Category: Outback adventure 2020

It was cold again this morning. Someone had told us that Monto can get cold, and cold it was.

2.1 degrees but feels like -0.2. Not a pleasant start to the day.

I think it’s around 50 years now that I have been able to shower without the need for adult supervision or direction.

So you’d probably think that I’d know most of the tips and tricks by now.

Like the fact that caravan park shower blocks are notoriously cold and drafty.

Like the fact that caravan park showers are incredibly hard to get adjusted to a comfortable temperature.

Like the fact that you don’t step out of your clothes until you are ready to step straight into the shower.

You’d think …

So there I was at the Monto caravan park, in my birthday suit, trying to find a middle ground between skin-flailingly hot water and icy cold.

I’m not sure what I was thinking.

I finally got the temperature close enough to “just right” and in I stepped … and I had my first moment of mental clarity.

I’d forgotten my towel 🙁

Not exactly a brilliant start to the day.

We had planned to stay one more night half-way between Monto and Brisbane, but the place we wanted to stay was fully booked.

So we figured we would just make a run for home.

We packed up Holly and hooked up Elsie for the last time, and pulled out of the Monto Caravan Park at around 8.40am and headed towards Brisbane.

I mentioned in yesterday’s post that there was some street art around town. We were told that we needed to look at the silos on our way out of Monto.

Very impressive!

From there we blasted through Eidsvold and Mundubbera, and into Gayndah for a coffee break at the side of the road.

These small towns are quite amazing. Their main streets are so wide … wide enough – I’d expect – that you could turn a whole bullock team around in the one manoeuvre … except that Gayndah has now installed a median strip down the middle.

The roads were pretty good, with a lot more green that we have seen over the last couple of weeks.

We kept going through Ban Ban Springs, where the local pub advertises “good meals”- not great meals, just to keep your expectations realistic.

We were nearly run off the road by some tosser who thought it would be a good idea to overtake us on a very narrow, single lane roadway heading into Kilkivan, and we made it to Gympie just before 1.00pm for a lunch break, and to give Elsie a big drink of diesel.

We got back home around 3.30pm, after 430km and 6 and a bit hours on the road.

The van is all unpacked and tomorrow we start the process of removing 2 weeks worth of bugs and dirt off the car and van.

That’s called delayed gratification!

This is what today looks like:

The wrap-up for the trip was a total of 3,764.8km travelled.

We’ve had a blast and hope that you enjoyed following along. It’s been a great trip but it’s also good to be home.

Now we need to start planning our next adventure 🙂

Ciao

I’m feeling rather emasculated today. It wasn’t just a single thing that happened, but a couple of things. My self-esteem has taken a hit.

We hooked up and rolled out of Kinka Beach this morning at 9.28am.

I’m very specific about the time because I believe that check-out time is strictly 9.30am according to the paperwork.

We were at the back of the caravan park so we had to weave our way out of the park at “walking pace only!” Lucky I can walk fast.

Being at the park for 2 nights, we had a change in neighbours on site 90. We were on site 89.

Our old neighbours rolled out yesterday morning, and our new neighbours rolled in last night in this huge truck towing a huge caravan and I suffered my first hit.

Note the size of his rig next door. It was even registered as a National Heavy Vehicle. He had a quad bike in the back and a tinnie on top. His caravan was ever bigger!

They say that size doesn’t matter … until it does 🙁

We hit the road and stopped to buy some pineapples at a roadside stall just up the road, then proceeded into Rockhampton to fuel up and head south towards Monto – tonight’s accommodation.

I’ve obviously been spoiled by the country drivers over the last couple of weeks. Here I was complaining about having to wave at every 4WD, caravan, Winnebago, SUV and truck, yet that was the least of my problems.

Driving through Rockhampton this morning, I realised that there must have been a Bad Drivers Convention on in town today, because they were all out and on their way there.

The most memorable one was a turkey driving a Toyota Yaris with 2 small children in the back, and s/he was determined not to get stuck behind some old fool towing a caravan (me, apparently).

