geoff – Page 10 – 2 Aussie Nomads

May 22, 2024May 22, 2024

Day 14: Daly Waters – Katherine

Well, what an exciting day it has been today. So much fodder for the blog.

So strap yourselves in.

But first I need to tell you about last night at the Daly Waters Pub.

We were told that Tim – the owner of the pub, I guess – gives a talk “around about 5.30”. Tim time, a bit like African time … it happens when it happens.

Now, yesterday I made an oblique comment about Tim being the correct weight for someone who should be twice as tall. Maybe I wasn’t clear.

A wise person once said that “… all things being equal, fat people use more soap.”

Tim uses a lot of soap. I mean, a LOT of soap, because he has a very large surface area. He seems like a really nice guy, but how his heart pumps blood around that body is a miracle of modern medicine. Maybe he has two hearts?

In fact, I’m going to call him Tim-Tim from now on, because he is big enough to be two people.

So we purchased a couple of Lemon, Lime and Bitters, and settled in. Somewhere after 5.30 (I think it was closer to 5.45), Tim-Tim trundles out on his mobility scooter and sets himself up near the entertainment area stage.

Tim-Tim proceeded to tell us all about the history of the pub, why there are so many bras nailed up on the wall, the Packers (as in Kerry Packer) who owned the property next door (which I think he said was 10,000 square km, but I could have that wrong), and the Japs (his word) and the history of WW2 and the Daly Waters area.

He also shared his views on poor old Paddy who disappeared from Larrimah. You will need to watch ”Last Stop Larrimah” if you don’t know about Paddy, but be sure to check your sensitivities at the door and be prepared to learn some new words 🙂

He also lectured us about people in caravans who go too fast on NT roads (they have a 130km/h speed limit here, remember?) and end up crashing.

Although, to be fair to old Tim-Tim, it seems like when there is a bad accident around Daly Waters, his beer garden gets converted to a triage centre, because he said that he has had people laid out on his tables for “up to 8 hours” waiting for the RFDS to arrive.

That’s Royal Flying Doctor Service for the acronymally challenged.

After Tim-Tim finished his talk, Steve Case – the local travelling muso – started to play a couple of sets and that was our signal to head off back to Percy and get dinner underway. We thought we would leave the live music and the dancing to the young(er) people.

It was a bit of a cool night again. Sometime around 5.30am, MBW obviously got cold and pulled up the quilt.

I was asleep and I hadn’t noticed. Sorry 🙁

But I did notice that it was cold getting out of the shower this morning, and I put on a flannelette shirt to keep warm. That’s in addition to my usual attire.

I probably shouldn’t need to clarify that, but I felt I should.

I slept really well again last night. The sleep of the pure and innocent.

So ablutions, breakfast, and pack down Percy.

Connect all of the things that need connecting, and disconnect all of the things that need disconnecting. Roll up the hoses and cords, store them away, put on the weight distribution hitch, retract the step, lock the doors, batten down the hatches, set the turbos to “warp speed”, and we are off.

We had a bit of a dilemma this morning. Elsie was showing just under half a tank of fuel with approximately 260km range on the trip computer. Daly Waters to Katherine is about 282km, and I don’t trust Elsie’s trip computer anyway.

Elsie has an optimism bias, and I think that her 260km range is based on a best case scenario, and doesn’t take into consideration the fact that we are lugging Percy behind us. So it is probably more like 200km because we are only getting about 20 litres/100km.

Which is nothing to be proud of, but if you wanted fuel economy, you’d buy a pushbike. And then Percy would be going nowhere fast.

Or going anywhere at all.

Fuel at Katherine is about 40c/litre cheaper than Daly Waters, so I just needed to put enough tigers into Elsie’s tank to get us to Katherine, and then we could give Elsie a big drink.

So 30 litres of fuel from the Daly Waters servo, and we were off.

Remember yesterday I had a bit of a vent about people that don’t use UHF channel 40? We were travelling along the highway this morning – not far out of Daly Waters – heading north, and we could hear these calls over the radio to caravans and other vehicles that were (obviously, as it turned out) ahead of us.

Because all of a sudden around a curve in the road came a pilot vehicle with all its lights flashing, and we got a call on UHF40 … “hey caravan, find a safe place to stop and get off the road. 5.5 metre wide load following.”

If you do the maths, the road is probably 6-7 metres wide at best, and a 5.5m wide load coming towards us doesn’t leave a great deal of room.

Plenty of room for him. Just no room for the both of us.

My point is that if you are “special” and you monitor a different channel on the CB (ie not UHF40), you wouldn’t have got the message from the pilot vehicle and you’d be having a “code brown” when confronted by a very wide load and no space on the road for both of you.

After that bit of excitement, we got back on the road and about an hour later, found ourselves at …

Larrimah!

And we just had to stop and have a look. Along with about a dozen other vans. Larrimah is a bit of a tourist spot now, and not for Fran’s famous meat pies, either.

That was pretty exciting. We have been to Larrimah!

But onwards and upwards, we kept travelling north.

You see a great deal of road trains on the national highways, outside of big cities. I don’t think that they are allowed any closer to Brisbane than about Chinchilla, but in these more remote areas they are everywhere.

Many of them have three trailers, and some – fuel tankers specifically – have 4 trailers. They are very long and they take up a lot of space on the road.

And every-so-often you need to overtake one that is slow moving … and it is like overtaking a cruise ship.

Through Mataranka and finally into Katherine around lunchtime.

We have decided to stay at the Katherine Farmstay for a couple of nights, with power and water hookup. It means that we can get some washing done and give Percy his weekly clean out. We are fully capable of surviving off the grid (no power and water hookup) for several days, but we need to make sure that we have plenty of water on board, and that is just dead weight that we need to drag behind us.

And power and water hookup here at the Katherine Farmstay is not that much more expensive than no power and water … so it makes sense.

And here is a fun fact: for about the last week we have just been driving and stopping the night, and driving again. I don’t think we have unhooked Percy from Elsie for several days now.

But here at Katherine, we will be doing some day trips and Elsie will get the chance to let the horses run free!

Plus, we will be having a day of free camping in a couple of nights time (at another location), before we leave here.

This is a very pretty spot, and – despite not booking ahead – we jagged a really nice spot under some big shady trees.

Lunch consumed, and we needed to go out and get some groceries.

And fuel. Elise was thirsty.

We found a shopping centre (TBH it’s probably the only shopping centre in Katherine, but we haven’t confirmed that yet). MBW found herself a nice pair of slacks, and then we went and stocked up on groceries at Woolies.

All very civilised. I’ve missed Woolies 🙁

Back to the farmstay, unload the groceries, and we got into our swimmers and headed back to the Katherine Hot Springs for a dip and a soak.

The water was crystal clear and around body temperature, and just delightful to soak in.

Thanks to the magic that is “the fresh food people”, we had a nice dinner of lamb chops on the BBQ tonight, with jacket potato and veggies. I can’t remember the last time we had vegetables, and I was starting to worry about getting scurvy.

Or is scurvy a symptom of not having citrus? I’ll need to Google that …

It was a great day today. I’m feeling tired from all of the driving, but now we have a few days of rest around Katherine before heading off to the National Parks and Darwin for about 9 days.

I was chatting to one of our boys tonight who said that driving long distances like this would be his worst nightmare.

But we are seeing new, fun and interesting things all the time, and meeting new people along the way. Australia really is a big, beautiful place. But there are some very big drives between townships in the NT, and no mobile coverage for much of the time.

First world problems.

Tomorrow we are going to do a 4-hour cruise on the Katherine Gorge which should be spectacular. And we get to go swimming in the gorge too.

But you will hear about that and see photos tomorrow … assuming that we don’t get eaten by a crocodile. That probably wouldn’t be an ideal outcome.

There is a theory that Paddy and his dog (remember Paddy from Larrimah?) were fed to a crocodile, and they never found any traces of him.

Hmmm … maybe I won’t go swimming.

If we stop having fun, we will let you know.

Ciao

#Retirement2024

#VanLife

May 21, 2024May 22, 2024

Day 13: Banka Banka Station – Daly Waters

A man walked into a bar. The bartender says to him, “Did you want the usual, Donkey?”

The man replies, “Yes thanks”.

A lady sitting at the bar leans over and says to the guy, “He just called you Donkey. Why did he do that?”

