Category: Western Queensland July 2021

Just by way of a disclaimer, it would probably be best that you prepare yourself for disappointment with today’s post. Much like the same disappointment that I am feeling at the prospect of going back to work in two more sleeps 🙁

There will be very little in the way of wisdom or inspiration tonight, and not many photos. Sorry.

Please feel free to send all complaints to mbw@…

I’ve mentioned in a previous post that the van only carries a small amount of water (maximum of 180 litres) and the hot water system only holds about 20 litres. So even when we are at a caravan park with power and water hookup, we are still limited by the relatively small HWS, and so showers still need to be quick (unless you enjoy a nice, hot shower that goes cold, in which case you can stay in for as long as you want).

So last night – the last night of our trip – I thought that I would treat myself to a nice, long, hot shower at the park amenities block. It was like a “full driveway service” kind of hot shower, where every nook and cranny got a good scrub and I came out feeling thoroughly … clean.

It always amuses me that these caravan parks constantly remind you of your moral responsibility to save water, yet they provide shower heads that throw out almost as much water as Niagara Falls.

I was gone for so long that I was worried that MBW might have sent out a search party, or at least reported me missing. But she was happy reading her book and neither missed my prolonged absence, nor noticed how clean and glowing I was when I got back.

It rained last night. Actually it started raining lightly at about the moment that we pulled up at our space in the Dalby Tourist Park, and the intensity of the rain continued to increase until – by the time I’d finished my shower and was ready to return to the van – it was coming down in almost biblical proportions.

We went to sleep last night to the sound of rain falling heavily on the roof of the van, and my last conscious thought was to wonder if we would have been better placed buying an ark (as in “Noah and the Ark …”) than a caravan.

I woke this morning at about 6.30am – goodness knows why – and in a final attempt to refuse to acknowledge that it was the end of our trip, I rolled over and went back to sleep for another two hours. Why? Because I could!

The first thing that was immediately obvious though was that it wasn’t raining. While I admit to having had some concerns (albeit very low level concerns) that we might be trapped in Dalby due to rising floodwaters, it turns out that our fears were completely unfounded.

I have a confession to make. I always try to take a photo of us pulling out of each caravan park, but this morning I completely forgot. The photos above are in a street just around the corner from the caravan park, on our way to coffee.

We mixed it up a little this morning and had breakfast at the van, but we stopped for coffee on the way home.

It’s always an interesting challenge trying to find somewhere to park with a van on the back. Many of these smaller townships are desperate for grey nomads to visit and spend all of their children’s inheritance, but they then make it really hard for you to actually park your rig within a reasonable distance of the local bakery, supermarket or coffee shop.

But we found just such a space, only about 50m from the Coffee Club where we had predetermined we were going for takeaway coffee this morning.

The girl (lady?) who served us had the annoying pre-disposition of referring to me in the plural, as in “What sort of coffee would we like?”

Sometimes when we are out driving and not actively engaged in conversation, I will randomly break the silence and ask MBW “are you thinking what I’m thinking?” It’s rarely that she is, BTW.

But at that very moment, standing in the Coffee Club in Dalby, I didn’t need to ask MBW if she was thinking what I was thinking … I KNEW she was. I could almost feel the oxygen get sucked out of the room and the air go cold.

Waitress: “What sort of coffee would we like?”

Me: “We would like a flat white please.”

Waitress looked at me like I’m a moron.

Me (for clarification): “Actually, I’d like a flat white. I’m not sure what you’d like.”

And then there was an uncomfortable silence like I’d just crossed a line between responsible and irresponsible behaviour (which, to be fair, I probably had) … and the waitress went off to make the coffee, and probably spit in it.

The trip home from Dalby was uneventful. Other than a super quick stop in Oakey – ironically for exactly the same reason that we stopped in Oakey on the first day of our trip heading out – it was a straight run home.

It was also interesting to notice how much greener everything is again.

The roads were flatter, wider, and faster than we have experienced more recently, and our return to suburbia brought with it the return of all the other drivers that are in an enormous hurry to get somewhere and not appreciating having a silly old fool in front of them towing a van and holding them up.

I haven’t missed that.

In fact I have appreciated the friendliness and courtesy shown by drivers out west, and even more ironically I’m already starting to miss the cheery waves from passing motorists.

We got home just before 1.00pm and started the process of unpacking, unloading, washing, cleaning and putting away.

Vital statistics for today were about 240km over 3.5 hours or so. For the total trip we travelled 3,173km, and we pulled Ernie for 2,381 of them.

All in all, I’d have to say that Elsie performed very well, Ernie was a delight to tow and exceeded our expectations, and I’d like to think that I behaved OK as well (although maybe not so well in the Coffee Club) … but I guess that I’ll find out for sure when MBW gives me my next performance review 🙂

Until next trip …

Ciao

PS: I’m already planning our next trip away in the van, even if it is just a weekend. MBW just doesn’t know it yet.

I had a terrible sleep last night. From all reports, MBW also had a bad night sleep.

After being so cold for so long – chilled to the bone almost watching the Big Rig night show – I fear that we overdid it with the portable heater while we were having dinner and the van got a bit overheated and stuffy.

