Category: Outback adventure 2020

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