The man replies, “Hee-haw, hee-haw, he always calls me that …”

I’ll explain that later.

Last night we stayed at the Banka Banka Station which is precisely in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

Banka Banka – the road to nowhere (actually, Tennant Creek)

After I’d posted the day’s blog, we went up to the campfire for drinks and a chat with other campers. Probably all of the same people that I’d overtaken at some time during the day, and most likely people that I’ve complained about at some time.

I didn’t see BMW guy anywhere, so that’s not a bad thing.

We had a nice chat with some fellow retirees. They all seemed nice and not too financially broke, so I guess that there is hope for us yet.

You always pick up some good tips around the campfire, like where to stay, where not to stay, what to see, what not to bother with … you know how it goes.

One of them went to get a beer from the bar and came back to report that “the rules about buying alcohol are different here in the NT.” You have to give them your name and ID, and they keep a tally of how many you’ve had over what period of time.

Something to do with limiting the amount of alcohol that is consumed by the locals, I believe.

It pays to just stick with soda water, me thinks.

It was cold this morning. Actually it was cold last night.

Actually, to be completely truthful, it was cold when we were up at the campfire, which is why we didn’t stay long. I noticed that the people drinking alcohol didn’t seem too cold.

Hmmm, maybe I should reconsider that. Alcohol seems to warm you from the inside out.

We rolled out of Banka Banka about 8.45am and it was nice and warm getting into Elsie. Once again today we are having a driving day, aiming for Daly Waters for the night.

Also once again, the roads are long and reasonably good, with the occasional flood damage. There was one spot where we had to stop for a red light, and they had some serious roadwork going on.

Roadworks between Tennant Creek and Daly Waters

There were quite a few times where we would see a SLOW DOWN sign, or similar. I had been wondering why they hadn’t dispatched a crew to fill in some of the many potholes in the road … so it was good to see a serious effort at fixing up some of the worse problems.

You see and hear some interesting things out on the road. UHF Channel 40 is the channel that everybody uses by default, but there are some numpties who insist on using something else – like UHF Channel 18 (which I admit is a recognised caravanning channel), or channel 50 which is … well, which is plain dumb.

In my opinion. Because nobody uses it, and if you want to talk to them, you have to change channels. Which is not easy at 100km/h on a bad road.

All of the truckies and majority of other road users assume that you are on UHF40. I get it that you might have UHF18 written on the back of your van, but if a pilot vehicle is coming towards you and they want to warn you of a wide load following them, they assume you are on 40.

And if you are not, then you don’t get the message.

I’ll get off that soapbox now.

The cross winds today were ferocious. I felt at times like I was going a couple of rounds with Percy, and it felt like Percy was winning. The cross winds – along with the bumpy roads – made keeping everything on the road a challenge. Plus dodging potholes.

Plus taking note of signs that say “Unfenced road. Beware of cattle.”

There was one point in the trip today where I had managed to overtake the first of two caravans that were travelling in convoy. So I was the middle of them.

While I know that MBW hates it when I get too close to the caravan in front, the fact is that you need to keep the gap fairly small to minimise the amount of runway that you need to overtake them.

In any case, it’s not like they are going to stamp on their brakes.

And then the driver in front of us stamped on their brakes, and yelled out (over the CB radio), “COW”.

I actually thought that was really unnecessary and inappropriate, and I was about to stick my head out the window and shout back “PIG”, and then I realised that there was a cow on the road. And it wasn’t happy.

I think that cow needs to be nicknamed “Lucky”, because we all avoided it. And if someone did hit it, then “Mincemeat” might be a better nickname.

Most of the other retirees towing caravans seem to be happy to plod along at 90km/h, while I am sitting on 100km/h.

That means a couple of things. Firstly, it means that I will inevitably catch up with them. Secondly, it means that I will have to overtake them. And unfortunately most of them don’t seem to understand road etiquette which says that you tell the vehicle behind you when it is safe to pass.

So that is a challenge.

But the bigger challenge is that most of them never seem to need to make a comfort stop, so when we stop briefly to … stretch our legs … they go whizzing past, and then I have to overtake them all over again.

C’est la vie.

At least that means that they get to see “2AussieNomads.com” on the back of Percy as we go sailing past them, and they get to read all about themselves on the blog.

So we rolled into Daly Waters today about 12.30pm.

It is a quirky and eccentric little place that has obviously become this way through someone’s artistic genius, or because of a lunatic.

Personally, I’m leaning towards lunatic.

Tim’s junkyard has an entry fee of $6 each to look at his junk, yet I can look at my own junk anytime I want for free.

There is a whole menagerie of animals around Daly Waters. I mean, just wandering around.

Chickens. Horses. And Donkeys.

Donkeys. That is the rather tenuous link to the donkey joke at the start of today’s blog.

There was a chicken that we saw crossing the road, and I so wanted to ask MBW “Why did that chicken cross the road …?”, but I thought better of it. She has no sense of humour.

The camping area is right beside the pub, and Daly Waters is a quirky (albeit pretty) little place.

The actual pub itself is … interesting. I wasn’t sure whether I should be blown away by the collection of historic artefacts that grace every surface of every wall, or horrified at the amount of junk that is pinned to the walls, and the amount of dust and dirt that is clinging to the junk pinned to the walls.

Honestly, I needed to go home and sanitise after walking through the pub.

Tonight some guy (Tim, maybe?) who runs the place does a talk on Daly Waters and the history surrounding the place.

I assume that it is the bloke who gets around on a mobility scooter with a large pair of horns attached to the handlebars. The same bloke who appears to be the correct weight for someone who should be about twice as tall as he is actually is.

I hear that the talk is very interesting, so I’m looking forward to that. We considered eating at the pub tonight, but the prices plus the grubbiness of the place (mostly the grubbiness) caused us to reconsider and put something out of the freezer for dinner.

Anyway, that’s about it for tonight.

MBW snuck a photo of me doing the blog, so that illusion that I have been trying to create that I am slaving over a hot computer is now blown away.

And on the subject of the less attractive parts of daily life on the road, MBW also snapped a picture of me emptying the can the other day.

Charming, right? Well, now you know what I have to do every few days. You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do.

The more observant amongst you may have noticed that today’s blog is dated 21 May 2024, but was actually posted via the FaceBook a day later. Well done for noticing.

Daly Waters is lots of things, but in the 21st century is not one of them. While my phone says I have 4G coverage, I really don’t. I don’t have enough of anything to upload photos or the blog.

Sorry.

Tomorrow we head for Katherine, so I’m hoping for more Telstra coverage, and more civilisation. We will be there for 3 nights, so it will be nice not driving long distances for a few days.

There might even be a shopping centre where we can stock up on fresh food, and MBW can get some retail therapy.

We are also seeing an outback concert while we are in Katherine, so that should be fun.

You’ll hear about all of that as it happens.

Ciao

#Retirement2024

#VanLife

May 20, 2024May 20, 2024

Day 12: Barkly Homestead – Banka Banka West Station

Another slow news day, I’m sorry to say.

One of the things that I’m finding about the Northern Territory (NT) is that you travel long distances and see little.

And when I say “little”, I mean nothing.

Seriously, there are places on the map that we have driven through (Ranken, for example) that has a road sign, a postcode, and (allegedly) a population of 44 … but I don’t know where they live, because I saw no houses. Or pubs. Or anything.

Last night we stayed at the Barkly Homestead. It was very pleasant and they did happy hour and a live band.

We wandered over and took a couple of photos of the sunset, but that was about it.

Dinner, showers, read and bed.

We pulled out around 9.00am, which is 30 minutes after Brisbane time.

The roads were pretty good, except for where they were really bad. They have had a great deal of flooding here in the last couple of months and there was some doubt whether we could get through the Barkly Hwy.

It was certainly open, but there were some potholes … that could also have been craters caused by meteors that have hit the earth.

Funny, the roads got so bad in places that the 130km/h speed limit was reduced to 40km/h … and even that felt too fast.

In fact, the roads have been so bad that even Google Earth thinks that they are closed, and diverts you around a different way.

It was our plan to travel to Tennant Creek and stay at a HipCamp for a couple of nights, however a few things happened:

The wind kicked in and the temperatures dropped
We drove into Tennant Creek to get fuel, and felt no real desire to stay there any longer than we needed to.