We didn’t get to bed late … I think I was crawling into bed at around 9.30pm and preparing myself early for the assault of trucks on the highway behind us, but then I couldn’t get to sleep because I was hot. After trashing around for a while I ended up opening some of the hatches in the bathroom to allow some airflow, and then after some further thrashing around I threw off the quilt also.

And then my feet were itchy. I’m not sure if that was because I was hot, or if it is some undiagnosed mental disorder – either is possible I guess – and then at around 11.00pm or so I gave up and sought some pharmaceutical assistance, via a sleeping tablet.

We packed down the van in record time this morning, and were ready to roll just before 9.15am. If I turned up to work at 9.15am I’d probably have my pay docked, but 9.15am isn’t too shabby in Roma, on holidays, and especially after a bad night sleep.

I got the coffee going this morning while MBW was in the shower, but she finished the process while I had a quick shower. I think that she must have done something wrong with the coffee today, because it did nothing to either wake me up, or cheer me up. Maybe the coffee we are using is past it’s use-by date and no longer works?

Or maybe it’s just because I’ll be going back to work in a couple of days and I don’t want to.

I felt just a little bit like Captain Kirk (of Starship Enterprise fame) this morning when I asked MBW to close the hatches, set Spotify for a country music playlist, and we set off at warp speed.

Actually I lie – it wasn’t even close to warp speed.

There was an absolutely ferocious cross wind on the trip out from Roma this morning heading east and that, combined with the appallingly uneven road surface, made for a very unpleasant journey.

Picture this: Imagine that you are sitting on a trampoline with two small children that are jumping up and down around you; meanwhile you have other idiot drivers flying past you in places where the white painted lines on the road are clearly screaming “DANGER – NO OVERTAKING HERE!!!”, and you are listening to this country and western playlist that includes classics such as “Beer never broke my heart” and “I only date cowboys”.

And I have to share with you that the music was the most enjoyable part of that whole experience. When in Roma …

So I kept it at a nice steady 95km/h and ignored the speed signs that said “you can go 110km/h if you want to”. I didn’t want to. I was happy doing 95km/h because I wanted to live a little longer.

It was a relatively uneventful trip – other than wondering if I was about to see my first dead body (… actually it would be my second DB, but that is a whole other discussion for a whole other time …) each time one of the lunatics overtook me on a double line in the face of oncoming traffic.

We blew through Wallumbilla and then suddenly the diuretic part the coffee kicked it, and the coffee needed to make an urgent exit. Next possible location was Yuleba.

I’m going to digress for just a moment and say that I’d like to buy a property in Wallumbilla. MBW doesn’t know that yet, but I guess she will find out when/if she reads this post. I think that Wallumbilla is a fun name for a township, and I think it would be cool to say “yeah, I have a place in Wallumbilla …”

The fact that it is little more than a “Welcome to Wallumbilla” sign, closely followed by “Thanks for visiting Wallumbilla” sign is not particularly relevant to me. If not Wallumbilla, then maybe Muckadilla. Either or.

I think I mentioned yesterday some of the changes that we are seeing the closer we get back to Brisbane – wider, faster roads, painted lines, more cars, overtaking lanes, etc.

The other thing that we have noticed is that instead of travelling an hour or more between townships, we are seeing them much more frequently. It sometimes feels like I have only just got Elsie back up to warp speed from coming through the last township, and I am throwing out the anchor and slowing down for the next one.

This was exactly the case this morning – there was hardly enough time to worry about missing an opportunity in Wallumbilla when another opportunity came up in Yuleba, only 15 minutes further down the road.

Now I’ve promised MBW that I won’t bore you with endless toilet stops and bladder issues in this trip’s blog, but I do need to mention this one because it was … unusual.

It was unusual because it was in the middle of a cemetery. I’m fairly certain that it wasn’t there for the benefit of any of the residents of the cemetery because they are all, um, dead, so maybe it is there for the comfort of people who are attending a burial and failed to plan by not going before the service … or maybe for the benefit of people who DID plan, but the service went very looooong.

Who knows? You can see the facilities in the picture below – it’s the little building just off centre.

To be fair, it wasn’t actually signed as a public toilet, but it was open, and it was unoccupied.

MBW was waiting in Elsie just outside the cemetery (I’ve been able to go by myself for some years now), and on the way back out I stopped and looked at some of the gravestones in the cemetery – some of which are quite old.

From Yuleba to Miles it was only about another hour, and we stopped for a late breakfast/early lunch.

While we were stopped for lunch and sitting in the van, we had a road train pull up beside (or outside) us, and I managed to snatch another photo of Elsie & Ernie Vs Road train – although this one wasn’t the full 53m long as it only had 2 trailers so it wasn’t quite as impressive.

I’m sure that a road train with only 2 trailers, not 3, has a name, but I don’t know what it is. Maybe a B-Double Vs a B-Triple?

We had a super-quick stop in Brigalow and then kept travelling through Chinchilla.

We stayed in Chinchilla on the first night of this trip, so we didn’t bother stopping again, preferring instead to get into Dalby earlier rather than later.