Despite giving him/her a wide berth, s/he managed to cut me off and/or stamp on their brakes on several occasions, causing me to have to take defensive steps to avoid a collision.

But the most emasculating thing that happened was being overtaken by a Toyota Prius.

A Prius!

I mean, those things use rubber-bands for propulsion as far as I know, so how they managed to overtake me in Elsie with her 4.5 litre V8 with twin turbos I’ll never understand.

Maybe they’d had new rubber bands fitted recently?

The trip today first took us through “historic Mount Morgan”.

The “Mount” in Mount Morgan should have been the first alarm bell.

I assume that Mount is short for mountain.

The second clue was the sign that said “Caravans Take Care”, and then the third was the fact that the speed limit dropped to 40km/hour.

I would have had to speed up to do 40km/hour. Poor old Elsie was struggling a bit – it was very steep.

And windy.

Let’s just say that today wasn’t Elsie’s best fuel economy day 🙁

We made it through Mt Morgan and then stopped at the small township of Dululu for a quick break.

Did you notice the international standard tennis courts in Dululu?

From Dululu we blasted through Jambin, then Biloela and then about 5km up the road we came to Thangool.

Here’s a fun bit of trivia. Thangool means O’Possum in the local native language.

Back in the day, Thangool was a hive of activity with upwards of 2000 people in town and hanging around on weekends.

Not so much today though.

If you believe everything you read on Wikipedia, Thangool now has a population of 741 people and I have no idea where any of them were.

As you know, before crossing the road you should always look to the right …

… then look to the left …

… then look to the right again.

Excellent. All safe to cross the road. Can you imagine how quiet the roads would be outside of the midday rush?

We had a coffee and a biscuit to keep us going, then kept rolling about another 80km (50 minutes) to Monto – home for tonight. We rolled into town at about 1.30pm.

Monto is another really pretty little township with a population of just under 1200 people.

We pulled into the caravan park and Peter very kindly guided me back into my space. A bite of lunch and we were out exploring the town.

The park is pretty quiet at the moment, but Peter – the guy who runs the place with his wife Lesley – said that they are fully booked tomorrow (Saturday) night.

Good for them! It’s nice to see that the small towns are open for business and getting lots of people coming to stay (and spend their money!)

Some really pretty buildings in the business centre.

Like many other caravan parks, they light the fire here at about 4.30pm and everyone is invited to gather around, chat and swap stories.

It’s a good place to pick up hints and tips about what vans are good, good places to stay, things to avoid, etc.

One couple (he was an ex-Qantas pilot, now retired) have been on the road for coming up 4 weeks, and another couple have been travelling all over for 3 months in their 25 foot van.

Once again I was told not to leave it too late to retire. I think it’s a sign …

The Grand Hotel is one of two hotels in Monto, and was built in 1928. That’s where we went for steak and ribs for dinner tonight.

There is also some amazing street art around Monto. Apparently their street art has “put Monto on the map”.

We have been told that their silos – just out of town – are pretty amazing, so hopefully we will see them tomorrow.

So this is what today looks like; a pretty cruisy day really.

Only about 215km and 3.5 hours of driving time.

Tomorrow … sigh 🙁

Tomorrow we had planned to stay at Kilkivan, about half-way between Monto and home. But we couldn’t get into the bush camp that was highly recommended as they are full to the gizzards.

So we are not sure if we are going to do a big push and get home tomorrow (Saturday) so that we can have Sunday to clean out the van and I can get ready for w… for wo… for wor…

Nope, I’m having trouble saying that word 🙁

We will play it by ear and see what happens. In any case, it’s been a blast! About 3,200km so far, with about 6 hours back to Brisbane … and then we can start planning the next one.

As they say, it’s not over ’till the fat lady sings.

And I’ll bet she uses lots of soap!

Ciao

It was a bit of a lazy day today. A day for recharging our batteries.

Despite the fact that the journey east from Winton is part of “heading home”, I refuse to acknowledge that we are heading home until we travel south.

