Author: geoff

It was a bit of a lazy Sunday in Winton today. Nothing much is open anyway, so we decided to do a self-drive trip along the Route of the River Gum, through the Bladensburg National Park.

But let me back up a little first.

We woke to a chilly morning again here in Winton. “8 degrees that feels like 4 degrees”. I’m no expert on what 4 degrees feels like, but I’d be pretty confident that it felt like 4 degrees this morning.

It was certainly a chilly and unpleasant walk from the van across to the ablutions block in my PJs and thongs.

No photos of that, fortunately!

And it only got more unpleasant after I got naked for my shower and discovered that there was virtually no water pressure and virtually no hot water.

And the pitiful dribble of water that did come out of the shower head stank of that Sulphur smell that is prevalent here in Winton.

So it wasn’t the happiest start to the day. And needless to say, ablutions were pretty quick!

But we had breakfast and coffee and the world became a happy place again. We packed up a few things to have for smoko on our trip with Neil & Desleigh into the national park.

Our first stop for the day was the musical fence.

It is basically just bits and pieces lying around that you can pluck, bang or strike to make sounds, and there is (of course) a part of the fence dedicated to Waltzing Matilda.

Next door to the musical fence is a truck museum. While we didn’t go in and look around, there were lots of old trucks in the truck graveyard out the back to look at.

We then headed back to the Waltzing Matilda Centre which is the start point for the self-drive trip.

We zeroed our trip meters and headed off south towards the Bladensburg National Park, following the instructions in a guide book.

First stop was a memorial to the Shearer’s Strike on 1891-1894.

The strike was essentially between unionised and non-unionised labour and all reports are that it was poorly timed as the union workers ran out of food and were forced to negotiate.

It was also the start of the Australian Labor Party.

Next stop was a clay pan. No vegetation grows in the clay plan except for when it rains, and water runs off the clay plan “like water off a tin roof” and fills the waterholes.

We then moved on to Little Jump Up. A jump up is an area of high ground where you can look back and see how flat the surrounding land is.

Next stop was Skull Hole, the site of an aboriginal massacre following the murder of a teamster. The state troopers tracked down the aborigines and dealt out punitive measures for the murder.

Next we stopped at a camping and swimming spot. Not much water in the waterhole, but a few people camped nearby.

It was around here that Neil radioed to say that he was having “tyre issues”; translation was that he had completely split one of his rear tyres open and it was almost off the rim.

So we all stood around and tut-tutted and made encouraging noises while Neil crawled under his car in the dirt and changed the tyre.

Let’s face it, the only thing that I know about changing a tyre is dialling 131905 (that’s RACQ roadside assistance), and to be completely honest, I don’t even know if Elsie has a spare tyre!

A few quick roadside repairs and we were off again towards Richard Cragg’s grave. He was an early pioneer in Winton in the late 1800s … although why his family chose to bury him all the way out here in the middle of nowhere is anybody’s guess.

I’m wondering if (a) his family didn’t like him much, or (b) his poisoning wasn’t completely accidental.

Now I need to explain a thing or two to you about 4WDing and creek crossings in particular.

You can never be too careful with a creek crossing; someone needs to take off their shoes and walk through the crossing first to ensure that it is safe and that the water isn’t flowing too fast or too deep.

Pretty safe with this creek crossing though – I can see that the water isn’t flowing too fast!

That took us to the end of the self-drive tour, so we took the road less travelled and headed on a further 14km through the national park to Logan’s Falls.

We had lunch, and headed back to town (Winton) in time to see the local brolgas taking their afternoon stroll down the main street.

Back to the van, caught up on some beauty sleep, and we got ready to head back out to the national park for a BBQ dinner, to watch the sunset, and look at the stars.

Sounds quite romantic really, don’t you think?

We drove back out to the national park – about 15km south of Winton towards Jundah – then turned off on the road to Opalton and travelled another couple of kilometres along a dirt road to a nice quiet spot in the middle of nowhere.

We pulled off the road and circled the (station) wagons, and set up for dinner, sunset, and star-gazing.

