I must have slept very soundly last night.
Using my complex calculation that takes into consideration factors such as how dark it is, how tired I still feel, and my level of bladder discomfort, I figure that it was around 3.00am that I was woken by Kerri banging around in the van.
I was way too fuzzy to work out what she was doing – and then I realised that I was really cold.
We’d had a cold snap come in during the night, and Kerri was digging out another blanket to put on the bed.
Thank goodness one of us was awake enough to take action.
And when I say cold snap, I’m not talking about frost or snow – we are in Longreach after all – it just dropped down to something cooler than we had become used to.
And we have been used to 30+ degrees every day, and not much less at night.
In other news, we had our first crisis today.
Well technically, I have just committed the crime of the inappropriate use of a PPP.
If you don’t know what a PPP is, you’ll have to skip back a couple of days because I don’t have the time to explain it again here.
Or why it frustrates me.
So to be more correct, I was having a crisis – I’d run out of clean underwear! I had expected that I’d have enough to get me through to Winton.
So that left me with 2 choices: I could reuse a previous day’s underwear, or I could go commando.
Let’s just agree that I’m not telling you which option I chose. Some things just need to remain a little bit of a mystery.
I started the day with my usual ablutions – I collected my stuff and wandered down for a shower.
There are signs around the place that say that there is a water shortage, and you are not to waste water, and you are not to wash your car or your van … yet they have these enormous waterfall shower heads in the showers.
You know the ones – they are the most anti-water saving devices that I have ever seen. So I stood in the hot shower for about 30 minutes and enjoyed it, just because I could!
After ablutions, we had breakfast out on the front deck again.
The weather was quite cool still. One of those “it’s 11 degrees but feels like 8.5 degrees” affairs. And it did indeed feel like 8.5 degrees, hence the jeans.
We packed down the van like a well-oiled machine, and then I filled the water tanks because we’d heard that the water in Winton is a bit stinky.
All done, hooked up the van to Elsie and we were ready to go.
When I was hooking up the van this morning, I couldn’t help noticing how dirty Elsie is … I suppose that’s to be expected after doing 1500km travelling around a dry and dusty outback Queensland.
That 13km x 2 going in and out of Lara’s Wetlands probably didn’t help much either.
I don’t know what to do about it now though. I’m not sure if it is a more effective use of my time to wash the car or plant potatoes.
So we were ready to roll out of Longreach at about 9.20, and it had just hit 20 degrees.
We headed North West on the last western leg of our trip – Longreach to Winton. Winton is the western-most point that we will be travelling to.
Roads were again very good – straight and mostly flat and there was very little breeze (= better fuel economy). I think we averaged about 17.5 litres/100km today which isn’t too bad.
Once again there was plenty of roadkill, much of it quite fresh. I’m guessing that they were the unlucky ones that ventured out in front of one of those 53 metre long Beef Busses at dawn … and didn’t live to tell the story.
Quite the buffet for all of the eagles and other meat-eating birds that pick the roadkill clean.
Somewhere along the road to Winton, Neil radioed to say that they were not far behind us … and so we travelled in convoy into Winton, arriving around 11.15am.
I set a new record today. I had a quick tinkle at the caravan park before we drove out this morning, and I made it all the way to Winton with no stops “to check the caravan was connected correctly”.
Winton is a pretty little town with a population just under 1000, and is the “dinosaur capital of Australia”.
We set the van up with Neil & Desleigh camped next door (that’s their camper trailer on the right-hand side of the photo below).
The very first thing that we did after setting up was go in search of the laundry and put on a couple of loads of washing.
Clean sheets, clean underwear, clean towels, clean shirts … what more could you hope for?
After a quick bite of lunch, we headed down the road to the Waltzing Matilda Museum and had a look around.
You may recall that the Waltzing Matilda Museum had an electrical fault in the ceiling in the middle of one night in June 2015, and the place burned to the ground.
It has now been rebuilt and is a great celebration of our history – well worth visiting!
Out the back of the museum they have some restored railway trains and carriages, as well of lots of other old artefacts from the past – and in particular items of historical significance for Winton.
They also have some other old vehicles, like the Model T Ford below.
Expectorating is such a disgusting habit!!
Kerri and I went for a quick spin around town to get some last-minute groceries for dinner and paid extortionate prices for staples like bread and milk.
Clearly we should have stocked up before leaving Longreach!
Tonight for dinner we decided to support the local area and go to the Gregory Hotel for a feed … and just like you’d expect from outback hospitality the meals were huge … so it was lucky that we had to walk the 3 blocks home to the van to try and undo some of the damage.
Tomorrow will be like a Sunday surprise – we have no plans so we will work out what to do in the morning.
But this is what today looked like … About an hour and 50 minutes and about 180km or so …
We are here for another night yet and many of the tours are still closed due to COVID-19 … so we may go for a bit of a drive to see if we can spot a dinosaur 🙂
That’s about it for today peeps. That 300g steak, chips and salad that I had for dinner is playing havoc with my digestive system, and I feel like to need to find a warm rock to lie on and hibernate for the winter.
Or maybe I’ll just go and have a (smelly) hot shower and go to bed.
Ciao