Tomorrow we start travelling south 🙁

I came to Emu Park probably more than 5 years ago when I was with Ergon Energy. One of my my stakeholders (actually, he was my manager) was based in Yeppoon/Rockhampton and I had come up to see him.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), there was a beef expo – or some such thing – on in Rockhampton at the time and there was no accommodation available.

Well, nothing within my price range.

So they put me at Emu Park. I thought that it was the end of the earth – about a 40 minute drive from Rockhampton.

I thought that if I went any further I’d be at risk of dropping off the edge of the world.

But rather than being a liability, it was a blessing in disguise.

Paradise found!

I’ve always wanted to come back here but figured that it was too far away. Fortunately we have been able to get here for a couple of nights on our outback adventure and recharge, before heading back to reality.

We weren’t able to get into the caravan park at Emu Park, but we got a spot at Kinka Beach – 5 minutes up the road towards Yeppoon.

I’ve even included a map for those of you who are geographically challenged.

So recharge we did.

We started the day with a long walk on the beach. Stunning!

Crisp clear morning, soft smooth sand, and an impossibly blue sky.

And these tiny little shells on the beach.

We came back from our walk and noticed the sound of a motor, and then we smelled it … John’s septic pumping service was pumping out the dump point.

That explained the fruity smell in the morning air. Lucky for us we are not camped near a dump point!

Back at the van, washed the sand off our feet and started getting breakfast ready … to hear and see John’s truck move around to the amenities block just across from us, and John start unrolling the hoses …

So it turns out there IS a dump point nearby.

Anyhow, we closed all of the van windows, turned on the A/C and had breakfast inside.

Last night I texted my old boss – let’s just call him “Richard”. Actually his name really is Richard, so that works well.

Richard recently left Ergon after 40-odd years and has taken on the status of “semi-retired”. He’s 2 months younger than I am, lives in Yeppoon and is now living the dream.

So I texted him last night to say hi and he suggested coffee.

So we started the day with a trip to Yeppoon – about 20 minutes up the road – and Kerri went for a browse around the shops while I had coffee and catch-up with Richard.

It was really good to see him. It’s been over 5 years.

Kerri even bought me a present that tells the story of my life in 4 words:

Yeppoon is such a pretty place and the weather was absolutely stunning!

From Yeppoon we headed up to Byfield for a drive on Richard’s recommendation … a pretty drive but a bit early for lunch.

I can’t say that we saw many people at Byfield, but we did see emus …

… and lots of letterboxes.

I’m not sure if there is a collective noun for letterboxes? Maybe a forest of letterboxes?

From Byfield we drove down to Rockhampton to see the sights. On the way I had a call from another ex-colleague from Ergon – let’s call him “Glen”. Another semi-retiree.

Glen and I had hoped to catch-up on this trip but unfortunately the planets didn’t line up so it didn’t happen 🙁

Glen and I did a “National Lampoon’s Western Queensland Substation Tour/Adventure” back in Ergon days … I could probably write a whole blog on that trip!

Rockhampton is a pretty town, very rural and lots of closed shops no doubt due to COVID.

From Rockhampton we headed back to the van for a bite of lunch and I managed a nap.

Tonight we had hoped to go to the Pine Beach Pub at Emu Park for dinner, but unfortunately they were booked out, so we went to Emu Park Pizza instead for … pizza …

… and we watched the sunset.

Dinner and a free light show with my favourite person in the whole world! What more could I ask for?

So this is what today looks like – just some buzzing around Emu Park, Byfield, Rockhampton, Kinka Beach, back to Emu Park for dinner and now back at the van.

Coffee and chocolate. What better way to end the day?

But I think we need to buy some more soap 🙁

Ciao

I’m starting today’s post with some wisdom.

Firstly from my mother: “If you can’t think of something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”

Secondly from a wise, although unknown source: “All things being equal, fat people use more soap.”

Which reminds me, I seem to be using more soap lately …

With both of those pieces of wisdom in mind, I will make an observation about sitting around the campfire last night listening to Errol What’s-his-name singing his songs about farting.

Yes, he really did sing songs about farting. That’s why I only rated the entertainment an “OK” in yesterday’s post.