We had read reports that you needed to be careful in Tennant Creek. We got fuel and went for a drive through the town to find that nothing was open (it is a Monday, right?), and there were groups of young kids walking/milling around that just made the place feel … unsafe.

After a drive up the main street and a U-turn at the end, there was absolutely nothing that made us want to stay or return to TC.

So we booked a power and water site at Banka Banka West Station, and kept driving.

An hour north of Tennant Creek is home for tonight.

Where the blue dot is – home for tonight. Banka Banka West Station

I’ve just been watching an older (than us) couple getting assistance to back their van into the space beside us, and they have now spent the last hour making centimetre-by-centimetre adjustments to the position of their van, interspersed by using a spirit level on all external surfaces of their van to ensure that it is completely, 100% level in every dimension.

Don’t get me started.

There is no Telstra reception here, and the Banka Banka free wifi internet is glacially slow, and about as useful as an ashtray on a motorcycle.

I’m getting frustrated, so I’m signing off.

Ciao

#Retirement2024

#VanLife

May 19, 2024May 19, 2024

Day 11: Camooweal – Barkly Homestead (NT)

I think it’s going to be a short post tonight, because it’s been a slow news day.

Thanks to the magic that is the Queensland/NT border, today will be a 24.5 hour day. We get to enjoy an extra 30 minutes of our retirement, because we crossed into the NT and turned our watches back 30 minutes.

Although I note that we will have to give it back again when we head back into Queensland in a few weeks.

Unfortunately that is probably the biggest news today, so please set your expectations accordingly. I will probably have to resort to some elevated level of sarcasm about things that annoyed me, just to provide enough content for today’s post.

Like the turkey in the BMW.

Before we went to bed last night, MBW did a quick review of our travel plans, and we agreed that we would still be heading for the Barkly Homestead tonight. It’s half-way along the Barkly Highway between the Queensland/NT border, and Tennant Creek.

Ok, maybe 2/3 of the way.

Just for clarity, Camooweal (on the right-hand side, underlined) was last night. BH (Barkly Homestead) is tonight, and tomorrow (Monday) we head to TC (Tennant Creek).

Well, in that general direction anyway.

The other bit of news that MBW told me last night was that the temperature is forecast to drop. This morning (Camooweal) was forecast to be 13 degrees but feel like 9 degrees, and tomorrow morning here at Barkly Homestead is forecast to be 11 degrees but feel like 3 degrees.

Might need to look out those warm clothes.

It did indeed get cold overnight. It was really warm when we went to bed, so we opened the windows. But during the night it got cold and I had to close the windows AND pull up the quilt.

Jeans weather today.

We stayed at the Camooweal lagoon/river-side camping last night. It’s a free camp spot with no facilities.

We woke this morning to another brilliant day. Sun shining, birds singing. Paradise.

On the way out of the free camp this morning, some guy in a BMW SUV and towing a single-axle van was ahead of us on the dirt road, and travelling about 5km/h all the way.

I don’t know if he was struggling to find 4WD, or if he was worried about puncturing one of those very low-profile sports tyres (I would have been worried!), but he was in no hurry to go anywhere, and not about to move off the track to let us past.

Why you’d use a BMW SUV as your tow vehicle out in the back of nowhere is beyond me. If you broke down or needed a part, it would probably be the first BMW that the local repairers have ever seen, and you’d have to wait weeks for parts.

And I’ll bet that they don’t carry those slick low-pro tyres out here either.

We drove the 1km or so back into town just to confirm that there was no lively Sunday morning excitement, and our expectations were certainly met.

No churches open, no pubs, no shops, no … nothing.

The local Puma was open, so we rounded up a few spare tigers to put into Elsie’s tank, and we were off.

We only made a couple of quick stops after we’d got fuel.

The first was to take a photo at the NT border.

Queensland/NT border (looking back towards Camooweal)

The second stop was to drop our grey water at the side of the road, and to get something to eat to sustain us.

Hardly worth mentioning really, and I’m kinda sorry that I did.

After crossing into NT, a few things became immediately obvious. Firstly, the roads became noticeably worse. Bumpy and uneven, and unpleasant to drive on.

And there are lots of signs saying that the paddocks are unfenced, so that implies that you could encounter a cow at any time on the road.

Secondly they were full of pot-holes, so we were playing a game of “dodge the pot-hole at 100km/h, or risk blowing a tyre.”

You’d have to be seriously concerned if you were driving a BMW SUV with those fancy-pancy low profile tyres.

And the last thing that we noticed was that the speed limit was suddenly raised to 130km/h.

130km/h? On these roads?

It’s obviously part of the NT government’s natural (de-)selection process to see who can really do 130km/h and survive.

Survival of the smartest, perhaps?

It’s certainly one way to add a little extra chlorine to the gene pool.

At least we won’t see any idiots in BMWs plugging along this road …

… and there he was. When we stopped to drop grey water, he passed us, roaring along at about 80km/h in the 130km/h zone in his high-performance SUV.

That meant that we needed to pass him again, and of course it was way too much to hope that he would be one of these helpful drivers that gives you some indication that it is safe to overtake. Nope, just keep puddling along, blocking your forward view, and do nothing to help.

Turkey.

Anyway, we arrived at the Barkly Homestead around 1.00pm local time, paid our $40 for a powered site, and found ourselves a spot.

It’s a thriving little business here in the middle of nowhere. But I guess that the laws of supply and demand dictate that when you have the only place to stay between the Queensland/NT border and Tennant Creek, then it’s a seller’s market.

And they have happy hour starting at 4.30pm with live music, and meal service starting at 6.00pm. Did I mention the live band? MBW and I might put on our boots and spurs, and kick our heels up.

Carefully, of course. After doing a risk assessment.

A boot-scooting boogie, perhaps?

Lots of space, with plenty of sites with power and water hookup.

That means that we can be civilised for a day and night. We can have decent showers, make coffee, and MBW can catch-up on MasterChef.

We had lunch and I had a Sunday afternoon nap while MBW read her book. I do love Sunday afternoon naps, almost as much as MBW loves reading.

It’s been quite windy here this afternoon and all of that red dirt in the Barkly Homestead parking area becomes something of a dust storm in the wind, which is a bit unpleasant. And it’s cool still.

At least we have a relatively clean – albeit old – shower block here at BH, so I can give myself a good scrub tonight.

Tomorrow we head off towards Tennant Creek. I’m not going to tell you our destination for tomorrow night, because … well, because I’m not sure that even we know where we are aiming for tomorrow.

Retirement. Nothing to do, and all day to do it. Nowhere to be, and all day to get there.

Why didn’t I realise this a long time ago?

PS: I warned you that I had nothing to say today, but you read it anyway, right?

Ciao

#Retirement2024

#VanLife

May 18, 2024May 18, 2024

Day 10: Julia Creek – Cloncurry – Mt Isa – Camooweal

It will probably be a short blog tonight. We had a long drive and I’m feeling a bit weary. And I did battle with the people at the Mt Isa BCF this afternoon, just so I could get a gas bottle refilled.

But that is a whole other story.

Last night we stayed at the JC RV park, right up close to the water. Or billabong, maybe? It was very pretty, and very quiet. Very serene, very relaxing.

And a spectacular sunset. Seriously, we are getting spoiled with the sunsets out here.

I managed to get the radio out last night before it got too dark, and the first thing I heard on 20m (14.205MHz) was someone in North Carolina talking with someone in Australia.

Then I managed to make a contact with a guy who was operating portable (from a National Park) at Noosa Heads.

Dinner, early to bed, and up early this morning.

We rolled out of the JC RV park before 8.00am, unfed and un-caffeinated. I’d had a shower at least, so I was mostly awake.

Just not my usual, cheery, caffeinated self.

We hadn’t even unhooked Percy from Elsie overnight, so it was a quick operation to plug in the plugs and head off. Topped up Elise’s tank again heading out of JC and we were on our way.

Cloncurry was only about 130km (1.5 hours) away, and we figured that we could make it that far without killing each other. A lack of caffeine can cause us to be unpredictable, or irrational. Possibly even hostile.

Straight, flat, featureless, roads, as far as the eye can see. Not even a tree to be seen, most of the time.