Somewhere past Chinchilla, in a place called MacAlister there is a grain (I think) silo with this impressive conveyor belt across the road to the train line. It doesn’t look like much from a distance, but becomes more impressive the closer you get … and you have a brief moment of panic wondering how much clearance there is underneath it!

The further east we travelled, the more the skies became threatening and in fact we had a few spots of rain on the way today.

We finally arrived into Dalby at around 1.30pm and checked into the Dalby Tourist Park. I asked for a nice, quiet, grassy spot and we got a nice one well away from the road … so no road trains to keep me awake tonight.

Dalby is the epitome of civilisation considering where we have been for the last week or so, with traffic lights, Woolworths and Coles AND Aldi. More fuel stations than you can poke a stick at … all sorts of fun things to see and do.

We thought we’d pop out for a quick coffee to celebrate civilisation found … only to find that the coffee shops in Dalby all close at 2.00pm, and we missed it by 10 minutes.

Maybe not so civilised after all 🙁

But at least they are honest. On a quick trip out to Coles to buy a few last-minute things that we needed, and a few things that we probably didn’t need, we saw this sign outside of a Lifeline shop …

Weird stuff for sale.

Maybe the locals in Dalby aren’t as normal or civilised at we thought?

We will be home tomorrow and I’m feeling a bit sad. I’ve enjoyed dragging Ernie around western Queensland with MBW – seeing and doing some fun stuff – and just once I’d like to be going home because I’m ready to go home, not because I’ve run out of time 🙁

We are sitting here in Dalby tonight, warming up one of our final frozen dinners that we brought with us, and listening to the increasingly heavy rain on the roof. There is also a strange vibration coming through the floor of the van and I can’t figure out what it is – either wind rocking the van or maybe an earthquake?

With any luck I won’t be able to make it back to work on Monday and I’ll have to “work from home” from Dalby for the foreseeable future.

I suppose I could go outside and look around to try and figure out the cause of the vibration but experience has taught me two things:

1. Don’t ask a question if you don’t want to know the answer; and
2. Don’t do something today if you can possibly put it off until tomorrow.

Today’s vital statistics are that we travelled approximately 270km over about 4 hours or so.

If anyone is talking to Zach, could you please remind him we will be home tomorrow and that it’s probably a good time to put on the dishwasher and give the house a tidy up.

Got to go. Dinner is ready and I don’t want MBW to shout at me for being late.

Ciao

Today’s post is brought to you by Benjamin Franklin without whom – with his kite flying in an electrical storm – we would likely have been unable to run our little electric heater this morning to stay warm.

I mentioned yesterday that the forecast for this morning was -4 degrees, and fortunately it only reached a teeth chattering -3 degrees … but felt like -5.4. With the heater on early (7.00am … OK not exactly early, but early for us) we hid under the covers for another 30 minutes or so until it was safe to face the day.

I don’t believe that it ever actually reached the dizzying heights of 18 degrees from 2.00pm to 4.00pm. From memory, it barely got above 10 degrees all day.

I’m feeling a little rattled today. After a night in Morven staying at Gidgee’s Bush Camp, where we had no power hookup but could have been a million miles from the rest of the world, last night we stayed in Roma at the Villa Caravan Park, which has power hookup and is “conveniently located on the Carnarvon Hwy” – code for “it feels like trucks coming from the north will rumble through your van all night long“.

And rumble they did.

OK, so the top picture above doesn’t make it look so bad, but when you see it from the street side (photo above) you can see that we are almost on the footpath!

The young lady who runs the park said that they would be all quiet by 7.00pm, but clearly the truckies didn’t get that memo. They were still rumbling past at about 10.30 or so when I gave up, jammed some earplugs into my head, and drifted off to the land of nod.

We are here again tonight, and I am a firm believer that – unlike the stock exchange – past performance WILL be an indication of future performance … so I’ll start with the earplugs as soon as I am ready for sleep.

Today was one of those lazy days pottering around Roma and seeing the sights.

Other than a quick pass through Roma on our Brisbane > Charleville > Longreach > Winton > Barcaldine > Rockhampton > Brisbane adventure with Holly (our old van) in 2020, it’s been >20 years since I spent any time in Roma, and that’s when I was working for Telstra. So I needed to get my bearings.

We started at the far end of town – in the east – with the plan of driving all the way through town until we were on the outgoing road back to Mitchell in the west.

Yes I appreciate that doesn’t sound like a particularly startling goal or achievement, but I find that if I set the bar pretty low then I won’t be disappointed early in the day.

So we drove to the eastern side of town, did a U-turn and came back through, albeit making several stops on the way.

First stop was an outback sculpture display on the edge of town. Many of the items were for sale, ranging from $3,000 for a very touching tribute to the fallen soldiers, up to an eye-popping $28,000 for a piece of wood with some holes cut into it.

Clearly I don’t understand art, but some of them were very well done.

From there we went into the Roma Big Rig to have a look around and book our (concession) tickets to tonight’s show, saving ourselves $5 each off the normal price.

The best part of that transaction was saving a total of $10 in entry fees. The most concerning part was that the lady serving us didn’t need to see our Senior’s cards because “she could see that we qualified for the concession”.