I spent some time getting in touch with my creative side (… a bit of right-brained activity never hurt anyone) …

Stay with me … sunset will come along eventually …

Probably not quite as spectacular as the sunset we saw in Longreach a couple of days ago, but it wasn’t as hot today and we had no clouds to bounce the sunset off.

We lit a small fire and waited for the stars to come out.

It was a drop dead gorgeous day here in Winton today. Crisp start, mid-20s … not too hot, not too cold … just a beautiful day in the outback.

Today was really just a whole bunch of driving around in circles, going to the national park and back (and back to the national park for dinner, and back again).

Tomorrow we head off early back towards Longreach to see the Qantas museum, then probably stay in Barcaldine for the night, before (I expect) heading back through Emerald towards Rockhampton and then home.

But that is still to be determined. Maybe we won’t come back at all … ? Maybe we will just keep travelling until we run out of money or we run out of clean clothes?

That’s about it for tonight peeps. Time to roll out my swag and let off some ZZZs …

I hope that you are having as much fun as we are 🙂

Ciao

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

We have a day in Longreach today, so we are staying at the Longreach Tourist Caravan Park for the 2 nights. Today is a bit of a “doing the touristy things in Longreach” day.

Part of me thinks that it is nice staying at the one place for a couple of nights so I get to sleep in the same bed 2 nights running, but we are actually sleeping in the same bed every night anyway.

But it is nice not having to run through my mental checklist of hooking up Elsie, packing down the van and being out of the park by 10.00am … and then driving the next 50km wondering what significant thing that I’d forgotten to do.

And that – as you know already – when coupled with poor plumbing leads me to have to stop and check.

Poor plumbing and OCD – what a winning combination!

So today we kicked off the day at the Stockman’s Hall of Fame.

Actually, that’s not strictly correct. We kicked off the day with the usual ablutions and breakfast on the front porch …

… but I don’t want to bore you with all of the minutiae of everyday life.

If I wanted to give you the full details of everything we do, not only will this blog will go forever, but I’d be forced to tell you that I also emptied the caravan toilet this morning at the dump point next to the camp kitchen because the light had come on, and that’s not exactly compelling reading … much less something that I want to record for posterity.

But now that I’ve brought it up, I actually don’t know why the dump point is located so close to the camp kitchen … but that is a rabbit-hole that I definitely don’t care to go down.

So we woke, had our ablutions, had breakfast outside in a pleasant 17 degrees or so, although that 17 degrees had this kind of veiled threat of a much hotter day to come.

I may not have mentioned that when we arrived in Longreach yesterday, the first thing that I did once we’d plugged in the power was to turn on the A/C in the van.

Today was going to be another one of those days. There was this warm blustery wind blowing.

After breakfast we did the dishes …. sorry, fast-forward to the Stockman’s Hall of Fame.

This whole COVID-19 thing means that you can’t just rock up to attractions here in Longreach – you have to pre-book and arrive at your allocated time.

You then go through the normal routine of hand sanitising etc before you get to the good stuff.

We spent a pleasant few hours browsing all of the exhibits, watching the Stockman’s documentary, and reading all about the unsung hero’s of the outback.

That picture above reminds me that we are having steak for dinner. Yum!

That bullock wagon in the picture above is full sized, so you can see how big they are! I’m 183cm tall and I fitted neatly underneath it.

Many of the stories of the unsung heros were really interesting and show how hard must have been back at the turn of the last century (early 1900s).

There were, however, two things to note about these heros:

1. Many of them were reproductive over-achievers. I think that the winner had 12 sons and 8 daughters … and I can only assume that this all happened before TV and they had nothing else to do, or perhaps the nights were very cold …?
2. Many of them had really cool names, like Splinter Morrison.

Why couldn’t my parents have given me a cool name like “Splinter”, or ”Spike” or “Randy” … hmmm, maybe not Randy.

So I decided to spice things up a bit by giving Kerri and I cowboy names for the rest of today’s blog.