We rolled into Cloncurry about 9.30 and set off looking for a coffee shop or cafe for coffee and a snack for breakfast.

I have been to Cloncurry in a previous life, being the well-travelled gentleman that I am … although I acknowledge that it was probably 14 or 15 years ago, but then nothing changes in these small towns, right?

Well, either Cloncurry has changed or my memory is … um … sorry, I forget.

Anyway I had a vague recollection of a straight road and an RSL (or Bowls Club, or Pub, or …) and those memories seemed to come together.

We used Cloncurry’s dump point and emptied the toilet cassette, even without the light having come on yet. (I know, right? How progressive are we?)

It always concerns me when something is advertised as “friendly”. Cloncurry, the friendly heart. It just sets expectations, and it often means that unnecessary extra words are being used.

Like “fresh fish”. I mean, seriously, why would you buy fish if it wasn’t fresh? It’s just “fish”.

But I digress.

Coffee and banana cake. It was very nice, and postpones divorce a bit longer.

Yes MBW. Adulting IS hard!

It turns out that Cloncurry wasn’t the hub of excitement that I recall from last time I was there, so we kept rolling towards Mt Isa.

I rang the Mt Isa BCF before we rolled out of Cloncurry to confirm that they have gas to do gas refills … and I was advised that they could not do any gas refills until 1.00pm because they are short-staffed.

Interesting.

So that just means that we don’t bust our boilers to get into Mt Isa, and we have a relaxing trip.

So wet set off on the Barkly Highway, heading west.

The scenery from Cloncurry to Mt Isa kept changing, with lots of rock formations, trees, and winding, hilly roads.

Mount Isa. Proudly sponsored by Ariat boots.

We rolled into Mt Isa around 11.45am. A bit over an hour until we can get gas, so we found a Coles supermarket and jagged a parking space right outside in the shade. Ok, we took up the space of 3 cars, but we found a parking space!!

In the shade!

If you’ve been following since the beginning, you may remember that MBW was quite ill right before we left, and I was also not feeling 100% although I was less sick than MBW.

Well it turns out that we are now counting the cost of us both being sick, and neglecting to pack some things that we’d planned to bring with us. Like a mat for the ground outside the van. Or an iron.

It also seems like a good excuse for MBW to do a bit of a wardrobe refresh, because each time we stop she remembers another important part of her outfit that she is missing, and we go searching for it.

Or maybe I’m just being cynical because I can wear the same T-shirt, shorts, socks and shoes for a week and think nothing of it?

I change my undies most days. I’m not completely barbaric.

We still had time to kill before BCF can supply us gas, so we decided to do the Underground Hospital tour. Now, TBH, anything touristy with the word “underground” in it is not something I get excited about, but we decided to do it anyway.

Made the mistake of taking Elsie and Percy down a no through road and needed to do a 75 point turn to get them pointing back the other way again so we could get back out.

Actually I lied about that. The 75 point turn was option 1, but resourceful Geoff put Elsie into 4WD and we did a bit of “off-roading” with Percy in tow, through the hospital carpark and back to the street entrance.

Crisis averted.

The underground hospital was not a government initiative – it was dug out by the people of Mt Isa during the war in 1942, and they did it in their own time.

All very interesting, but not the sort of place where I would want to go and have a baby, or have surgery.

Doing a final circuit of the hospital museum, I (literally) bumped into an elderly woman from a bus tour that had just arrived, and she said it “wasn’t every day that she bumped into a tall, dark, and handsome man”. OK, so she got one out of three correct, and I don’t really consider myself that tall.

By now it was 1.30pm. Time to find BCF, get gas, and be on our way.

Me: “Hello, can I get a 9kg gas refill, please?”

Destiny (seriously, that was her name): “Sorry, we can’t do gas refills until 2.00pm because the manager hasn’t had lunch yet.”

If the connection between Destiny’s boss having lunch and their ability to dispense gas eludes you, join the club. I assume that it has something to do with having a required number of staff with a working braincell in the store at the same time.

Specifically, staff that can multi-task. You know, like being able to chew gum and think at the same time.

So we waited until 2.00pm and tried again.

It turns out that the young dude who started the complicated process of filling gas bottles – put on your PPE shirt, put on your gloves, put on your safety glasses, get the tool bag, um … – was likely only rowing with one oar anyway, because his first achievement was to give the wrong gas bottle to the wrong customer, so the right customer kicked up a fuss.

A huge fuss that Destiny was overheard describing as a “situation”. As in “we have a situation”.

Anyhow, you get the idea. By 3.00pm (yep, 3.00pm!) we were back on the Barkly and heading towards tonight’s camp.

Which we hadn’t decided yet, as it turned out.

There was a place just outside of Camooweal – not dissimilar to last night’s RV park – that looked OK and was only another couple of hours onwards. That means a couple of hours closer to wherever we want to be the next night.

The only concern with this Camooweal lagoon-side camping is that some previous reviewers have reported that some people poop on the ground.

I mean seriously, would I make that up?

Turns out it is true. And I nearly stepped in someone’s poop.

I mean seriously, anyone that poops on the ground in a public camping area makes the Mt Isa BCF peeps seem like Albert Einstein in comparison.

Anyhoo, we found a spot, got everything level, avoided the poop, had an early dinner and admired the sunset.

We had decided that we would try to stop and join a local church service wherever we find ourselves on a Sunday morning.

Tomorrow is Sunday.

Despite some feverish Googling, it appears that the options in Camooweal (population 236, or 310 if you believe the sign coming into town) are fairly limited.

And when I say “fairly limited”, you would not be incorrect to use the literal translation of “non-existent”.

So maybe we will just give it a miss. Again.

We have now run out of cold press coffee, with no time to make more before tomorrow. So if there is no blog tomorrow, it is possible that MBW has killed me and hidden my body around Camooweal.

Call for help. Feel free to describe me as tall, dark and handsome.

Ciao

#Retirement2024

#VanLife

May 17, 2024May 17, 2024

Day 9: Winton – Julia Creek

Last night – Thursday night – we went to the Dark Sky Serenade at the Age of Dinosaurs museum, our last night of opera festivities.

Not for them though. All of the opera peeps are now heading towards Longreach while MBW and I are heading towards Darwin.

Now firstly I need to get something off my chest. As luck would have it, I was seated behind a guy with an unusually large head.

Abnormally large.

Big head – Dark Sky Serenade Opera – Winton

While that was useful for blocking out the setting sun that was in my eyes, he kinda got in the way of my vision of the stage and the performers.

Which was a shame. But not the end of the world, right?

Well … as luck would also have it, his device of choice for taking photos was an iPad.

A full sized iPad … which he constantly held up above his head to try to figure out how to point and position it so that he could take multiple photos.

Anyhow, being the opera buff that I am, the experience was an auditory one, not necessarily a visual one. And I could still hear perfectly, even though I couldn’t see much.

It was a spectacular experience. The dark hauntingness (is that a word?) of the desert, with the amazing sounds of world famous opera singers, backed by the Queensland Symphony Orchestra (QSO) was astonishing.

Surreal.

Now I have to confess that I don’t know much opera, and I don’t have a great deal of it on my Spotify playlist. Plus they kept singing it in Italian, with no subtitles, which really just made it difficult to follow along.

The conductor – some guy who could have been Tom Gleeson’s doppelgänger (with a sense of humour to match) – was the Head of Artistic Something-Or-Other from Opera West Australia. He tended to get a bit too excited about operas in 6/8 time and quivering quavers for my liking. But then he probably doesn’t understand amateur radio.

And he did dumb down the plot of one particular piece that they performed.

“Boy falls in love with girl. Girl dies. Boy cries.”

The final piece that they performed was Puccini’s Nessun Dorma, which I’m sure that you will recognise, even if you are as much of an uneducated Philistine as I am.

It was performed by some guy – a tenor – who apparently is world famous, even though I confess that I’ve never heard of him.

There were people there who (apparently) came out on a charter flight, plus people on bus tours, and of course all of the giants of Opera Queensland were there hobnobbing with the Minister for Whatever and the Arts. Probably 500 people in all.

Jason Two-Dads was there again, and he sang a couple of pieces.

Of course they all got a standing ovation at the end, so they graciously and spontaneously performed “something that was written around here”, namely Waltzing Matilda.