There were probably 60 or 70 people in their camp chairs last night with us, and many of them were really, really fa …. er … had a really, really large surface area.

One bloke had such an incredible amount of surface area that he could barely carry his chair and walk at the same time.

And I couldn’t help but think to myself, “Wow! I bet he uses lots and lots of soap!”

Even Kerri commented on it, and she never says anything bad about anybody!

Goodness only knows how they get in and out of their caravans. They must have had extra wide doors fitted.

Emerald was nice, but the flies nearly drove me mad. These tiny little black things that like to crawl in your ears and up your nose.

Argh!

And the Emerald Tourist Park was quite a nice place to stay the night. They are expanding the site (a good thing) but there was lots of mess and noise from the trucks and bobcats etc, which started a bit too early this morning for my liking 🙁

I actually thought that the clientele at the Emerald Tourist Park was a little different to most other places that we have stayed in the last week or so.

Here are a few observations to support my case:

There was the usual powered and unpowered sites, and cabins, plus there seemed to be a number of dongas like you see at mine sites. Not the kind of thing that your average tourist would choose to stay in.

When you put that with the fact that there were quite a number of people sitting at their vans wearing PPE, it makes me think that they must be there for work – possibly at the local mines.

And the final piece of evidence is that many of them seemed to be there for the long haul.

Our neighbours, “Sambo and Jenny on UHF 40” according to the signage on the back of their van, had a fence set up to keep their dog in, Jenny was out front watering the grass when we arrived, and they had a lawnmower – yes, a lawnmower – amongst their worldly possessions stored under their van.

Sambo – I assume that it was Sambo – turned up at about 5.00pm dressed in his PPE, with dirty hands and a look on his face that said “I’ve had a really crappy day at work and now I’m going to drink myself into oblivion to forget all about it”.

And Sambo was gone again the next morning while Jenny sat out in the sun looking at her grass.

I have a view that some of these van parks were originally designed as nudist parks.

Why, you ask, would I think that? Because the showers have absolutely no consideration for the fact that you have a set of clean clothes that you need to keep dry for the duration of your shower and while you get dressed.

I challenge you to give it a try … step into your shower cubicle at home wearing your PJs, and carrying a clean (and dry) set of underwear, plus a shirt and jeans and maybe a sweatshirt if it’s cold. Don’t forget you’ve also got your toiletry bag and whatever other stuff you need, because you have to be carrying it all with you.

Get out of your PJs and hang them, along with all of your clean clothes and your other stuff on maybe 2 hooks on the back of the door. Not the bathroom door – they have to hang inside the shower with you.

There are no shelves or other useful places to store your stuff – just two hooks on the back of the door.

Now try and have a shower without anything falling onto the wet floor, or without everything getting wet while you are splashing around in the shower, washing your hair.

Now try and get dressed again in the impossibly small confines of the shower cubicle without falling over.

See what I mean?

I am convinced that these showers were designed for a nudist park because there is no consideration for the fact that you have a set of clothes that you need to keep dry!

I’m sure that they assume you are going in naked, and coming back out naked. No clothes required.

Enough said.

Pop top vans are a wonderful invention. Ours sits nice and low behind Elsie and doesn’t cause too much wind drag.

But one of the problems of having a pop top van is that because the top comes down, everything inside the van has a height limit – like the mirror – so to see yourself in the mirror you have to get down on your knees!

One day we will have a full height van and we will look back at this photo and laugh 🙂

We packed up the van and loaded up the car with all of our essential supplies that we need to keep close at hand – thermos of hot water, coffee, cups, chips, chocolate … you know, all of the important stuff.

I realised this morning that we have very cleverly hidden all of our most essential items in a dry gin box that we keep in the car 🙂

We rolled out of the Emerald Tourist Park at about 9.00am and it was already pushing 25 degrees.

I couldn’t get out of the park easily this morning because this Silly Old Goat in a Pajero and a dual axle Jayco van decided that the exit road was a fabulous place to stop and have a chat with his mate … so I needed to go cross-country through the unpowered sites area to get out of the park.