I will henceforth be known as Luther ‘Scarface’ Taylor, and Kerri will be Erma ‘Lucky’ Taylor.

Anyhow, as I was saying, Erma and I spent a pleasant few hours looking around the SHoF and came out into approx 30 degrees heat at around 12.30pm.

We went for a quick spin down to the river, and then back to the van for a bite of lunch.

It’s a funny thing – the street names in Longreach are mostly named after birds.

Even stranger, the east-west streets are named after water-based birds (Duck St, Swan St, Pelican St), while the north-south streets are named after land-based birds (Pidgeon Ln, Parrot Ln, Cassowary St) and so on.

And they go on and on and on.

Clearly the early settlers out here had a limited imagination.

So we had lunch and started thinking about our next afternoon outing – Smithy’s Outback Adventure (Thompson River Cruise).

We putted around for an hour or so in the air-conditioned comfort of the van, before heading out the front at 2.15pm to the front of the caravan park ready for the pick-up by Smithy.

It was 32 degrees. And it stayed 32 degrees for most of the afternoon.

We went on the river cruise with Neil and Des – I mentioned them in yesterday’s post. They will henceforth be known as Beauford and Mildred Dawson.

So Erma and I, along with Beauford and Mildred waited out front in 32 degree heat waiting for Smithy to come along in his bus to pick us up.

We were taken out to the Thompson River, which is not actually a river at all, but a series of waterholes. Today we went on the Longreach Waterhole which goes for 10.4km.

Prior to embarkation, everyone was told that we would get a shot of pure alcohol.

It sounded a bit like saloon time from the old West, but it was actually COVID-19 precautions and we got hand sanitiser.

Not entirely unexpected, I guess.

Our riverboat crew were introduced to us as Miss Jane and Captain Corky.

I thought it was a joke … but it wasn’t – they actually called each other by those names … and I kind of felt like I was trapped in an episode of Mr Squiggle.

We also learned that the local Aboriginals used to use the trees along the shore of the Longreach waterhole for making canoes using the bark.

In the picture above you can see the scar where the canoe was carved out of the tree – possibly a couple of hundred years ago.

Very pretty trip along the river, good commentary and generally a pleasant afternoon puttering up the river in a boat with twin 27HP diesel motors.

Just for comparison, Elsie (remember Elsie?) has probably 10 times the HP that the boat has. Which reminds me – did you figure out why Kerri Erma called the car Elsie?

As we got off the boat storm clouds started rolling in, so it was good timing that we were back in the bus and heading back to the caravan park for dinner.

Dinner tonight? Steak 🙂

Tomorrow we head off to Winton. I hear that the water is pretty bad there – lots of sulphur smell in the water – so I might fill the tanks and take some purified Longreach waterhole water with me.

Time for coffee, then bed.

Ciao

I’m going to start today’s post with a bit of a rant about PPPs.

Plural Possessive Pronouns.

Nothing annoys me more than walking into a cafe or coffee shop and being asked “are we eating in today?”

Not “are you eating in …”; “are we eating in?”

Kerri knows how much I hate it because I will always answer “… well I’m not sure about your plans, but I am planning to eat in” … so she always jumps in ahead of me.

It is especially prevalent in outback Queensland.

The young bloke at the Cosmos Centre took it to a new level the other night. “Hi. What is our surname?”

I highly doubt that my surname is the same as his, but I didn’t get the chance to correct him as Kerri got in first 🙁

Enough said.

We got away from Lara’s Wetlands at about 9.15 am.

We travelled the 13km back to the main road …

… and headed north towards Barcaldine.

Once again the roads were very good, 110km/hour. Lots and lots of roadkill.

So many dead ‘roos that sometimes you had to swerve to the wrong side of the road to miss running over one that was in the middle of my side of the road.

We got into Barcaldine about 10.00 and got some fuel, then headed west again towards Longreach.

It is very, very dry out here. The place all looks a bit post-apocalyptic to me – nothing much growing.

There really isn’t much to tell. The road from Barcaldine to Longreach is about an hour.

