were going around and around …
Anyway, it was better than a poke in the eye with a blunt pencil, although only marginally better.
C’est la vie.
So the moral to that story is that if you drive all the way to Charleville, pay $60 for two people to see the Big Sky Observatory and they say that “there are clouds” – take the refund.
But that’s just my opinion.
I realised last night while we were at the Cosmos Centre that I had forgotten to show you yesterday’s trip details, so here it is.
Mitchell to Charleville with no wrong turns. Approx 219 km, 2.5 hours.
So back to the story …
Elsie; 8.45 am; decided mix it up a bit.
We mixed it up by travelling north today, rather than west.
The road that the Charleville Bush Caravan Park is on is called the Diamantina Development Road, and also the longest road in Australia. 1334km.
My mind boggles at the number of dead ‘roos that you would see in 1334km.
All of the distances are big in the west. Nothing is close by.
Left out of the caravan park, left onto the road to Augathella, wind Elsie up to 110km/hour and we were on our way.
The roads and surrounding land is just astonishing – big, brown and it just goes on and on and on …
A quick stop at one of those truck rest stops to “check that I’d attached the caravan correctly” (I didn’t really need to check the van), and then we rolled into Augathella at around 9.45am.
Augathella: population 449.
Two things amused me about the shop in the photo above.
Firstly it is listed as a “friendly grocer”. I would have assumed the “friendly” part – I mean, they are not likely to say that they are an “unfriendly grocer”… are they?
Secondly, the sign proudly announced that they are “open 5 days”, like it is something truly progressive.
Maybe being open 5 days IS progressive for Augathella?
Too early for coffee but a(nother) quick comfort stop at the public conveniences and we were heading towards Tambo.
We hit our first 1000km for the trip just south of the Nive River.
Tambo is another very pretty little town, and we arrived just in time for lunch.
We spent some time browsing the counter lunch menu at the Carrangarra Hotel, strategising what to have for lunch before going to place our order.
You’d think that the first clue for us big city folk was the fact that we were the only two people in the place.
No. Other. Customers.
You’d think that the difficulty we had finding someone who worked at the pub might have been the second clue.
When we found him, he looked at us quizzically, listening carefully to what we wanted to order, before advising that they “aren’t doing meals at the pub at the moment, but that there are two cafe’s in town that are quite good”.
Oh well.
So we went over the road to Cindy’s – a neat little place (also with no customers, I should add) to learn that the lady who owned the place wasn’t called Cindy. Go figure!
We ordered lunch – a beef burger for me; nachos for Kerri. We also ordered coffees. Ate lunch and took the coffees across the road to the park to drink it.
Lunch was OK, but certainly not good enough to warrant any more discussion that that.
We looked at the sights – mainly a restored fire engine …
… and the Tambo Teddies (I don’t know, so don’t ask), then got back into Elsie and pulled out of town. Next stop, Blackall.
Really good roads, 110km/h. Smooth, fast, flat.
We got stuck behind a “Beef Bus” at a set of lights at a roadworks in the middle of nowhere.
“Beef Bus” makes it sound exotic and exciting, but it just looked overcrowded, it was smelly, and I’m guessing that it wasn’t going to end well for the beef.
Which reminds me – we should buy some steak for dinner …
Those road trains are amazing – up to 53m long and essentially a truck cab with 3 semi-trailers hooked on behind.
They are certainly a challenge to overtake – like trying to overtake a cruise ship!
We rolled into Blackall at 1.30pm – another pretty little place that is famous for Jackie the shearer (he held the record for most sheep sheared – 321 sheep in 7 hours 40 minutes in 1892 – for 58 years, and was beaten only when electric shearing equipment was introduced).
Blackall is also home of the Black Stump – used to hold scientific equipment for measuring the position of towns in Queensland.
The Black Stump was considered so far away that anything beyond it to the west was considered to be “Beyond the Black Stump”.
I’m pretty sure that I’ve been to Blackall before – back in My Ergon days – and I had a clear mental picture of what it looked like.
That would have been back in 2005 or 2006 and guess what? It hasn’t changed one little bit.
We had planned to stay in Blackall tonight, but friends of ours – you’ll meet them soon – stayed about 50 minutes north of Blackall at a place called the Lara Wetlands. No power but they have hot showers, at a cost of $25/night.
Bargain. And “just off the highway, 10km before Blackall”.
The driveway in goes for 13km. Thirteen! I travel just a little further than that each day going from home to the city.
So here we are. Beyond the Black Stump, but camping in possibly the most beautiful place I’ve seen in a long time.
We soaked in the free artisan mineral pool, had our showers, took photos of the sunset …
… and are now sitting in the van listening to the (very loud) live show at the other side of the campgrounds.
All of the yee-ha, yahoo kind of music that Mitchell (the son who got married recently, not the town) loves.
It’s been a big day, but a good one.
This is what today’s trip looks like.
402km, 4 hours and 20 minutes according to Google Maps, but actually about 7 hours with comfort stops, meal stops, and tourist stops.
It is so dark here that I had a crack at getting some images of the Milky Way. They turned out OK but I need to download them and post them. Watch this space.
That’s it for today. Time for bed.
Ciao