And we were all invited to sing along. So …

… technically, I can honestly say that I have sung Waltzing Matilda, accompanied by the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, and backed up by some world-famous opera singers … and at the end of that performance, the audience erupted into wild and rapturous applause.

Beat that!

It was a great night. Beautiful music, and beautiful voices, all performed in a stunning desert environment.

We were home by 8.00pm, caffeinated by 8.30pm, and in bed by 10.00pm.

I think I mentioned yesterday that I have finished the Tattooist, and now I am looking for something else to read. And having trouble finding something that I can get into. I’m thinking that I might try Faye Kellerman, but happy to hear your suggestions.

I currently enjoy Lee Child (Jack Reacher) and Nelson DeMille (John Covey). But I’m happy to try something new. Leave me a comment with suggestions. The best suggestion wins 🙂

I feel bad that I am being lazy sleeping in until 7.30 or later each morning, but I have an excuse.

I’m sure that you all know that we were in Winton the last few days, and Winton is waaaay over there where the sun sets. Yes, in the west.

But while we are much further west, we are still in the same timezone as home. Home’s sunrise is currently 6.21am (in the east of Queensland), while Winton’s sunrise is 6.53 (in the west of Queensland). That’s more than 30 minutes later!

That’s my excuse, anyway.

It was a cool start to the day again today. Our neighbours – who we have spoken to, but not exchanged names with – come from Townsville and were walking around this morning dressed as though they were ready to commence an assault on Mt Everest.

Personally, while I acknowledge that it was cool, I didn’t think that it was THAT cold, so we settled for our regular shorts and T-shirts.

Toast and coffee for breakfast this morning. (Can you tell that I’m running out of content for the blog?)

MBW tidied the house, while I went out to capture a tiger or two to put in Elsie’s tank. She only took $125 worth this morning, and it concerns me that I can say “only” and “$125” in the same sentence.

We rolled out of the Winton Wanderers CP around 9.00am and headed west to Kynuna. A road that we have never travelled before.

Never.

Today we are travelling towards Julia Creek. We will be travelling the road towards Cloncurry (north west) and turning off just before Kynuna, to the north.

Good roads, fast, smooth, and wide.

And every-so-often you see an unusual land formation that breaks the monotony.

I continue to be astonished by the variety of levels of helpfulness that you see in other road users. One minute we were sitting behind a van, when the driver calls us on the CB radio and offers to slow down and pull over so that we could pass.

20 minutes later we were sitting behind another numpty who was doing 25km/h under the speed limit, wandering all over his lane, hogging the centre line, blocking all forward view of oncoming traffic, providing no clue whether it was safe to pass, and was entirely and completely unhelpful.

Seriously, you can understand how accidents happen.

We had previously picked up the local tourist guide for the area, and it gave us several compelling reasons why Kynuna is not a place to “just drive through”, but a place to stop and visit, and enjoy.

So we drove past the turnoff and kept going a further 5km or so to Kynuna to stop and visit. And enjoy.

They lied.

Kynuna has a population of 20, and I’m certain that we didn’t see a single, solitary one of them. Not one.

So we turned around, drove the 5km back to the turnoff to Julia Creek, and kept on going.

They are seriously lacking in imagination out in these parts. Guess what the Kynuna to Julia Creek road is called?

Kynuna-Julia Creek Road.

Guess what the Winton to Richmond road is called?

Winton-Richmond Road.

And if they include the word “Developmental” into the road name – eg Winton-Richmond Developmental Road, that is generally code for “unsealed road, drive at your peril”.

The road from Kynuna to JC (aka the Kynuna-JC Road) was a single lane, sealed road that was smooth and fast, and I needed to set the cruise control so that my speed didn’t keep creeping up to 110km/h.

We did need to slow down or stop a couple of times, and they were because of road trains coming the other way9 (there simply wasn’t enough space on the road for us AND a road train), or because of these cattle grids that were really rough and threatened to either cause your suspension to bottom out, or to cause you to become airborne.

We rolled into Julia Creek (population 511) around 12.30pm, and went looking for the Visitor Information Centre. We are planning to stop at a free RV park just outside town, but we needed to get a permit first.

Free to stay here, but a permit is required. And you cannot drop anything on the ground. No grey water, nothing.

I said to the lady at the Visitor Information Centre that I had always wanted to visit Julia Creek. Her response probably summed up everything you need to know about Julia Creek and the level of excitement that you can expect here.

“Why?”

Well, that is a very good question, and I’ll have to give some though to why I have always wanted to visit JC.

So we got our permit and decided to have a pub lunch for a change. 2 x Parmys with salad and chips, followed by a walk through town.

We went for a quick walk up one side of the main street and back the other, and that was about it. I saw a guy getting a gas bottle filled at the local hardware store, and asked how much … because I also have an empty bottle on the van.

Remember Augathella?

$49.95 for a 9kg gas bottle. $24.95 at home.

Sigh 🙁

Maybe I can wait until we get to Mt Isa?

We found the RV park, found a spot by the water and have had a bit of a rest waiting for sunset to arrive.

We have a few feathered friends turned up to say hello. Ducks and chickens, although one of the chickens has been crowing, which means two things:

He’s not a chicken, and
He has no idea what time it is.

That’s about it. I think that we are all caught up now.

Tonight we stay here in the Julia Creek RV park, and tomorrow we travel through Cloncurry (population 3,167) and stay at the Mary Kathleen Abandoned township.

Well, that’s the plan, anyway. And you know what they say about a plan …

A plan is only good until the first punch is thrown. Hopefully there will be no punching tonight!

One final thing: I know that you have all been worried sick that I have forgotten to give you the answer on a cup of Winton (smelly) water being allowed to decant all night in the fridge. Is it the best water you’ve ever tasted, or was the lady at the shop having a go at us?

Well, we tried it. It wasn’t smelly any longer and it was nice water. Not necessarily the best water that I’ve ever tasted, but not the worst either.

Cold, wet and refreshing.

What more can I say?

Ciao

#Retirement2024

#VanLife

May 16, 2024May 16, 2024

Day 8: Winton

Winton, Thursday.

What a cracker of a day. Not a cloud in the sky, low 20s, a cool breeze blowing. Shorts and T-shirt weather.

It’s been warm going to bed at night, but we generally pull up the blanket around 5.30am as it starts to cool off. But I’m not complaining.

Fabulous, darlings!

Yesterday afternoon we went for a bit of a drive, just to see the sights.

When I say “we went for a bit of a drive”, we didn’t go far, because there are not many places to see without going a long way. But it was a spectacularly beautiful afternoon. Although the water stinks out here, the air is clean and fresh.

Look at that sky!

We are staying at the Winton Wanderers Caravan Park, out on the western (left) side of the image above. Where the blue dot is.

And when I say “to see the sights”, I use that term loosely.

We found the road to Hughenden (north), and the road to Jundah (south), and the road to Longreach (east), and the road to Cloncurry (west – that is tomorrow’s road out of town, into the unknown).

That’s it, just 4 roads out of town. Plus Arno’s wall, a coffee shop, and a musical fence.

And 3 (maybe 4) pubs.

We also found the Winton railway station, except that it didn’t display any Queensland Rail signage … so maybe the QR Travel services stop at Longreach. You’d think that I’d know stuff like that, having worked at QR 🙁

Last night was Opera Queensland’s “Do we need another hero” production. This was a free event that was held at the Crackup Sister’s Dust Arena. It is a local attraction where small comedy shows are put on, and the reason it is called the Dust Arena will become obvious soon.

The production was very well done (as usual), and was a musical examination of all of the heros that we have in our lives, including Superman, Hercules, etc, along with everyday heros including Mum and Dad. They even worked a local hero into the story – a lady who has spent 22 years in Winton helping underprivileged people here in the outback.

This was obviously a pretty big deal last night, because the Board of Directors of OQ, and also the Minister for lots of things including Arts all appeared to be present. They were all pretty obviously arty-farty types, sitting in the front two rows with their fancy clothes, weird glasses, bottles of wine, and hyphenated surnames.

I don’t know where they are all staying out here. I can’t imagine them bringing a caravan, and there are certainly no 5-star hotels out this way. In fact, I can’t imagine that there is much accommodation out here at all; certainly not enough for all of the performers, plus the OQ Board, plus the Minister and her entourage.

