Have you ever watched the news, and when the weather comes on they say something like “… and Roma can expect a low of 0 degrees and a high of 32 degrees”?
And you wonder to yourself “… how do they cope with such extremes of temperature…?”
That was us today. We woke cold some time in the middle of the night and I had to get up and turn on the heater. You’d think that we’d have learnt by now, but apparently not.
The reason that I am deliberately vague about the time in the middle of the night is because (a) we don’t have a clock in the van and (b) I really don’t care enough to put on my glasses and look at my phone. Time is not relevant during sleep time.
I went over to the showers and it was brisk – probably single digits – and then the day just got hotter from there.
So let’s start the day in the showers.
The facilities at Roses ‘n’ Things Caravan Park in Barcaldine were beautiful. It was a very clean, green park and everything was just right.
5 stars!
One of the good things about travelling around in the “grey nomad” crowd is that they all seem to have these huge, self-contained vans and they are all set in their ways.
Nobody ever seems to use the caravan park facilities because the facilities (in my limited experience) are nearly almost always empty.
Well, empty except for me.
And so it was again today at the Roses ‘n’ Things Caravan Park in Barcaldine.
I had the whole place to myself! Not a big facility – the men’s only had 2 toilets, 2 showers and a wash basin – but clean, tidy, and empty.
I picked one of the showers (it was an ennie meenie miney mo process, if I’m to be completely honest) and discovered to my surprise the the wall that separated the two shower cubicles was shorter that I am tall.
So if there had been someone in the shower next door, we could have made eye contact.
And if there had been someone in the shower next door and he had been quite tall … well, let’s just say that we wouldn’t have had any secrets between us.
But I was alone, so it all worked out for the best 🙂
But a funny thing did happen while I was enjoying my nice hot shower … there was a horse neighing (whinnying?) right outside the shower block.
That’s something that doesn’t happen every day!
So, without wanting to bore you with all of the details, I showered, dried, dressed and was back at the van in a jiffy.
Kerri was making coffee. (I love that woman!!!)
And then Kerri and I had our usual breakfast conversation:
Kerri: “What is the date today?”
Me: “I dunno.”
Kerri: “Well, do you know what day it is today?”
Me: ”Nope.”
I reckon you have achieved the pinnacle of holiday success when you have no idea what day or date it is.
This must be what retirement is like 🙂 I can’t wait!
We have the pack down of the van down to a fine art. Kerri does the breakfast dishes while I unplug, plug, connect, and disconnect everything as required, so that we are coordinated to the point that we are both finished our respective chores at the time that I am starting Elsie and backing her up to connect to the van.
I wonder if Kerri realises that we have named the car but not the van?
So we had hooked up and rolled out by about 9.15am to head into town to have a look-see before heading east towards Emerald.
And it was already pushing about 22 degrees.
We wandered up and down the main street, looking into the very few stores that are still open.
Barcaldine really is a very pretty little township. Very clean and green and friendly.
There is a cafe in town called the Lounging Emu that (apparently) does a fabulous pizza on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, and you can order by phone or UHF radio!
We had a(nother) coffee in town and then headed out towards Emerald.
First stop was Jericho.
Jericho is a quant little town about an hour east of Barcaldine that capitalises on the biblical story of Joshua and Jericho. There is a Lake Galilee just north of the township, and apparently a Jordan River that flows nearby.
Anyway, Jericho (population 115) is another quaint little town in the middle of nowhere …
Here’s a couple of fun facts.
People in Jericho are good at multi-tasking.
This building houses the council office, library, provides photocopy/fax services, internet facilities, a community room, Medicare office, Centrelink office, Train station and Post Office.
And they have public toilets!
And I’ll bet the place is managed by one person who is busy for only about 10% of their day!!
The second fun fact is that Jericho has Australia’s smallest drive-in theatre.
By my count, full capacity is 32 vehicles.
We drove on to the next township (about another 45 minutes) called Alpha, and stopped for lunch.
It was now over 30 degrees and time to change into shorts.
One of the things that I noticed was that the roads east of Barcaldine are relatively free of roadkill, and there is a great deal more trees and vegetation along the side of the road.
East of Alpha, the roads are very bumpy and uneven, so by the time we arrived in Emerald at about 2.30pm, I felt like I’d been wrestling with Elsie for the last 90 minutes or so.
I also felt like my internal organs had been rearranged 🙁
The roads are also slower – only 100km/hour – probably due to the condition of the roads, and quite narrow in parts … so you see an oncoming road train and say a silent prayer …
We arrived in Emerald, went to the Emerald Tourist Park and jagged the last powered site, and went off into the big smoke to get some groceries.
We are back in civilisation!!
A Woolies, a BigW, a Coles, KFC, McDonalds, Target Country (we love browsing in Target Country to see what specials we can find) … even a Chinese Take-away shop!
We’ve found the Promised Land!
So that’s about all of the news – approx 310km, a bit over 4.5 hours in the car and we are in Emerald.
We were told that there was “entertainment at the fire pit from 4.30” today, so we grabbed our chairs and wandered over.
Bought fish and chips from the Yabby Hut inside the caravan park and got the “Pensioner Pack”. I’m not sure whether to be happy or sad about that.
The lady said that “anyone can get the pensioner pack”, but I think she was only trying to cheer me up.
Entertainment was OK; food was good.
We came back to the van, Kerri made coffee (I love that woman!!) while I started the blog, and now I’m tired and ready for bed.
And it’s still 25 degrees 🙁
No heater for us tonight!
Ciao
Always very interesting. What a great trip