I’m not quite sure what that means or how to interpret it, but it appears that the money I save on hair colouring also saves me more money on admissions in the west. Probably lucky that I’m not bald, because she would have thought I was a 25 year old 🙂

We went and had a look at the Roma Bush Gardens, and discovered that the advertising brochure must have captured the gardens in much happier (= greener) times. They were very dry and looking a little forlorn.

I probably should point out that while Roma is still a well-sized township (population ~7,000), nothing is ever very far away. In fact, you could probably throw a rock from one side of the main street to the other, so when I say we “went to the gardens” or “went into town”, it’s not a particularly onerous journey … maybe a 2 minute drive.

So anyway, we went back into town (500m, if that), had coffee and then parked Elsie and went walking up and down the main street to see if there was anything that we missed from yesterday’s walk.

It was just a nice, pleasant morning, walking around town in the sunshine, looking in the shops, and feeling a bit like the Michelin Man.

Here’s a fun fact – that glass turret at the top of the School of Arts Hotel (picture above) was used as a lookout location during the war.

I’m unsure how PC (politically correct) they like to be out here in the west, but calling a shop “Mensland” just sounds to me like they are asking for trouble!

Back to the van for some lunch, and MBW read her book for a while, and I had a little nap. I didn’t get the chance to let off as many Z’s as I would have liked last night, for fear that I was going to be run over by a truck.

This afternoon we took Elsie out for a short drive to the local fuel station to give her a big drink, and it was good to see that the price of diesel is back to an acceptable $1.41/litre. I also gave her windscreen a good wash, because it had a significant build-up of bug DNA again.

Both Elsie and Ernie are going to need a very good bath when we get home, as they are both starting to look very dusty and dirty. I’ve noticed that since we have been driving on these outback roads, we no longer get asked if the van is new 🙁

While I was filling up, another vehicle pulled in beside me and it had “Equine Dentist” written on the door. Equine dentist … that’s two words that you don’t normally expect to see together … I suppose it means what I think it means?

Tonight we went to the night show at the Roma Big Rig. The Big Rig is a display depicting Roma’s history in the oil and gas fields, and it was a good night. The show only went for about an hour, but it was very informative and it was interesting to see photos from the 1920s and learn about how the drilling occurred.

As part of the show, everyone gets a shot of St George Port and a take-home shot glass. We are not alcohol drinkers, but one of our sons told us that St George makes really good port, and that we should try it if we get a chance.

So when our tour guide said “does anyone prefer a shot of juice instead of port?”, we stayed silent.

When in Roma, do as the Romans do … I guess.

Ciao

Today’s post is brought to you by the letter “M”. And “R”. Oh, and the locksmith.

Last night we stayed at Mick and Kylie’s place – Gidgee’s Bush Camp in Morven. Remember Mick and Kylie? Best friends with Marie Jean, daughter of Ruby – the lady we had dinner with in Quilpie? If you need a reminder you will need to go back and couple of days and re-read it.

The words “Bush Camp” mean that we were free camping again. For those Phillistines amongst you who are not familiar with the concept of free camping, it means camping (or – in our case – glamping) without access to power or water hook-up, so you need to be completely self-sufficient.

The van is set up to allow us to be self-sufficient – as many modern vans are – with water tanks, 12 volt lighting, batteries, solar panels, gas hot water, toilet, etc, etc.

The only things that you miss out on are any appliances that NEED 240v to run, like the air-conditioner, the washing machine, and the microwave.

Oh, and the electric heater. And the electric blankets.

Free camping can be completely free, if you stay at a designated place that is provided by many smaller local councils. Or it can have a small cost if you choose to stay in the relative safety of somebody’s property where – for the camping fee – you may have access to a long-drop toilet, or a camp kitchen. We paid about $15 for the night for the 2 of us to stay at Gidgee’s.

In our case at Gidgee’s, they supplied plenty of free firewood and fire pits and also had a camp kitchen.

So I mentioned that we didn’t have an electric heater. It was cold last night, and colder this morning. Now I won’t give you a number for how cold it was – I’ll give you a description.

Picture this: I was standing sans PJs waiting for the hot water to run in the shower*, and I realised that I was breathing steam out of my nose with each exhaled breath. It was cold!

* OK, so I can hear some of you saying “why didn’t you just let the water run hot and fill the van with steam before going sans PJs? Elementary my dear Watson: Because we only carry very limited water and the hot water system runs out very quickly, so conservation is the name of the game.

Morven is a pretty little place, but I have to confess that they all start to blend into each other after a while 🙁 Morven had a pub, and fuel station, and a coffee cart, and … hmmm. That’s about it.

Out in the west you often see signs warning of road trains that can be up to 53m long. I think that the point of the warning is that you shouldn’t underestimate how long they are if you are planning to overtake one. It’s a bit like overtaking an ocean liner.

As we were pulling out of Morven this morning, one of those 53m road trains rumbled past and then stopped at the fuel station just up the road. It doesn’t really seem to be that long, but I just had to know …

OK, so the road train wins this round.