We arrived in Longreach at about 11.30 and it was 30 degrees C. Shorts and Tee-shirt weather.

We dropped off the van at the Longreach Tourist Caravan Park …

… and then headed into town to see the sights.

We met up with some friends from Brisbane – Neil and Desleigh – who are also staying at the Longreach Tourist Caravan Park and will probably travel with them on the next leg to Winton.

Tonight we went on a Bush By Night experience, which included seeing the sunset …

… followed by dinner around the campfire, some music …

… poetry and story-telling.

Sitting watching a stunning sunset and it was still 30 degrees C … this is living!

It was a great night – well worth doing!

Home now, and we are staying in Longreach for a couple of nights.

Today’s trip was a pretty easy one – 134km and a bit over 2 hours on the road.

Tomorrow the Stockman’s Hall of Fame and a river cruise.

Bring it on.

Ciao

I know that some of you have travelled with us previously.

Not literally travelled with us, because that would be weird. There wouldn’t be enough space in the car for all of you, and when we book a room to stay we only book for the two of us.

What I mean is that you travel with us vicariously through the blog.

So anyway, I know that some of you have travelled with us previously, and you know that at some point in the trip we give the car a name.

Elsie.

That’s what Kerri has called our car. Elsie.

Not exactly the type of name that belongs on the “King off the road”… but it does have her initials on the number plate, so I guess she gets naming rights.

I would have chosen Mustafa, but no, Elsie. Pfft.

I’ll leave it up to you to figure out why the car is called Elsie.

Anyhow, we loaded up Elsie (who calls a car Elsie???) and pulled out of the Charleville Bush Caravan Park at about 8.45am. We thought we’d mix it up a little today 🙂

Just hold that thought for a moment.

So I told you that we were going to the Cosmos Centre last night for the Big Sky Observatory tour.

$30 each. Not the most expensive thing that we are doing on the trip; certainly not the cheapest … but it was a fizzer.

We were due to start at 9.00pm sharp, but at 9.07pm we were still standing around while some of the staff had huddled discussions, and others Googled the weather on the computer.

Apparently there were clouds coming in and they did not feel that they could give us the “full experience” … so they gave us two other options – go into the other dome thing and look at “NASA imagery”, or get a refund.

So seriously … you don’t drive all the way to Charleville to get a refund just because there are “clouds”, so we went for the narrated NASA imagery option instead.

Fizzer 🙁

The shape of the dome meant that everything said had a terrible echo (… echo … echo …) and it was very hard to understand. And then there was the fact that imagery moved across the dome at a speed that made you feel like you were going around and around …

Anyway, it was better than a poke in the eye with a blunt pencil, although only marginally better.

C’est la vie.

So the moral to that story is that if you drive all the way to Charleville, pay $60 for two people to see the Big Sky Observatory and they say that “there are clouds” – take the refund.

But that’s just my opinion.

I realised last night while we were at the Cosmos Centre that I had forgotten to show you yesterday’s trip details, so here it is.

Mitchell to Charleville with no wrong turns. Approx 219 km, 2.5 hours.

So back to the story …

Elsie; 8.45 am; decided mix it up a bit.

We mixed it up by travelling north today, rather than west.

The road that the Charleville Bush Caravan Park is on is called the Diamantina Development Road, and also the longest road in Australia. 1334km.

My mind boggles at the number of dead ‘roos that you would see in 1334km.

All of the distances are big in the west. Nothing is close by.

Left out of the caravan park, left onto the road to Augathella, wind Elsie up to 110km/hour and we were on our way.

The roads and surrounding land is just astonishing – big, brown and it just goes on and on and on …

A quick stop at one of those truck rest stops to “check that I’d attached the caravan correctly” (I didn’t really need to check the van), and then we rolled into Augathella at around 9.45am.

Augathella: population 449.

Two things amused me about the shop in the photo above.

Firstly it is listed as a “friendly grocer”. I would have assumed the “friendly” part – I mean, they are not likely to say that they are an “unfriendly grocer”… are they?

