Today’s post is brought to you by the letter “M”. And “R”. Oh, and the locksmith.
Last night we stayed at Mick and Kylie’s place – Gidgee’s Bush Camp in Morven. Remember Mick and Kylie? Best friends with Marie Jean, daughter of Ruby – the lady we had dinner with in Quilpie? If you need a reminder you will need to go back and couple of days and re-read it.
The words “Bush Camp” mean that we were free camping again. For those Phillistines amongst you who are not familiar with the concept of free camping, it means camping (or – in our case – glamping) without access to power or water hook-up, so you need to be completely self-sufficient.
The van is set up to allow us to be self-sufficient – as many modern vans are – with water tanks, 12 volt lighting, batteries, solar panels, gas hot water, toilet, etc, etc.
The only things that you miss out on are any appliances that NEED 240v to run, like the air-conditioner, the washing machine, and the microwave.
Oh, and the electric heater. And the electric blankets.
Free camping can be completely free, if you stay at a designated place that is provided by many smaller local councils. Or it can have a small cost if you choose to stay in the relative safety of somebody’s property where – for the camping fee – you may have access to a long-drop toilet, or a camp kitchen. We paid about $15 for the night for the 2 of us to stay at Gidgee’s.
In our case at Gidgee’s, they supplied plenty of free firewood and fire pits and also had a camp kitchen.
So I mentioned that we didn’t have an electric heater. It was cold last night, and colder this morning. Now I won’t give you a number for how cold it was – I’ll give you a description.
Picture this: I was standing sans PJs waiting for the hot water to run in the shower*, and I realised that I was breathing steam out of my nose with each exhaled breath. It was cold!
* OK, so I can hear some of you saying “why didn’t you just let the water run hot and fill the van with steam before going sans PJs? Elementary my dear Watson: Because we only carry very limited water and the hot water system runs out very quickly, so conservation is the name of the game.
Morven is a pretty little place, but I have to confess that they all start to blend into each other after a while 🙁 Morven had a pub, and fuel station, and a coffee cart, and … hmmm. That’s about it.
Out in the west you often see signs warning of road trains that can be up to 53m long. I think that the point of the warning is that you shouldn’t underestimate how long they are if you are planning to overtake one. It’s a bit like overtaking an ocean liner.
As we were pulling out of Morven this morning, one of those 53m road trains rumbled past and then stopped at the fuel station just up the road. It doesn’t really seem to be that long, but I just had to know …
OK, so the road train wins this round.
The further west that you travel, the greater the chance that drivers of passing (oncoming) vehicles will wave at you. Drivers of other vehicles towing caravans, in particular. It’s almost like a secret wave of people in the “caravan club”.
And I have to say, it all becomes a bit exhausting after a while.
The roads from Thargomindah up to Quilpie, and from Quilpie back through Charleville have relatively few vans, so it hasn’t been such a problem, but the bit from Charleville back towards Roma has had more vans, and consequently more waving.
To be honest it is wearing me out, and I’ve started to just raise my right index finger in a vague attempt to show some courtesy to other drivers.
The further east that we travel though, I’ve noticed that there is less of a predisposition for other drivers to wave, and I expect that it won’t be long before other drivers will be giving me a very different one fingered salute, and not because they are being friendly.
I’ve also noticed some other things about the roads the further east we travel.
Firstly, there is a great deal more roadkill to avoid. Further west there was only the occasional dead ‘roo/emu/pig on the road, but now we are seeing them all of the time.
Secondly, we are seeing a great deal more trucks and road trains on the highway. I also suspect that the relationship between the increase in trucks and the increase in roadkill is not entirely coincidental.
The third observation is that the roads east of Charleville have become more “interesting”. They are not as straight and flat. They do not have vast expanses of barren land either side but rather we are starting to see more field and trees. And we are also seeing painted lines on the road – something that we haven’t seen since about St George.
So anyway, we pulled out of Morven at about 10.00am after stopping to look at some of the bags that Kylie makes at Gidgee’s. Now I know that a 10.00am departure makes it seem like we got off to a slow start today, but we really did stop for coffee and to look at Kylie’s products – you can see them here if you don’t believe me.
First stop for the day after leaving Morven was Mungallala, a small “blink and you will miss it” kind of township with a population of about 137 people and absolutely nothing of interest except for a public toilet.
Mungallala has the dubious honour of being named the poorest township in Australia.