The further west that you travel, the greater the chance that drivers of passing (oncoming) vehicles will wave at you. Drivers of other vehicles towing caravans, in particular. It’s almost like a secret wave of people in the “caravan club”.

And I have to say, it all becomes a bit exhausting after a while.

The roads from Thargomindah up to Quilpie, and from Quilpie back through Charleville have relatively few vans, so it hasn’t been such a problem, but the bit from Charleville back towards Roma has had more vans, and consequently more waving.

To be honest it is wearing me out, and I’ve started to just raise my right index finger in a vague attempt to show some courtesy to other drivers.

The further east that we travel though, I’ve noticed that there is less of a predisposition for other drivers to wave, and I expect that it won’t be long before other drivers will be giving me a very different one fingered salute, and not because they are being friendly.

I’ve also noticed some other things about the roads the further east we travel.

Firstly, there is a great deal more roadkill to avoid. Further west there was only the occasional dead ‘roo/emu/pig on the road, but now we are seeing them all of the time.

Secondly, we are seeing a great deal more trucks and road trains on the highway. I also suspect that the relationship between the increase in trucks and the increase in roadkill is not entirely coincidental.

The third observation is that the roads east of Charleville have become more “interesting”. They are not as straight and flat. They do not have vast expanses of barren land either side but rather we are starting to see more field and trees. And we are also seeing painted lines on the road – something that we haven’t seen since about St George.

So anyway, we pulled out of Morven at about 10.00am after stopping to look at some of the bags that Kylie makes at Gidgee’s. Now I know that a 10.00am departure makes it seem like we got off to a slow start today, but we really did stop for coffee and to look at Kylie’s products – you can see them here if you don’t believe me.

First stop for the day after leaving Morven was Mungallala, a small “blink and you will miss it” kind of township with a population of about 137 people and absolutely nothing of interest except for a public toilet.

Mungallala has the dubious honour of being named the poorest township in Australia.

Apparently the average income of the residents is $3,000/pa. I’m not sure how they survive on only $3,000/pa, but I can assure you that there is no McDonald’s, no Hungry Jacks and no other places to spend your money. There is a pub, but if Mungallala is anything like every other small township we’ve passed through, there is unlikely to be a chef or bar staff there, so it is unlikely to be doing much business.

Another interesting factoid about Mungallala is that the last time the local policeman needed to use the lights and siren on his police vehicle was to scare his neighbour who was walking down the middle of the road.

The final fun fact about Mungallala is that they have had some tough times in the past. In their chequered history, the sawmill burned down and some young (= stupid) guys were injured when the young guys broke into the sawmill and lit a match to see how much fuel was in a jerry can they were planning to steal.

I’m sure that you can foresee the end to that story, even if they couldn’t.

After Mungallala, the next stop was Mitchell – a very pretty little township and a place where I would love to spend some more time.

We have stopped in Mitchell on a previous trip, and used their beautiful artesian pools there. Sadly we didn’t have time for that today though.

We stopped at the bakery and bought sausage rolls and a cream donut (AKA “lunch”) at 11.00am or so, then had a very pleasant wander down the main street and had a nice chat to the lady that runs that Samios Trading Post – a clothing shop that sells all kinds of cool stuff.

OK, it’s time for some audience participation: outside the Trading Post are some statues of farm animals …

Three of these things are just like the others; one of these things is not quite the same. Can you pick the real animal?

We checked out all of the cool stuff and I found a few things that I’d like to buy.

These Ariat boots were really nice, but I’m not sure where I’d wear them. I’d probably have to buy a horse.

At ~$350 for a pair of boots they are a bit hard to justify, even if one of my sons is screaming out BUY THEM!! Ironically, that son has the same name as the township.

We also tried on (and received advice about buying) some Akubra hats, but at ~$220 or so each, we deferred that decision for now too … We did find out that they have “the races” happening on the long weekend in October, so we may plan to go back for that – sounds like fun!

And maybe splurge and buy ourselves some hats.

And some boots 🙂

We headed out of Mitchell and the next (brief) stop was Muckadilla. It is even smaller than Mungallala but not as depressing.

All of these townships with “M” names: Morven. Mungallala, Mitchell. Muckadilla. It’s getting confusing!

From Muckadilla it was only a short run (~45km) to Roma, our destination tonight.

We have already established that it was cold this morning, and it has been cold all day. Warm in the car, cold in the wind.

We did a quick look at the weather forecast and saw that the forecast for Roma is -4 to 18 on Thursday. Yes you read that right – minus 4 to 18.

If we free camp we can potentially save $30-40/night, but with a forecast of minus 4 degrees (and no power hookup = no heater) there is a very real risk that we could freeze to death … and then one of our boys would need to travel to Roma and identify our frozen and lifeless bodies.

I can’t see how that would be an optimal outcome for either Kerri or I, or for the son that has to identify our bodies.

So for the purposes of risk reduction, we elected to stay at a nice caravan park in Roma with access to power and water.

We finally feel like we are back in civilisation with McDonald’s, KFC, Woolworths, Mitre 10 and a variety of other conveniences … and I can’t say that it excites me much.