I’ll refer to him as SOG from now on, out of recognition of my mother’s wisdom from the start of this post. Not that SOG is much better than spelling it out … but you do what you can, and it makes me feel like I’m making an effort.

When I pulled out of the park he was behind me, and by the time I got to the road leading out of Emerald he was in front of me again!

He obviously knew a shortcut that Google Maps doesn’t know!

So I was stuck behind him on the single-lane highway while he puddled along at 80km/hour, 20km/hour below the speed limit.

I’m sure that he was doing it to annoy me.

I finally got past him and managed to forget about him until I got to Comet – yes, there really is a township called Comet, 40km east of Emerald – and I needed to stop and make a phone call.

Just so you know, “stop and make a phone call” is not a euphemism for anything else … I really DID need to stop and make a phone call.

So I’m sitting there on the phone, stopped at the side of the road, and the SOG went past me, still doing 20km/hour below the limit and with half a dozen cars stuck behind him.

I finished my call, got back on the highway and managed to pass him again, and then the road sped up to 110km/hour and I had to wonder if he’d sped up to 90km/hour to maintain that “20km/hour below the speed limit because I’m a safer driver than you are” thing, or was he was now doing 30km/hour below the limit because 80 was his terminal velocity.

I guess that I’ll never know.

Today we travelled from Emerald, through Comet, Blackwater, Bluff, Dingo … and a whole bunch of other places through to Rockhampton.

Sadly I’ve not got all that much to report on any of those places, because other than a quick comfort stop and the opportunity to top up our caffeine level, we really didn’t stop at all.

That’s probably why the introduction to this post was so long … but you probably suspected something was up anyway, I’m guessing.

I can tell you that we knew we were back in civilisation when we went through Bluff (population 373) and there were 2 police at the side of the road with a speed gun pouncing on speeding motorists like crows on roadkill.

I’m pretty sure that old mate (SOG) would have safely sailed through at 40km/hour.

We also learned that Dingo is the birthplace of Ben Hunt (NRL player).

Probably the most exciting thing we saw were trains hauling coal, and they must have had more that 100 coal cars behind the twin engines … and we probably saw half a dozen of them.

We also saw this coal loading thingy across the road, obviously to load coal onto the trains.

Pretty impressive operation!

The roads were really good today, with an obvious lack of roadkill. Most of the way they were flat, straight and wide … which showed up in Elsie’s fuel economy, coming in at about 15.5 litres/100km – not too shabby considering the trip up to Charleville yielded closer to 20 litres/100km.

For those of you that don’t understand litres/100km, small numbers are great, big numbers are bad.

15.5 litres/100km is nothing to write home about, but it’s pretty good considering I have 2 tonnes of van on the back.

There was a fair bit of roadwork which slowed us down a bit.

And you may have noticed that I straightened the UHF aerial on the Elsie’s bull bar. It had this “Leaning Tower of Pisa” thing happening and it was playing havoc with my OCD.

We made it into Rockhampton at around 12.30pm and I have to say it was a bit of a shock to the system to have to deal with multiple lanes of traffic, traffic lights, pedestrians, etc … something that I haven’t dealt with for almost 2 weeks.

And it was 32 degrees!

Tonight we are staying at the Island View Caravan Park at Kinka Beach – just south of Yeppoon.

Really, really pretty, green little park and just across the road from the ocean. And by the time we got here – closer to the water – it was a much more pleasant 28 degrees.

I feel like I’m cheating on you all by spending a couple of nights at the beach when we are doing an outback adventure … but then I still think of Rocky as a country town, and we will be back in the outback again in a couple of days 🙂

We set up the van …

… then went out exploring the surrounds from Yeppoon to Emu Park.

So far on this trip we have done 2,700km, and we still need to get home from Rockhampton yet.

This is what today’s trip looks like: Emerald to Kinka Beach, about 4.5 hours in the car and covered just over 300km.

And Kerri tells me that the van does have a name – Holly.

Short for Holiday.