I hope that they are not staying at the North Gregory Hotel, because by my reckoning it must be due to burn down again any time soon.

Anyhow, they all laughed hysterically at things that I (clearly) didn’t understand, like when Jason Barry-Smith (another hyphenated surname from the night before) started singing some aria in Italian.

As I said, it was all a bit lost on me.

But it was a great show. They told the story of heros, and sang lots of stuff that related to heros such as “We don’t need another hero”, “Billy, don’t be a hero”, “Man in the mirror”, and stuff in Italian that was obviously real opera about heros.

Anyhow, it was a great night. And they had lamingtons for sale at intermission! When was the last time you got lamingtons served at intermission?

You can see the OQ Instagram page for last night’s event here. Make sure you turn the sound on.

We slept well last night. Well, I slept well and MBW says that she did too. I must have slept well because at some unearthly hour, MBW elbows me in the side and announced that it was 7.45am. Time to get up.

The usual ablutions and breakfast, gave Percy a quick tidy, and invested $4.00 in a washing machine to do the weekly washing of the big stuff – sheets, towels, jeans, etc.

We do have a washing machine in Percy, but it is only good for smalls. Half a dozen pairs of undies and it is about at capacity.

Washing hung out, and we were back off to the Dust Arena for the Crackup Sisters show this morning. It was a fun morning of typical Aussie slapstick humour and whip cracking on an outdoor stage. And audience participation, whether you wanted to participate or not.

I’m not sure that Michael from Wynnum (a couple of pictures below, in a dress), was particularly enthusiastic about being part of the show – particularly when he’d paid $20 to see it, but he got in on the fun and we all had a good laugh at him.

The Minister for lots of things including the Arts was there again, so Parliament mustn’t be sitting at the moment, or she must be hiding from her boss.

Or she needs another portfolio to keep herself and her entourage busy.

As well as the show, our entry fee included a tour of the museum … which, according to my untrained eye just seemed like a whole bunch of junk that should have been taken to the tip years ago. Kinda like Arno’s wall … cement your junk into a concrete wall and suddenly becomes a tourist attraction.

Huh?

Hmmm … maybe I could turn my office at home into a tourist attraction, because it has a whole bunch of junk lying around that should have been taken to the tip years ago …

It’s hard to appreciate just how isolated you are out here. On most of the roads leading out of Winton there is a sign that warns you how far you have to go to find your next fuel stop in that direction. Having a tiger in your tank is really all that matters.

Winton – 374km to next fuel stop (South)

Winton – 213km to next fuel stop (North)

You also have to watch out for the road trains. The picture above shows one taking up most of the road to Jundah, with 4 trailers. I assume that makes it a B-Quadruple?

And there was 2 of them, one after the other. And the road to Jundah is hardly a 4 lane highway.

We stopped off at the local grocery shop to get some essentials. Last time we were out here at Winton, I recall that there was only one shop, but now there are two shops. I also recall that the prices were extortionate … but with 2 local shops there seems to be more competition and prices are more reasonable.

In fact, I don’t know that we paid a great deal more out here than we do at home for stuff like milk, Jatz, and bottled water.

The water out here – direct from the Artesian basin – is pretty stinky, with a strong sulphur smell. You get out of the shower smelling worse than when you got in!

But the lady at the shop tells us that if you get a bottle of the water and put it in the fridge, it is the nicest water that you will ever taste.

I’m not sure whether that is a joke that the locals play on the tourists, or a fact, but we will give it a try and report back tomorrow.

The lady at the shop – also from Brisbane apparently, although she says she was born out here, lived in Brisbane, and has returned – went to some pains to tell us how safe it is out here. We noticed yesterday that the local coffee shop (the “Lost Poet” from yesterday, remember?) leaves all of their tables and chairs outside when they close up for the day.

She told us that the only “trouble” she can recall is when a car caught fire, and how everyone comes together to assist when someone has a problem.

Which reminds me of a line from OQ’s hero presentation last night: “Pickles are great, until you are in one”.

Nice to know that if we find ourselves in a pickle, one of the 1600 people who live here will help out.

On the subject of safety though, I do need to note that there is a big sign inside the toilet doors saying “WARNING: BEWARE OF SNAKES!”, that then go on to tell you not to get to close to a snake if you see one.

Why they need to give you this warning when you are in the loo I have no idea, but it certainly incentivises you to hurry up and not hang around for too long.

One of the things that we were happy to do on this trip was not be in a hurry. That means that there will be times when we just have a bit of a rest day.

Today was one of those days. As I’ve said previously, we have been to Winton previously and there are not a huge number of touristy things to do here … and we have already been for a drive around town a couple of times, so we just had a quiet afternoon.

MBW made toasties for lunch, and then we just poked around for a while.

I tried to think of some clever and witty things to say in the blog, and MBW went inside to read her book. I finished the Tattooist of Auschwitz today, and then I was ready for a nap.

But it suddenly got really hot and stuffy in the van – 30+ degrees outside in the shade, so we closed all of Percy’s windows and cranked up the air-conditioning for a few hours.

And I had a nap.

That’s about all of the excitement for today. Tonight we are off to see the final opera show called Dark Sky Serenade. It is being held at the Age of Dinosaurs site, about 30km outside of Winton on the road back to Longreach.

It should be a great night. I assume that everyone who’s anyone will be there again tonight with their soft cheeses, and bottles of white. And their reserved front-row seats.

But you’ll hear all about that tomorrow.

Tonight is our last night in Winton, and tomorrow we (literally) head off into the unknown. Well, unknown for us. From tomorrow morning we will be travelling roads that we have never travelled before.

Winton to Kynuna, then Kynuna to Julia Creek – home for tomorrow night. North and West to discover new places. It is under 300km and less than 3 hours, so it should be a relaxed day.

Ciao

#Retirement2024

#VanLife

May 15, 2024May 15, 2024

Day 7: Winton

I feel like I need to explain something that I said in yesterday’s blog, specifically about the “deafening silence” at Dunblane. It’s actually quite strange, because normally we have a “noise floor” (to use amateur radio terminology) where there is a constant level of background noise.

Even now – sitting in the van at Winton – I can hear cars and trucks going along the highway, providing some constant white noise. Plus there are trees blowing in the wind, and people talking nearby.

Noise.

But when we were at Dunblane, there were virtually no trees on the property, so no wind noise, and the road to Winton was so far away (maybe a kilometre away) so no noise there either.

So in the absence of any background noise, you just have this aching silence.

And in the silence, any occasional noise that you do hear – like the bed squeak when you roll over, or crickets chirping – just seems so much louder and intrusive. Not necessarily in a bad way, though. Just different.

Maybe the sound of that alleged beeping in the middle of the night too?

When we rolled into Winton (population 1600) yesterday afternoon, it was about 30 degrees. I couldn’t get out of those jeans and into shorts fast enough! By the time we rolled out of the caravan park into the Winton town centre around 4.45pm for the night’s fun, Elsie’s thermometer was reporting it was 38 degrees outside.

So off we went to the Opera in the Outback’s first event (that we planned to attend) called “Sing, sing, sing”. It was intended to be a mix of operatic performances by Opera Queensland (OQ) professionals, with the opportunity for us non-professionals to join in.

And hopefully we will not spoil it 🙁

Most of the pieces that they encouraged us to sing along to were pieces that you would likely know, such as Habanera or Figaro, mashed up with Australian classics, like “Click go the Shears”.

It was all very interactive, and a lot of fun.

The event was held at the Royal Open Air Picture Theatre in the centre of Winton.

The host for the night – a guy named Jason Barry-Smith – was very flamboyant, and seemed to me to be something of a mix between Mr Humphries (from “Are you being served”), and Zsa Zsa Gabor, with his constant encouragement that our singing was “Fabulous, darlings”.

The event started at 6.30pm or so, and finished up just before 8.00pm. We sat in old-fashioned canvas seats, and the BBQ they put on was sausages and onions on bread at $3.00 each.

All in all a fun night.

I think I have said already that we are staying at the Winton Wanderers Caravan Park, just outside of Winton. A new, and very pretty little park with flat, level, drive-through sites and excellent facilities.

We woke this morning to a beautiful sunny day.

After breakfast we did a run into town and a look around and to walk the main street. Also to figure out where tonight’s opera is on, and to see if we could spot any of the pop-ups that OQ are putting on around town during the day.