We set up the van, did a couple of loads of washing, and went for a spin into town because there is a drapery store in Roma that MBW particularly wanted to visit.

I personally thought that it was like the little shop of horrors, with rolls of material (and other assorted junk) stocked to the ceiling, to the point where we believe that the guy who owns the store probably has an undiagnosed psychological issue with either serious OCD or hoarding issues. Or both.

Final stop for the day was Woolworths to buy some groceries, including steak for dinner.

We came out of Woolies to find that some psychopath had reversed back against us (but fortunately not into us) such that we couldn’t possibly get the groceries into the back of the car.

So as I was taking some photos (for just in case), I was verbally accosted by the aforementioned psychopath who wanted to know if there was a problem. Hmmm. I couldn’t tell if there was a problem, because I couldn’t get close enough to Elise to see … but it doesn’t appear that there is, in case you’re wondering.

Dinner tonight was steak on the BBQ that far surpassed the meal at the Imperial pub in Quilpie a couple of nights ago. Good to know that if all else fails, I could get a gig at the Quilpie pub in the kitchen.

Tomorrow will be a relaxed (and likely freezing) day exploring Roma, and then we are on the penultimate leg of our journey home.

Only about 180km and 2 hours driving time today, but we had some nice stops on the way.

Ciao

PS: Today’s post was proudly brought to you by the letter “M”, and Locksmiths Roma.

I mentioned at the end of yesterday’s post that we were going out to a community dinner last night at the Bulloo Race Track in Quilpie. They’d had a weekend of football and other sporting events and JT (Jonathan Thurston) was in town as the special guest.

The lady at the visitor information centre said that “anyone who is in the community is part of the community”, so we were made very welcome to go along and enjoy.

JT was indeed there, and unfortunately because they’d had a number (like 16) events on over the extended weekend, everyone was suffering event fatigue … and so there was only a small turn up. Maybe 50 people?

But it was a nice intimate little event. One of us was itching to go up and introduce herself to JT and get a photo. I may have given it away by saying “herself” …

But because there weren’t too many people there, we had the opportunity to talk with several people including a lovely, elderly local lady named Ruby.

Anyway, MBW was itching to get a photo with JT and we were trying to figure out how to “accidentally” bump into him to say hi. Next thing Sam – JT’s manager – dragged JT down to meet Ruby of all people, and so we were all introduced to him because we were all there there In that intimate little group. So it was kind of like JT accidentally bumped into us 🙂

I’d like to say that JT and I had a bit of an intellectual conversation about football, but those of you who know me would instantly recognise that as a lie.

Dinner was exactly what I would have expected from a CWA-organised dinner at the local race club – roast chicken and ham, potato salad, various salads, and a bread roll – all followed up up with apple crumble and ice cream. And there was enough of it to feed a small army.

And because it was a community event run by the local council, it didn’t cost us a brass razoo.

So that was a really nice night out, and a fun way to end our time in Quilpie. It’s such a pretty little town with so many lovely, welcoming people, it would be a great place to spend more time.

This morning was cold again, but it is also the day we have to leave Quilpie for Morven, and it is also MBW’s birthday.

The 6 degrees of separation happened to us again this morning. We were chatting to the guy in the van behind us at Quilpie as we were packing down and hooking up, and it turns out that he knows the father of a friend of ours from when they both lived in Biloela, and he used to live just around the corner to where we used to live in Alexandra Hills.

Small world.

So we had coffee, packed down the van and headed out. Well, out of the park anyway.

You may recall that I mentioned a day or so ago that the bluebird of happiness had visited and left his/her calling card all over the front of the van. So the first place that we needed to stop was the very handy, free wash down facility on the outskirts of town.

The water is hot artesian bore water and it did a great job getting bluebird of happiness (BBOH) poop off the van, and also got rid of a buildup of dirt and dust off Elsie and Ernie (van).

When we got to the wash down facility there was this (I assume local) guy washing down his ute. Seriously I have never seen so much red mud come out of a vehicle as I saw came out of his ute. Every time he pointed the hose at a different wheel arch, or down a rail, more dirt and mud came out.

In fact so much dirt and mud came out of that vehicle that I’m surprised that he wasn’t paying land tax!

After Elsie and Ernie were clean-ish, we headed down to the bakery. Note that I didn’t say clean? It will take a bit more work than just squirting them with water before I can claim that they are clean 🙁

We’ve been to the bakery a couple of times now to buy some sausage rolls and we have missed out every time. I asked the nice bakery lady to save us a couple and we were fortunate enough to secure a couple for breakfast on our way out of town.

Did I mention that when I was in the newsagent the other day, the lady ahead of me spent $756 on Lotto and Powerball tickets? Really? $756?

Well MBW had a similar experience at the bakery where the truckie ahead of her spent $75 on pies, sausage rolls and cakes. I’m not sure if that was just breakfast, or supposed to last him a day or two?

We rolled out of town and had a completely uneventful trip to Charleville. The roads have white lines and a speed limit of 110km/h – all of which seem unusual to us after travelling along these outback western unmarked/unlined and narrow roads for several days now.