If I thought that Emerald was the Promised Land, then Kinka Beach is Heaven! Such a beautiful spot, green, grassy, and with that beautiful salt air smell.

I can’t wait to get up early tomorrow, cross the road and go for a walk on the beach.

See you then!

Ciao

Have you ever watched the news, and when the weather comes on they say something like “… and Roma can expect a low of 0 degrees and a high of 32 degrees”?

And you wonder to yourself “… how do they cope with such extremes of temperature…?”

That was us today. We woke cold some time in the middle of the night and I had to get up and turn on the heater. You’d think that we’d have learnt by now, but apparently not.

The reason that I am deliberately vague about the time in the middle of the night is because (a) we don’t have a clock in the van and (b) I really don’t care enough to put on my glasses and look at my phone. Time is not relevant during sleep time.

I went over to the showers and it was brisk – probably single digits – and then the day just got hotter from there.

So let’s start the day in the showers.

The facilities at Roses ‘n’ Things Caravan Park in Barcaldine were beautiful. It was a very clean, green park and everything was just right.

5 stars!

One of the good things about travelling around in the “grey nomad” crowd is that they all seem to have these huge, self-contained vans and they are all set in their ways.

Nobody ever seems to use the caravan park facilities because the facilities (in my limited experience) are nearly almost always empty.

Well, empty except for me.

And so it was again today at the Roses ‘n’ Things Caravan Park in Barcaldine.

I had the whole place to myself! Not a big facility – the men’s only had 2 toilets, 2 showers and a wash basin – but clean, tidy, and empty.

I picked one of the showers (it was an ennie meenie miney mo process, if I’m to be completely honest) and discovered to my surprise the the wall that separated the two shower cubicles was shorter that I am tall.

So if there had been someone in the shower next door, we could have made eye contact.

And if there had been someone in the shower next door and he had been quite tall … well, let’s just say that we wouldn’t have had any secrets between us.

But I was alone, so it all worked out for the best 🙂

But a funny thing did happen while I was enjoying my nice hot shower … there was a horse neighing (whinnying?) right outside the shower block.

That’s something that doesn’t happen every day!

So, without wanting to bore you with all of the details, I showered, dried, dressed and was back at the van in a jiffy.

Kerri was making coffee. (I love that woman!!!)

And then Kerri and I had our usual breakfast conversation:

Kerri: “What is the date today?”

Me: “I dunno.”

Kerri: “Well, do you know what day it is today?”

Me: ”Nope.”

I reckon you have achieved the pinnacle of holiday success when you have no idea what day or date it is.

This must be what retirement is like 🙂 I can’t wait!

We have the pack down of the van down to a fine art. Kerri does the breakfast dishes while I unplug, plug, connect, and disconnect everything as required, so that we are coordinated to the point that we are both finished our respective chores at the time that I am starting Elsie and backing her up to connect to the van.

I wonder if Kerri realises that we have named the car but not the van?

So we had hooked up and rolled out by about 9.15am to head into town to have a look-see before heading east towards Emerald.

And it was already pushing about 22 degrees.

We wandered up and down the main street, looking into the very few stores that are still open.

Barcaldine really is a very pretty little township. Very clean and green and friendly.

There is a cafe in town called the Lounging Emu that (apparently) does a fabulous pizza on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, and you can order by phone or UHF radio!

We had a(nother) coffee in town and then headed out towards Emerald.

First stop was Jericho.

Jericho is a quant little town about an hour east of Barcaldine that capitalises on the biblical story of Joshua and Jericho. There is a Lake Galilee just north of the township, and apparently a Jordan River that flows nearby.

Anyway, Jericho (population 115) is another quaint little town in the middle of nowhere …

Here’s a couple of fun facts.

People in Jericho are good at multi-tasking.

This building houses the council office, library, provides photocopy/fax services, internet facilities, a community room, Medicare office, Centrelink office, Train station and Post Office.

And they have public toilets!

And I’ll bet the place is managed by one person who is busy for only about 10% of their day!!

The second fun fact is that Jericho has Australia’s smallest drive-in theatre.