We were told of a new coffee shop in town called “The Lost Poet” and decided to support local enterprise. Nothing is more than a 5 minute walk in Winton, so we left Elsie where she was parked in the main street, and went for a walk.

Within 5 minutes of sitting down in the Lost Poet, OQ started up a quick performance.

After coffee, we kept walking around town.

There is quite a bit of history in Winton, including Arno’s Garden and Arno’s Wall.

Nope, I don’t really get it either. Arno was either a genius who was way ahead of his time, or a lunatic.

I can only suggest that Mrs Arno must have been a very patient woman, because if I did that at home, I’d be very divorced.

In terms of other history in Winton, Banjo Patterson was probably the headline act, although there were several other things of note that happened here.

There are several pubs in town (I’m thinking 3), and The Gregory Hotel seems to have a bit of a chequered history, with it being knocked down or burnt down several times.

Seems to me that if you book a room at the Gregory, you’d better have your life insurance paid up to date, and your affairs in order.

Or even if you just go there for dinner.

So we had a wander around the township. Such a pretty little town.

It’s hot out here at Winton. 31 degrees.

Back to the van for a rest and some lunch. We decided to have dinner for lunch, and then take some snacky stuff for dinner tonight as it is a BYO food event.

Tonight we are off to see “Do we need another hero?”, which is tonight’s show by OQ. This one is a freebie but tomorrow night is “Dark Sky Sernade” and we paid about $120 each for those tickets. It is out at the Age of Dinosaurs, about 25km out of Winton. That one should be a great show.

MBW is catching up on MasterChef, and I’m looking at emails. All boring stuff, really. Sorry.

That’s about it for today. I hope you are enjoying tagging along.

Ciao

#Retirement2024

#VanLife

May 14, 2024May 14, 2024

Day 6: Dunblane (Barcaldine) – Winton

Today was a day of firsts. I’ll come to that in a moment.

I barely slept last night. I was up late doing some things and by the time I crawled into bed just after 10.00pm, MBW was already snoring softly.

MBW gave me a copy of “The Tattooist of Auschwitz” as a retirement gift, along with a few other things – chocolate, Minties, and a hat.

So by the time I crawled into bed I was still a little wired and not really ready for sleep. So I pulled out the TToA and read a few chapters. By the time I was ready for sleep, I couldn’t get to sleep.

Argh!

It was really dark in the middle of 40,000 acres. About as dark outside your head with your eyes open, as it is inside your head with your eyes closed.

This dark, in fact. I took a photo of how dark it was just so that you could see for yourself.

BTW the quote under the photo above comes from a line that Sylvester Stalone delivered in the movie Rhinestone.

Not only was it dark, but it was super quiet. So quiet in fact that it was deafening. So deafening in fact that I needed to put in my earplugs just to blot it out.

Yes, I know that sounds counterintuitive, but you’ll have to trust me.

So with my earplugs in, and it not mattering if my eyes were opened or closed because it was just as dark either way, I tried to go to sleep.

And I tried. And I tried. And I tried.

Somewhere around 1245am two things happened. Firstly, my bladder started sending messages to my brain, and they were messages that couldn’t be ignored.

And secondly, my legs started to cramp. Badly.

So I got up, put on a pair of shoes and went outside to stretch my legs and to also take a tinkle.

Now I don’t want to bore you with the moment-by-moment minutiae of daily life, and I certainly don’t want you to think that I am some kind of weird pervert who pees outside, but you need to understand a couple of important things here:

The toilet canister light hadn’t come on yet and I could feel it in my water that it would come on at any moment, so I was trying to avoid that at all costs
When you are in the middle of 40,000 acres and it is just before 1.00am, and it is super dark, the risks of being seen taking a tinkle outside are so small that they are insignificant. Probably close to zero. Maybe actually zero.

So that done – legs stretched, cramp relieved, and bladder emptied – I crawled back into bed.

And finally went to sleep …

… until about 30 minutes later, when I was right at the bottom of a nice, comfortable REM cycle, MBW shakes me awake and says “something is beeping”.

And then she rolled over and promptly went back to sleep, while I lay there for another couple of hours listening for an urgent screeching of the smoke alarm (or whatever it was), and wondering how I’d missed it. In fact, I couldn’t help but wonder if someone would find our cold, lifeless bodies in the morning because some catastrophe had happened and I’d missed the warning beeps.

But there was no beeping. Nada.

I finally got back to sleep some time later, and – despite only having had a couple of hours sleep – managed to wake in time to see the sun rising in the east. As it does every single day.

And it was a very pretty sunrise, so I took some photos of it to share.

It looks a bit like a sunset, except on the other side of the sky. Funny that.

The other thing that I really wanted to do before we left was to get the drone in the air. The batteries were charged and so I got it set up only to find that the app on my phone was outdated and needed to be reinstalled..

And that was a serious exercise in frustration when you have limited internet access, and the app isn’t available on the Google Play Store. Almost as frustrating as being at work. Sorry 🙁

Anyhow, after lots of jiggery-pokery I finally managed to get it sorted out and the drone was in the air.

The photos are terrible, and that is a combination of inexperience, the sun being low on the horizon, and trying to avoid overhead powerlines.

By breakfast we had run out of water in our tanks, and the toilet light was on, so we ate breakfast, hooked up, and headed into town.

The Barcaldine showgrounds have a dump point and a water tap for filling your tanks – both completely separate and with no risk of cross-contamination. Completely unrelated.

I know I shouldn’t need to say that, but I feel that it is an important point. I must say however that I was curious at the pair of BBQ tongs that someone has left at the dump point, and I am still trying to figure out their purpose in the emptying of a toilet canister.

Hmmm.

Anyhow, toilet canister empty, hands thoroughly washed and sanitised, and here we are filling the water tanks.

Thanks Barcaldine for being such an RV friendly town, and providing such great facilities!

The trip today is from Barcaldine to Winton, a distance of approximately 300km and just over 3 hours travelling time. It is made up of a 1 hour run to Longreach (home of the Qantas museum), then a further 2 hour run to Winton.

The roads were great. Wide, smooth, fast. Plenty of room to pass a B-Triple coming the other way, without fearing that you were about to be run or blown off the road. Plenty of room for overtaking, too.

I had a constant feeling that we were climbing all day. Elsie’s fuel economy reflected that fact too, with the tank registering just north of 20 litres per 100km.

If you do the maths and convert that to a cost per kilometre, it’s … nah. Experience tells me not to ask a question if you don’t want to know the answer.

So while I felt as though we were climbing all day, Wikipedia tells me that Barcaldine is 267m above sea level, Longreach is 191m above sea level, and Winton is 188m above sea level.

That means that … we were actually going downhill overall. Interesting.

We wanted to stop at Ilfracombe – about 15 minutes before Longreach – to have a look at a quirky little pub called the Wellshot Hotel.

And to get a caffeinated beverage.

After a broken night’s sleep, I needed all of the caffeine that I could get 🙁

Wellshot Hotel Coffee Hatch – Ilfracombe

Bar stools – Wellshot Hotel – Ilfracombe

Does my bum look big in this? Bar stool – Wellshot Hotel – Ilfracombe

The other significant event that occurred at Ilfracombe was that I finally had mobile access (thanks Woolworths Mobile!), so I was able to port my service over to another carrier that covers more of the Australian population than any other.

I’m finally back in the land of the living and contactable. Hooray!

It was quick run into Longreach for a quick walk around, and so that we could fuel up Elsie for the next part of the trip to Winton.

Longreach is yet another very pretty little outback Queensland town.

We rolled into Winton a bit after 2.00pm and headed straight for our accommodation for the next 3 nights – the Winton Wanderers Caravan Park. It’s about 5km outside Winton on the way to Cloncurry.

We are here in Winton for the Opera in the Outback, and we will get to see 3 separate events over 3 nights, starting tonight.

But first, let me tell you about today’s firsts:

It was the first time that we emptied the toilet canister
It was the first time I had mobile coverage since driving out of Roma
It was the first time I had the drone in the air
It was the first time that someone spoke to us on UHF Channel 40 and addressed us directly, due to the signage on the back of the van.