The only notable event on an otherwise uneventful trip from Quilpie to Charleville was that we stopped at this tiny little township just west of Charleville called Cooladdi (population 16) – and specifically at the Foxtrap Roadhouse – to buy coffee, and I encountered possibly one of the most unpleasant people that I have ever met. So unpleasant in fact that I was about 2 heartbeats away from just turning around and walking back out again.

But my need for caffeine was greater than my desire to play the “who can be more obnoxious” game, so I ordered coffee, paid my money and left her a bad review on Google Maps.

Turns out that her coffee was bad enough that I would have been better off going out to the van and having a couple of teaspoons of Moccona straight out of the bottle. C’est la vie.

We arrived in Charleville for a late lunch at a little coffee shop, that was staffed with people who were exponentially more pleasant than the woman at Cooladdi, and their coffee was exponentially better also.

I mentioned that it is MBW’s birthday today. Our options of going out for breakfast were fairly limited in Quilpie, and as we are staying at a bush camp in Morven (population 199) tonight I suspect that our options will be limited again, so we celebrated her birthday over lunch.

You may recall that the last time we went out I had the steak and it was terrible, and MBW had the chicken schnitty and it was great. This time the tables were turned and MBW had the steak and it looked and tasted fabulous, and I had the chicken fillet burger which was OK, but clearly the inferior choice. Story of my life 🙁

We went to the local fuel station and filled the tank, then headed off for our destination tonight – Gidgee’s Bush Camp in Morven.

So the 6 degrees of separation came into play for the 2nd time today, as we found out that the lady who owns and runs Gidgee’s Bush Camp is best friends with Marie Jean who we had dinner with in Quilpie last night.

If I was paranoid, I’d claim that there is a conspiracy going on.

We arrived at Gidgee’s Bush Camp around 3.00pm, set up the van and lit the campfire.

We had the place to ourselves for a whole hour until another vehicle towing another Supreme/Leader van rolled in and a family with two small girls disembarked.

The lady who runs Gidgee’s is very artistic and she we had a look at some of her artwork.

Don’t tell Elise, but I’m seeing someone else …

It is also a working farm with sheep and goats, and they have a few newborn goats in an enclosure that the other family’s children fed.

Tonight MBW and I have had a nice evening sitting around the campfire, drinking coffee and eating chocolate. What better way to end the day?

Tomorrow we are off to Roma for a couple of nights and then the adventure will be rapidly drawing to an end 🙁 I’ll tell you about Roma tomorrow.

Ciao

Karma [noun]: Good or bad luck, resulting from one’s actions.

Three things happened in quick succession this morning. Possibly four things happened this morning if I mention the weather, but technically the weather happens every day so it doesn’t really count as a thing.

Let’s get the weather out of the way first. It was cold. Like maybe 5 degrees inside the van, and unpleasantly colder outside the van. Fortunately I’d had the foresight to put the air conditioner remote beside the bed last night so I set it to tropical and hid under the doona for another hour or so until it warmed up.

If I am to be completely accurate in my reporting, I’d have to confess that I fell asleep again and didn’t wake until about 8.30am, which was embarrassingly late, but I must have been tired.

Once I got out of bed, three things happened in quick succession. You probably thought that I’d forgotten about them. I may be getting old and forgetful, but at least I’m … nope sorry, I can’t remember 🙁

Anyway the first thing that happened was that I heard old mate from site #29 – you remember old mate from #29 … sunning himself like a lizard, twice the man that I will ever be, PPE, toilet canister, crocs – he was stomping around, packing down his van, rolling his hoses, hooking up his car, and he left in a cloud of dust.

So essentially that means that there will be no more blog fodder from him.

The second thing that happened was that I was greeted by a cheery little red light on the top of my toilet … it’s time to empty my canister. And I wasn’t taking any chances 🙁

The third thing that happened was that I discovered that the blue bird of happiness had been to visit us during the night. That’s going to need a good wash …

Today was a bit of a lazy, “walk up the main street one side and come back the other side” kind of a day.

All of the museums and attractions are free entry, and most surprisingly most are open 24 hours. “Just push the door open, any time of the day or night” was the instruction we received on several occasions.

The first stop was the Rail museum …

We stopped by the visitor’s centre and had a look at the art gallery …

… the Quilpie museum, and the military museum …

… and then we stopped at the bakery for a cream donut, and then the newsagent for coffee. Yes, the newsagent. Best coffee in town we were told, and it was pretty good.

By this time we had reached the end of Brolga Street, so swapped over to the other side to stop at the Empire Cafe to get “the best toastie in town”. I had a ham, cheese and tomato toastie, and MBW had a chicken, cheese and pineapple toastie, and they were both pretty good!

We then wandered down to the Quilpie Powerhouse museum. Quilpie was the first town to have a powerhouse as a result of a government scheme to provide electricity to small towns in rural and outback Queensland, and the Quilpie powerhouse was commissioned in 1952.

We then went around to St Finbarr’s Catholic Church to have a look at the opal altar.

On the way back to the van we stopped in at the local library and bought some 2nd hand books.

Today was mostly a walking day – a great way to get out and see Quilpie and meet the beautiful people who live here. >10,000 steps and a beautiful day in outback Queensland.