By my count, full capacity is 32 vehicles.

We drove on to the next township (about another 45 minutes) called Alpha, and stopped for lunch.

It was now over 30 degrees and time to change into shorts.

One of the things that I noticed was that the roads east of Barcaldine are relatively free of roadkill, and there is a great deal more trees and vegetation along the side of the road.

East of Alpha, the roads are very bumpy and uneven, so by the time we arrived in Emerald at about 2.30pm, I felt like I’d been wrestling with Elsie for the last 90 minutes or so.

I also felt like my internal organs had been rearranged 🙁

The roads are also slower – only 100km/hour – probably due to the condition of the roads, and quite narrow in parts … so you see an oncoming road train and say a silent prayer …

We arrived in Emerald, went to the Emerald Tourist Park and jagged the last powered site, and went off into the big smoke to get some groceries.

We are back in civilisation!!

A Woolies, a BigW, a Coles, KFC, McDonalds, Target Country (we love browsing in Target Country to see what specials we can find) … even a Chinese Take-away shop!

We’ve found the Promised Land!

So that’s about all of the news – approx 310km, a bit over 4.5 hours in the car and we are in Emerald.

We were told that there was “entertainment at the fire pit from 4.30” today, so we grabbed our chairs and wandered over.

Bought fish and chips from the Yabby Hut inside the caravan park and got the “Pensioner Pack”. I’m not sure whether to be happy or sad about that.

The lady said that “anyone can get the pensioner pack”, but I think she was only trying to cheer me up.

Entertainment was OK; food was good.

We came back to the van, Kerri made coffee (I love that woman!!) while I started the blog, and now I’m tired and ready for bed.

And it’s still 25 degrees 🙁

No heater for us tonight!

Ciao

I’m feeling a bit sad today. Today is the day that we start the return journey from our western-most town (Winton) and head back towards Brisbane.

We still have the best part of a week to go before we are home, but we are heading towards home all the same.

I’m starting today’s blog with a puzzle: What two services would you expect to get at the Pelican Fuel Supplies & Caravan Park?

I’ll even give you a hint: We stayed in the caravan park, so that leaves just one more service that they provide.

I’ll give you a little while to ponder that question.

We had a booking at the Qantas Founders Museum in Longreach at 11.00am this morning, se we needed to be leaving Winton by 8.30am to get there in plenty of time.

Neil, on the other hand, had the problem of having no spare tyre after splitting one of his tyres in the Bladensburg National Park yesterday, so his priority was to get that replaced.

I obviously slept very well again last night because at sometime before dawn, Kerri was coming in for a cuddle. No, nothing like that, so don’t go there.

Apparently it had gotten very cold (again) during the night and I was so deeply in the land of nod that I was blissfully unaware that she had been up at about 3.00am to turn on the heater, and was trying to warm up by stealing some of my body heat.

I was also blissfully unaware that she got up again at about 6.00am to turn the heater down because the van was getting stuffy.

I slept through both of those events.

According to the weather app on her iPhone, it was 4.3 degrees but felt like 0.5 degrees.

That didn’t sound very pleasant, so ablutions were had in the van (we have a shower, but the hot water system only holds about 18 litres of hot water, so I normally choose to shower elsewhere), and then we chose to have breakfast in the inside dining room today.

The good thing about having breakfast in the van is that you can reach the cupboard, toaster, fridge and sink all from your seat. Bonus!

We are retracing our tracks from Winton back to Barcaldine today, so I’m not going to give you road reports in case I contradict previous impressions that I have given of the roads … but I’m pretty sure I said that they were quite good, flat and 110km/hour.

In fact I think that we saw much the same roadkill going back as we saw heading out to Winton, albeit it was a few days further progressed in the process of decomposition.

We actually saw something really exciting on the road to Longreach this morning; we got to see the dude whose job it is to drag the roadkill off the road.

It doesn’t seem like a particularly pleasant job to me. I imagine that it would be hard work as some of those big ‘roos look pretty heavy.