We have a sign on the back of the van that says 2AussieNomads.com UHF40, and we got a call from someone that I didn’t even realise was behind us saying “Supreme 2 Aussie Nomads, I’m coming past you …”.

Not exactly something to celebrate, but that’s why you advertise who you are and what channel you are on. It makes it so much easier for other road travellers to communicate with you.

We are off to “Sing, sing, sing” being put on by Opera Queensland tonight at the Winton Royal Open Air Theatre, so that should be a fun night … I hope.

You’ll hear about that tomorrow. It will be an early night tonight after the opera.

Ciao

#Retirement2024

#VanLife

May 13, 2024May 13, 2024

Day 5: Dunblane (near Barcaldine)

Pfft.

I’m going to say it again. Pfft.

Last night’s “sunset from the tub full of hot artesian basin water” was a bust. Seriously.

Not the sunset’s fault. The sunset was spectacular. Indescribably beautiful.

Here is some proof, even though the photos simply do not do it justice. You had to be there to see it.

The problem wasn’t even with the tub and the hot artesian basin water. The problem was with the pump that pushes the water from the bore to the tub. Although technically there was nothing wrong with the pump either.

The problem was that Ergon Energy had a “significant outage” that plunged all of the Barcaldine district into the dark ages. Literally. A network outage that started about an hour before sunset and lasted until about an hour after sunset.

No electricity = no pump = no hot tub full of water.

Just the sunset. Which was spectacular.

As I said, the power did eventually come on and we filled the tub and went for a plunge anyway, but it was very dark, with a cool breeze blowing. We had a nice soak after dinner, then put on some warmer clothes and went and sat by the fire for a while and drank coffee.

And listened to the cows mooing, and the sheep baa-ing.

And nothing else. Not a sound. Well, maybe a few crickets.

We also spent some time looking up at the Milky Way and named all of the constellations that we could. Beautiful.

I wonder what the poor people are doing?

Monday morning, and we woke to a beautiful day. Sunny, warm, blue skies.

We had no particular plans for today, and David (the lucky guy who owns these 40,000 acres) was dubious of our claim that we would be happy just sitting around, reading books, and napping.

He proposed an alternative plan. A self-drive tour of his property.

All we had to do was follow the road leading out of camp towards the shearing shed. Not the road that we came in on, which could hardly be described as a road, but the one leading in the other direction.

Which, as it turns out, was even less of a road than the one we came in on.

Road towards the shearing shed – Dunblane

Lucky we didn’t bring the Ferrari on this trip – it would never have made it!

We followed the road for about 15 minutes, saw some kangaroos and emus, and finally made it across the train line (that’s the QR Travel line to Winton), and to the shearing shed.

David’s instruction was that we should text him when we got to the shearing shed, and he would give us instructions for the self-drive tour.

Although we texted him, unfortunately he was tied up and didn’t respond. We found out later that he was busy unbogging a bogged caravan.

Probably that turkey from Victoria that I complained about yesterday.

If a less than perfect road and no response from David were the biggest problems that we have today, then it’s a pretty good day.

We decided to head back into town (Barcaldine) to have a look around. It was only 5km or so and I think that Elsie appreciated the opportunity to let those horses run free, without Percy on the back.

In fact, we (I) had a bigger problem than just David not responding. If you cast your mind back a few days to when we went through Roma, that was the last time that I had mobile coverage. Several months ago I ported across to Woolworths mobile on the understanding that it was on the Telstra network, and to have the added bonus of 10% off one shop at Woolies each month.

And given how much we spend at Woolies each month, that meant that the Woolworths mobile plan would pay for itself!

Bargain. NOT!

Roma was the last time that my phone connected to a network and I was able to send or receive calls and text messages. MBW’s phone still works and is getting good reception and decent internet, but mine?

Nada.

Here we are, centre of Barcaldine, underneath a Telstra mobile tower, and no mobile coverage on my phone. Zip.

It turns out, as my learned oldest son informs me, that Woolworths mobile is on the Telstra Wholesale network, not the “real Telstra network”.

And he’d know, because he works for them.

So that means that I am doomed to no mobile coverage for most of this trip. Unless …

We went to the local Barcaldine IGA and got me a Boost Mobile SIM card. Boost are on the “real” network. MBW is on Boost, and she gets good reception and internet – remember?

All I had to do was to activate the SIM and my phone is alive again. Except …

To activate a SIM, you have to be able to receive a text message with a code in it. To receive a text message, you have to have mobile coverage. And I don’t have mobile coverage.

Bugger.

So we had a quick poke around Barcaldine, got some groceries and some more cash, and headed back to camp for a quick lunch.

By this time it was hot – about 30 degrees, so we changed into shorts and T-shirts, had a quick bite of lunch, and headed back to the shearing shed for the self-drive tour, take #2.

With instructions from David, and in possession of the black folder that gives us the detailed directions, we headed off.

The self-drive tour is the opportunity for us city-slickers to get out and have a look at how the other half – our country cousins – live. On our little 400m² blocks, it is quite hard to comprehend the size of David’s 40,000 acres. And I’m sure that we only saw a small part of it.

It is also an opportunity to let Elsie do what she was designed to do – go off-road.

We picked up a hitch-hiker – Self-drive tour – Dunblane

It also turns out that David is smarter than the average bear. The self-drive tour is constructed to be followed as though we are working for him and doing a property check, looking for issues with the fence, checking the water tanks/troughs, and checking for any evidence of his sheep being killed by wild dogs.

His instructions are quite specific about how to check the water level in the tanks, and checking the condition of some of the equipment that he has around the property.

In one of the photos above you can see the dog fence, designed to keep wild dogs out, and to keep his sheep safe. And they are designed in a compartmentalised way so that if a dog does get it, it is confined to one small area and can’t go any further.

In fact, the dog fence surrounds and protects several properties, covering several hundred thousand acres.

As a part of the tour, you are asked to send him any photos or reports of any issues on the property. Seems like a very clever way to get people to see a part of his world, and for him to get property reports without having to have to go out and do it himself 🙂

The tour took us about 2 hours to complete, and we travelled about 15km, and it was well worth the experience!

Here is a fun fact – I read somewhere that David has approximately 10,000 sheep on his property, and that he also has more kangaroos than sheep.

Travelling around Barcaldine and self-drive tour

Once we’d completed the tour, we headed back to camp for coffee and a rest. We spent some time looking around the camp, and checking out the neighbours.

It is obviously lambing season because there are lots of these little fellas running around the paddock.

Beef and lamb – 2 of my favourite things – Dunblane

I had wanted to put the drone (Sam’s drone) up to get some photos this afternoon, but it seems that I neglected to confirm that the batteries were charged before I left home, so I put them all onto charge ready for tomorrow morning.

Fortunately we have power here at this campsite, so while we are very remote, we still have the ability to run 240V appliances, and charge drone batteries.

I busied myself with getting the tub ready for sunset tonight, given that Ergon Energy had lifted their game and we had power restored.

Last night we found that the water – while it comes out at about 45 degrees – it is not quite hot enough to be really relaxing. David has a hot water donkey that you can hook up to get the water even hotter.

That was all a bit of an exercise in frustration because the water pressures are not great, and so it was hard to get the water flowing effectively through the donkey, and the hoses are old and cracked, and the connections are bad … but being the resourceful people that we are, we found a way.

Where there’s a will … as they say.

Tonight we got to sit in the hot tub and watch the sun go down … and what another spectacular sunset it was.

Sunset was about 5.47pm tonight, so you can see how that unfolded – from the luxury of a hot tub.

Dinner, coffee and a sit by the fire for a while. What better way is there to end the day?

Tomorrow we are packing up and heading off to Winton, about 3 hours away. Fortunately Woolworths Mobile considers Longreach (on the way from Barcaldine to Winton) worthy of their mobile service. So we will stop there briefly to start the porting process and bring me back into the 21st century.

I’ve been cut off from the world for so long that I have been practicing smoke signals, just in case.

Winton is the place where we will stay for 3 nights, and we will get to experience the Opera in the Outback. It should be amazing – even though we are not opera buffs.

Winton is also the place where the water smells awful, full of sulphur … so we will be stopping in town (Barcaldine) to top up the tanks so that we have sufficient clean water to get us through the next few days.

We are still having fun, and hope that you are too!

Ciao

#Retirement2024

#VanLife