Secondly, the sign proudly announced that they are “open 5 days”, like it is something truly progressive.

Maybe being open 5 days IS progressive for Augathella?

Too early for coffee but a(nother) quick comfort stop at the public conveniences and we were heading towards Tambo.

We hit our first 1000km for the trip just south of the Nive River.

Tambo is another very pretty little town, and we arrived just in time for lunch.

We spent some time browsing the counter lunch menu at the Carrangarra Hotel, strategising what to have for lunch before going to place our order.

You’d think that the first clue for us big city folk was the fact that we were the only two people in the place. 

No. Other. Customers.

You’d think that the difficulty we had finding someone who worked at the pub might have been the second clue.

When we found him, he looked at us quizzically, listening carefully to what we wanted to order, before advising that they “aren’t doing meals at the pub at the moment, but that there are two cafe’s in town that are quite good”.

Oh well.

So we went over the road to Cindy’s – a neat little place (also with no customers, I should add) to learn that the lady who owned the place wasn’t called Cindy. Go figure!

We ordered lunch – a beef burger for me; nachos for Kerri. We also ordered coffees. Ate lunch and took the coffees across the road to the park to drink it.

Lunch was OK, but certainly not  good enough to warrant any more discussion that that.

We looked at the sights – mainly a restored fire engine …

… and the Tambo Teddies (I don’t know, so don’t ask), then got back into Elsie and pulled out of town. Next stop, Blackall.

Really good roads, 110km/h. Smooth, fast, flat.

We got stuck behind a “Beef Bus” at a set of lights at a roadworks in the middle of nowhere.

“Beef Bus” makes it sound exotic and exciting, but it just looked overcrowded, it was smelly, and I’m guessing that it wasn’t going to end well for the beef.

Which reminds me – we should buy some steak for dinner …

Those road trains are amazing – up to 53m long and essentially a truck cab with 3 semi-trailers hooked on behind.

They are certainly a challenge to overtake – like trying to overtake a cruise ship!

We rolled into Blackall at 1.30pm – another pretty little place that is famous for Jackie the shearer (he held the record for most sheep sheared – 321 sheep in 7 hours 40 minutes in 1892 – for 58 years, and was beaten only when electric shearing equipment was introduced).

Blackall is also home of the Black Stump – used to hold scientific equipment for measuring the position of towns in Queensland.

The Black Stump was considered so far away that anything beyond it to the west was considered to be “Beyond the Black Stump”.

I’m pretty sure that I’ve been to Blackall before – back in My Ergon days – and I had a clear mental picture of what it looked like.

That would have been back in 2005 or 2006 and guess what? It hasn’t changed one little bit.

We had planned to stay in Blackall tonight, but friends of ours – you’ll meet them soon – stayed about 50 minutes north of Blackall at a place called the Lara Wetlands. No power but they have hot showers, at a cost of $25/night.

Bargain. And “just off the highway, 10km before Blackall”.

The driveway in goes for 13km. Thirteen! I travel just a little further than that each day going from home to the city.

So here we are. Beyond the Black Stump, but camping in possibly the most beautiful place I’ve seen in a long time.

We soaked in the free artisan mineral pool, had our showers, took photos of the sunset …

… and are now sitting in the van listening to the (very loud) live show at the other side of the campgrounds.

All of the yee-ha, yahoo kind of music that Mitchell (the son who got married recently, not the town) loves.

It’s been a big day, but a good one.

This is what today’s trip looks like.

402km, 4 hours and 20 minutes according to Google Maps, but actually about 7 hours with comfort stops, meal stops, and tourist stops.

It is so dark here that I had a crack at getting some images of the Milky Way. They turned out OK but I need to download them and post them. Watch this space.

That’s it for today. Time for bed.

Ciao

Today’s blog starts off with a puzzle.

What do manchester, children’s wear, coffee, jewellery, luggage, women’s wear, menswear, undergarments, shoes and embroidery have in common? I’ll tell you the answer to that a little later in the blog.

