I’m feeling a bit sad today. Today is the day that we start the return journey from our western-most town (Winton) and head back towards Brisbane.
We still have the best part of a week to go before we are home, but we are heading towards home all the same.
I’m starting today’s blog with a puzzle: What two services would you expect to get at the Pelican Fuel Supplies & Caravan Park?
I’ll even give you a hint: We stayed in the caravan park, so that leaves just one more service that they provide.
I’ll give you a little while to ponder that question.
We had a booking at the Qantas Founders Museum in Longreach at 11.00am this morning, se we needed to be leaving Winton by 8.30am to get there in plenty of time.
Neil, on the other hand, had the problem of having no spare tyre after splitting one of his tyres in the Bladensburg National Park yesterday, so his priority was to get that replaced.
I obviously slept very well again last night because at sometime before dawn, Kerri was coming in for a cuddle. No, nothing like that, so don’t go there.
Apparently it had gotten very cold (again) during the night and I was so deeply in the land of nod that I was blissfully unaware that she had been up at about 3.00am to turn on the heater, and was trying to warm up by stealing some of my body heat.
I was also blissfully unaware that she got up again at about 6.00am to turn the heater down because the van was getting stuffy.
I slept through both of those events.
According to the weather app on her iPhone, it was 4.3 degrees but felt like 0.5 degrees.
That didn’t sound very pleasant, so ablutions were had in the van (we have a shower, but the hot water system only holds about 18 litres of hot water, so I normally choose to shower elsewhere), and then we chose to have breakfast in the inside dining room today.
The good thing about having breakfast in the van is that you can reach the cupboard, toaster, fridge and sink all from your seat. Bonus!
We are retracing our tracks from Winton back to Barcaldine today, so I’m not going to give you road reports in case I contradict previous impressions that I have given of the roads … but I’m pretty sure I said that they were quite good, flat and 110km/hour.
In fact I think that we saw much the same roadkill going back as we saw heading out to Winton, albeit it was a few days further progressed in the process of decomposition.
We actually saw something really exciting on the road to Longreach this morning; we got to see the dude whose job it is to drag the roadkill off the road.
It doesn’t seem like a particularly pleasant job to me. I imagine that it would be hard work as some of those big ‘roos look pretty heavy.
Depending on how many days they had been on the road and how many times they’d been hit by another vehicle while they lay there, they would have been pretty smelly and approaching mince meat … so not something that I’d really want to do.
But at least he has a job for life!
There are more dead ‘roos on the road than you can poke a stick at, and probably many more than that hopping around in the paddocks.
We also saw a train coming into Winton, which was pretty exciting for a train guy 🙂
I have to confess to having learnt something about Winton, and feeling pretty silly about it in the process.
Those of you that know me will know that I don’t mind watching a bit of Super V8 racing. I also know that one of the tracks on the annual circuit is at Winton, and I was interested to see where they race.
I must say that I have always wondered why they would go so far into outback Queensland to have a Super V8 race, but then I figured that it would be good for the local economy.
I was wrong. They race at another Winton in Victoria! Bummer 🙁
You may recall that on the trip out from Longreach to Winton I managed to make it all the way without needing to … “check the caravan”. So I was hoping to repeat that feat again this morning.
Unfortunately there were a couple of things that I had failed to take into consideration: my breakfast coffee hadn’t made it’s way out yet, and it was quite cold.
Cold weather + coffee + faulty plumbing = 🙁
The trip from Winton to Longreach is just under 2 hours or about 180km.
With about 50km behind us and about an hour and a half to go, my bladder and brain started exchanging messages.
With 100km behind us and another hour to go, the messages were becoming more urgent.
“Don’t think about it” was the advice from the passenger seat. Hmmm. Thanks for that …
At about 150km and with 30 minutes to go, the exchange of information between my bladder and brain was becoming quite frantic.
Now you are probably thinking to yourself “why not just pull over at one of the rest stops and address the issue”?
That’s a very good question.
Was it because I didn’t want to stop at a rest stop? No.
Was it because I was too proud to stop at the side of the road and have a tinkle? No!
Was it because I didn’t want to give some poor, thirsty shrub at the side of the road a really good watering? NO!
It was because I had previously passed – with some considerable difficulty, I might add – a couple of old farts with caravans, and a 53m road train, and there was no way in God’s little green earth that I was going to allow them to go past me while I was attending to nature, and so that I’d be forced to overtake them all over again!!!
So I sucked it up, ignored every bump in the road, ignored the frantic messages that my bladder was sending to my brain, and kept driving.
We got into Longreach at around 10.30am and drove past the Longreach train station …
… and then went to check out the Qantas museum and do the airpark tour.
To be completely honest, I’m finding that many small towns out this way have some form of historical village and they all start to look the same after a while.
And they all seem to have much the same stuff.
But having said that, the Qantas Founders Museum was interesting because we got to see a number of aircraft up close and we got to wander all over the planes.
I’m thinking about dropping one of these babies under Elsie’s bonnet and see how she goes…
After the Qantas museum tour, we fuelled up and headed back through Ilfracombe and towards Barcaldine, which is where we are staying the night.
We got into Barcaldine at about 3.30pm and dropped off the van at the Roses ‘N’ Things Caravan park. Only about 10 sites, but very pretty and quiet – just what the doctor ordered.
After setting up the van we went back into town to have a look at the Tree of Knowledge …
… Barcaldine train station …
… and city clock …
… before heading back to the van for cheese o’clock.
Just as we were getting ready for dinner, we were blessed with another beautiful outback sunset.
If you look really closely, you can see a horse in the middle of the photo above.
So this is what today’s trip looks like – a bit of a repeat of a trip a few days ago but in the other direction.
Only about 290km and 3.5 hours driving, but some good stops on the way.
I reckon I’ve waved at every 4WD, caravan, SUV, and truck between Winton and here today, and collectively over the last few days.
In fact, I reckon that if I had $1.00 for every vehicle that I’ve waved at in the last week I could probably afford to take another week off with no pay!
So back to my puzzle from the start of the blog: what two key services would you expect to get at the Pelican Fuel Supplies & Caravan Park?
You can stay in their caravan park, but you can’t get fuel! They have bowsers, but they all have a sign on them saying “no fuel”.
Bummer.
That’s it for today.
Ciao