Apparently the average income of the residents is $3,000/pa. I’m not sure how they survive on only $3,000/pa, but I can assure you that there is no McDonald’s, no Hungry Jacks and no other places to spend your money. There is a pub, but if Mungallala is anything like every other small township we’ve passed through, there is unlikely to be a chef or bar staff there, so it is unlikely to be doing much business.
Another interesting factoid about Mungallala is that the last time the local policeman needed to use the lights and siren on his police vehicle was to scare his neighbour who was walking down the middle of the road.
The final fun fact about Mungallala is that they have had some tough times in the past. In their chequered history, the sawmill burned down and some young (= stupid) guys were injured when the young guys broke into the sawmill and lit a match to see how much fuel was in a jerry can they were planning to steal.
I’m sure that you can foresee the end to that story, even if they couldn’t.
After Mungallala, the next stop was Mitchell – a very pretty little township and a place where I would love to spend some more time.
We have stopped in Mitchell on a previous trip, and used their beautiful artesian pools there. Sadly we didn’t have time for that today though.
We stopped at the bakery and bought sausage rolls and a cream donut (AKA “lunch”) at 11.00am or so, then had a very pleasant wander down the main street and had a nice chat to the lady that runs that Samios Trading Post – a clothing shop that sells all kinds of cool stuff.
OK, it’s time for some audience participation: outside the Trading Post are some statues of farm animals …
Three of these things are just like the others; one of these things is not quite the same. Can you pick the real animal?
We checked out all of the cool stuff and I found a few things that I’d like to buy.
These Ariat boots were really nice, but I’m not sure where I’d wear them. I’d probably have to buy a horse.
At ~$350 for a pair of boots they are a bit hard to justify, even if one of my sons is screaming out BUY THEM!! Ironically, that son has the same name as the township.
We also tried on (and received advice about buying) some Akubra hats, but at ~$220 or so each, we deferred that decision for now too … We did find out that they have “the races” happening on the long weekend in October, so we may plan to go back for that – sounds like fun!
And maybe splurge and buy ourselves some hats.
And some boots 🙂
We headed out of Mitchell and the next (brief) stop was Muckadilla. It is even smaller than Mungallala but not as depressing.
All of these townships with “M” names: Morven. Mungallala, Mitchell. Muckadilla. It’s getting confusing!
From Muckadilla it was only a short run (~45km) to Roma, our destination tonight.
We have already established that it was cold this morning, and it has been cold all day. Warm in the car, cold in the wind.
We did a quick look at the weather forecast and saw that the forecast for Roma is -4 to 18 on Thursday. Yes you read that right – minus 4 to 18.
If we free camp we can potentially save $30-40/night, but with a forecast of minus 4 degrees (and no power hookup = no heater) there is a very real risk that we could freeze to death … and then one of our boys would need to travel to Roma and identify our frozen and lifeless bodies.
I can’t see how that would be an optimal outcome for either Kerri or I, or for the son that has to identify our bodies.
So for the purposes of risk reduction, we elected to stay at a nice caravan park in Roma with access to power and water.
We finally feel like we are back in civilisation with McDonald’s, KFC, Woolworths, Mitre 10 and a variety of other conveniences … and I can’t say that it excites me much.
We set up the van, did a couple of loads of washing, and went for a spin into town because there is a drapery store in Roma that MBW particularly wanted to visit.
I personally thought that it was like the little shop of horrors, with rolls of material (and other assorted junk) stocked to the ceiling, to the point where we believe that the guy who owns the store probably has an undiagnosed psychological issue with either serious OCD or hoarding issues. Or both.
Final stop for the day was Woolworths to buy some groceries, including steak for dinner.
We came out of Woolies to find that some psychopath had reversed back against us (but fortunately not into us) such that we couldn’t possibly get the groceries into the back of the car.
So as I was taking some photos (for just in case), I was verbally accosted by the aforementioned psychopath who wanted to know if there was a problem. Hmmm. I couldn’t tell if there was a problem, because I couldn’t get close enough to Elise to see … but it doesn’t appear that there is, in case you’re wondering.
Dinner tonight was steak on the BBQ that far surpassed the meal at the Imperial pub in Quilpie a couple of nights ago. Good to know that if all else fails, I could get a gig at the Quilpie pub in the kitchen.
Tomorrow will be a relaxed (and likely freezing) day exploring Roma, and then we are on the penultimate leg of our journey home.
Only about 180km and 2 hours driving time today, but we had some nice stops on the way.
Ciao
PS: Today’s post was proudly brought to you by the letter “M”, and Locksmiths Roma.
Geoff you have a wonderful gift of entertaining with your blogs. I will buy your book when you write it.