We rolled out of Mitchell at about 8.55am – about 30 minutes after our effort the day before … but then we had nowhere that we needed to be and all day to get there.

The Major Mitchell Caravan Park in Mitchell was a nice little park, although a bit random in the layout. There seemed to be vans everywhere, at all angles.

I’d suggest that it was organised chaos, except it wasn’t really organised at all 🙁

Probably the biggest drawback of many small town caravan parks is also it’s greatest draw card – they are located right on the highway. Easy to find, but the sound of road trains rolling through the centre of the caravan park all night (… well, that’s what it feels like!) can keep you awake 🙁

One of the great things about travelling around in the van is that you stay at a different place – and see different people – every day. That means that there is no requirement to make any special effort to think about what to wear … I can wear the same things every day and nobody will ever know!

I do draw the line at socks and jocks – but everything else can be recycled indefinitely! Bonus!

Maybe not indefinitely, but certainly until they are ready to be burned.

First stop today was Morven – about 1 hour from Mitchell. I’ll say that the reason we stopped was to get fuel, but the real reason was something else entirely. Faulty plumbing. You know how it is.

So we got fuel and then the second stop for the day was Morven (again). We saw a sign that said “Coffee van a head”.

That’s not a typo BTW. It was actually written “a head”.

I figured that they can’t be bad at both spelling AND making coffee, so we stopped.

It wasn’t the worst coffee I’ve ever had, but not the best either. No donut, and the price was more than the $3 coffee and donut special, but it was coffee all the same and came out of a fancy coffee machine that made all of the correct coffee noises.

Morven is a pretty little place, population approx 250.

Just the simple act of stopping increased the population at that moment in time by almost 1%! How’s that for having some significance and making a difference?

The roads were much better today. I watched the average fuel consumption fall from something around 20 litres/100km down to just under 16 litres/100km.

We sat on 100-110 km/hour and watched the red dirt and blue skies roll past.

It seems that there is an unwritten code of the road west of Roma that you have to wave to every driver of every vehicle that passes you headed in the opposite direction.

On today’s trip from Mitchell to Charleville I think that we sat behind a road train for a while, passed a Ford Ranger towing a huge dual axle van about 4 times (every time we stopped he went by again), and were overtaken by one vehicle.

That’s about it for people travelling from Mitchell west to Charleville. But it seemed that the whole world was travelling from Charleville back to Mitchell … so I spent the morning waving at every vehicle that was going in the other direction!

And I have to say that I was getting a little concerned that almost nobody was going to Charleville, but everybody was coming back from Charleville … and I had to wonder why …?

We rolled into Charleville at around 11.30am.

First thing that we saw was the Charleville train station. I thought about going in and saying hi to the locals … maybe tomorrow …

We went through town to the Charleville Bush Caravan Park – tonight’s stop – and dropped off/set up the van under a big, wide Charleville blue sky …

… and then headed back into town to see the sights.

We started off in the main street of Charleville and found a parking spot at one end of the street and went for a walk through town.

After a quick bite at the bakery, we went off to find the Cosmos Centre because we are going there tonight to do the Big Sky Observatory tour. Pretty excited about that, I have to say.

The Cosmos Centre and the RFDS Visitor Centre are located together on the road to Cunnamulla, and we thought it best to find them in the daylight, in order to make it easier tonight.

We started at the RFDS Visitor Centre …

… before heading over to the Cosmos Centre.

I’m really looking forward to the observatory tour tonight, but it doesn’t start until 9.00pm and goes through to 10.00pm or later … so you won’t hear about that until tomorrow’s blog.

So … the answer to today’s puzzle.

What do Manchester, children’s wear, coffee, jewellery, luggage, women’s wear, menswear, undergarments, shoes and embroidery have in common?

You can buy them all at R&P in Charleville!

That’s all for today. Tomorrow I’ll tell you all about the Cosmos Centre experience.

Ciao

Last night in Miles it was cold. Seriously cold.

The evening started with a pleasant chat with our fellow travellers around the fire pit, swapping stories … and we went back to our van at around the same time as I was about to lose some fingers to frostbite.