Depending on how many days they had been on the road and how many times they’d been hit by another vehicle while they lay there, they would have been pretty smelly and approaching mince meat … so not something that I’d really want to do.

But at least he has a job for life!

There are more dead ‘roos on the road than you can poke a stick at, and probably many more than that hopping around in the paddocks.

We also saw a train coming into Winton, which was pretty exciting for a train guy 🙂

I have to confess to having learnt something about Winton, and feeling pretty silly about it in the process.

Those of you that know me will know that I don’t mind watching a bit of Super V8 racing. I also know that one of the tracks on the annual circuit is at Winton, and I was interested to see where they race.

I must say that I have always wondered why they would go so far into outback Queensland to have a Super V8 race, but then I figured that it would be good for the local economy.

I was wrong. They race at another Winton in Victoria! Bummer 🙁

You may recall that on the trip out from Longreach to Winton I managed to make it all the way without needing to … “check the caravan”. So I was hoping to repeat that feat again this morning.

Unfortunately there were a couple of things that I had failed to take into consideration: my breakfast coffee hadn’t made it’s way out yet, and it was quite cold.

Cold weather + coffee + faulty plumbing = 🙁

The trip from Winton to Longreach is just under 2 hours or about 180km.

With about 50km behind us and about an hour and a half to go, my bladder and brain started exchanging messages.

With 100km behind us and another hour to go, the messages were becoming more urgent.

“Don’t think about it” was the advice from the passenger seat. Hmmm. Thanks for that …

At about 150km and with 30 minutes to go, the exchange of information between my bladder and brain was becoming quite frantic.

Now you are probably thinking to yourself “why not just pull over at one of the rest stops and address the issue”?

That’s a very good question.

Was it because I didn’t want to stop at a rest stop? No.

Was it because I was too proud to stop at the side of the road and have a tinkle? No!

Was it because I didn’t want to give some poor, thirsty shrub at the side of the road a really good watering? NO!

It was because I had previously passed – with some considerable difficulty, I might add – a couple of old farts with caravans, and a 53m road train, and there was no way in God’s little green earth that I was going to allow them to go past me while I was attending to nature, and so that I’d be forced to overtake them all over again!!!

So I sucked it up, ignored every bump in the road, ignored the frantic messages that my bladder was sending to my brain, and kept driving.

We got into Longreach at around 10.30am and drove past the Longreach train station …

… and then went to check out the Qantas museum and do the airpark tour.

To be completely honest, I’m finding that many small towns out this way have some form of historical village and they all start to look the same after a while.

And they all seem to have much the same stuff.

But having said that, the Qantas Founders Museum was interesting because we got to see a number of aircraft up close and we got to wander all over the planes.

I’m thinking about dropping one of these babies under Elsie’s bonnet and see how she goes…

After the Qantas museum tour, we fuelled up and headed back through Ilfracombe and towards Barcaldine, which is where we are staying the night.

We got into Barcaldine at about 3.30pm and dropped off the van at the Roses ‘N’ Things Caravan park. Only about 10 sites, but very pretty and quiet – just what the doctor ordered.

After setting up the van we went back into town to have a look at the Tree of Knowledge …

… Barcaldine train station …

… and city clock …

… before heading back to the van for cheese o’clock.

Just as we were getting ready for dinner, we were blessed with another beautiful outback sunset.

If you look really closely, you can see a horse in the middle of the photo above.

So this is what today’s trip looks like – a bit of a repeat of a trip a few days ago but in the other direction.

Only about 290km and 3.5 hours driving, but some good stops on the way.

I reckon I’ve waved at every 4WD, caravan, SUV, and truck between Winton and here today, and collectively over the last few days.

In fact, I reckon that if I had $1.00 for every vehicle that I’ve waved at in the last week I could probably afford to take another week off with no pay!

So back to my puzzle from the start of the blog: what two key services would you expect to get at the Pelican Fuel Supplies & Caravan Park?

You can stay in their caravan park, but you can’t get fuel! They have bowsers, but they all have a sign on them saying “no fuel”.

Bummer.

That’s it for today.

Ciao

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