Had a lovely hot shower at the amenities block after dinner and was letting off ZZZZs by about 9.30pm.

I woke sometime after that – no idea when really because it was very dark and I wasn’t wearing my glasses … but judging by my level of bladder discomfort I’d guess it was around 1.00am – and I was absolutely freezing.

Teeth-chatteringly cold. You know that cold that gets in your bones and you can’t stop shaking? Yep, just like that.

I turned on the little fan heater and warmed the van up all nice and toasty and went back to letting off ZZZZs.

The sun rises later the further west you go. That’s probably intuitively obvious, but it caught me by surprise anyway. I think it was about 6.45 and it was still pretty dark. I checked the weather and apparently it got down to 4 degrees last night, so that explains the teeth chattering.

We headed off around 8.30am and kept heading west. We made it all the way to Dulacca (44km) before needing to make our first (comfort) stop.

I personally blame the cold weather, faulty plumbing, coffee and a couple of glasses of water.

Next stop was Wallumbilla for – yes another (comfort) stop. Another 60km achieved. A nice little craft shop run by these two old dears in the middle of nowhere.

They even had Devonshire tea – coffee and scones with jam and cream.

So this was the first puzzle for the day – how do they serve coffee when they don’t have a coffee machine?

“Oh, it’s instant coffee dear – we don’t have that fancy coffee here!” Fortunately it was another couple placing the order, so we dodged a bullet there!

We made it to Roma at about 10.45am. Heading into Roma we saw a sign advertising coffee and a donut for $3 at Pie Face at the local servo, and thought “how bad can a $3 coffee and donut be?”

So … it was OK. Not the worst coffee I’ve ever had; certainly not the best.

You know the saying “When in Rome …?”

Well, “when in Roma, do as the Roma-n’s do” … so we went to look at the Big Rig …

… and the biggest bottle tree …

… and checked out the Main Street of Roma …

… before doing more mundane things like going to Woolies to stock up on supplies.

At around 12.00 noon we once again headed west, towards Mitchell (the town, not the son who was married last weekend) …

The roads have been pretty good -everything west of Chinchilla has been posted at 110km/hour, although they are all pretty bumpy and rough … so 90-100km/hour feels much safer!

How do you measure progress in outback Queensland?

Litres per 100 km (not very good with 2.5 tonnes of van on the back and a strong headwind)?

Comfort stops per hour?

Dead kangaroos per km?

We passed through more funny-sounding towns …

… before arriving in Mitchell at around 1.30pm for a late lunch.

After lunch we went for a walk (only about 100m down the road from the Major Mitchell Caravan Park) to the Aquatic Centre to soak our cares away in the artisan spa for an hour or so.

We really should get one of these artisan/mineral spas installed at work and we would be so stress free!

We then went for a wander through the Main Street of Mitchell …

… and checked out the local general store that sold everything from boots to clothes, to spurs (for your boots) to guns and ammo.

Snappy!

We walked the street and found the world’s longest acronym – longer even than many words that I know!

The CWAATSICH. Stands for the Charleville Western Areas Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community Health (Limited).

That was about all of the excitement that we could take for one day in Mitchell. Back to the van, chatted with our “neighbours” at the fire pit …

None of our “neighbours” was photo worthy, so we edited them all out and just kept the fire pit!

We watched the sun set through the trees …

… and then headed back to the van for dinner.

Looks like we are in for another cold night, so I might need to look out the thermals. I’d hate for my chattering teeth to wake up Kerri 🙁

At least the days (and nights) look like they are getting warmer!!!

That’s about it for tonight peeps.

230km, about 6 comfort stops, 1 coffee (and donut) stop, 2 tourist stops, about 1000 dead ‘Roos, dozens of those triple-length road trains (that are really hard to overtake with a van on the back) … and here we are in Mitchell!

Not exactly the stuff that our pioneering forefathers would have been proud of when they urged us to “go west, young man”, but a pleasant day on the road puddling along and watching the world go by … and certainly better than being at work!

Ciao