This afternoon we gave Elsie a run out to the lake and then did the river walk – both locations attractions that we were told we really should do.

I’ve mentioned in an previous post that the streets are very wide in these country towns. This is the street that leads down to the caravan park. But my calculations it is about 23 metres wide!

I’ve also mentioned – yesterday I think – that you need to ensure you have plenty of fuel when going for a drive. You know that they are serious when they give you a final warning before leaving town.

Tonight we are going down to the Bulloo Racing Club because JT is in town for a community meal, and we are told that everyone is welcome. You’ll hear about that tomorrow.

Ciao

One of the best parts about staying in a caravan park is the sport of people watching. That could be anything from watching people try to reverse their ridiculously large van into an impossibly small space, or any other activities that happen in the park.

The older couple next to us on site 29 at the Channel Country Caravan Park in Quilpie were sitting outside their van sunning themselves like a couple of lizards on a rock when we arrived yesterday.

Our spot – site 28 – was indeed one of those impossibly narrow spaces that had “divorce” written all over it … or at the very least “sleep on the couch for the next couple of nights.”

I’ve seen a sign that says “I’m sorry for what I said when I was reversing the van.” Truer words have never been spoken.

But despite that, I managed to reverse it in almost perfectly on the first attempt, and with just a little more jiggery-pokery I was able to make it completely aligned with the concrete slab, perfectly straight, at right angles to the road, and level. My OCD is still alive and well, even on holidays 🙁

I’m not sure who was more surprised by my parking efforts – me or the bloke next door.

It would be unkind to describe the bloke next door as seriously overweight, or even just obese … my mother always taught me not to say unkind things about others.

So let’s just say that the guy next door is twice the man that I will ever be. Perhaps three times. And he uses a wheelie walker to get around, just to complete the picture.

When I got out of bed this morning, the temperature gauge said it was about 7 degrees inside the van, and quite a bit colder outside.

I opened the screens first thing this morning just to check that the world hadn’t ended, and I’m pleased to report that it hasn’t – well, not here in Quilpie anyway. Anything is possible elsewhere in the world.

The thing that I noticed was that old mate next door was kitted out in his PPE – short sleeved shirt, shorts, crocs and garden gloves. OK, so maybe not full PPE in the traditional sense, but the garden gloves were the give-away. He definitely had something important going on, and he needed to protect his hands while he was doing it.

A few more minutes of covert observation and everything became clear. It was time to empty his toilet cassette!

This caravan park is the only place I have ever stayed where there is a mini dump point at each site. Normally you have power, water and sullage, and then there is a centrally located communal dump point where you get to queue up behind all of the other poor suckers who are waiting to empty their cassettes, but not here in Quilpie. Here you get your own dump point, right there at your site!

So I got to watch him go through the process of emptying his cassette. Now I won’t go into all of the sordid details, but let’s just say that it gives a whole new meaning to the expression “splash your boots” .. or in old mate’s case, splash your crocs.

At least he was wearing gardening gloves to protect his hands, but a shame he didn’t have something more substantial on his feet.

That cheered me up 🙂

Then I opened the fridge to start the process of making coffee and I discovered that we were almost out of coffee for our coffee maker.

That made me sad 🙁

Just to clarify, if you are at all surprised that we brought a coffee maker on our western Queensland adventure, then you clearly don’t know us very well and we probably shouldn’t be FaceBook friends.

There was only really one thing on the agenda for today, and that was a trip out to Eromanga (population ~30) to meet Cooper, Queensland’s newest dinosaur out at the Natural History Museum. We had an 11.00am booking and it is a bit over an hour from Quilpie, so we knew that we needed to get away by around 9.30am to be there in plenty of time.

We also needed to get some groceries – milk, bread rolls, etc – so we needed to get moving by 9.00am. We went to the bakery, and then to the Foodworks, and then back to the van to drop everything off.

Surprise, surprise – despite being in a township of 570 people and 1000km west of home, packets of ground coffee were (almost) the same price as we pay at home. So were many other items.

Not bananas though – they were 8.00/kg for cavendish, and 11.00/kg for lady fingers, so we didn’t buy any of them. In fact, other than the milk and the bread rolls, I don’t think that we bought anything fresh. To be completely truthful, I think that we made some poor dietary choices, but the things we bought were yummy, on special, and I’m a firm believer that calories consumed on holidays don’t count.

As we were leaving the park this morning to get our groceries prior to heading out to Eromanga, we couldn’t help but notice how many vans had cleared out of the park early this morning. I assume that they were all here for the football yesterday?

Quilpie is a pretty little township; very quiet on a Sunday morning. Nothing much open, nothing much happening, nobody moving around – all of the locals must have been still safely ensconced in their homes, because the majority of people on the streets had a caravan hooked up and were getting fuel.

The trip out to Eromanga was uneventful. 101km and (from memory) about a dozen cars that we passed on the way out. I think we saw more things dead on the road than we saw alive and grazing in the dry and desolate paddocks.

Among the dead were pigs, cattle, kangaroos, sheep and an emu, and much the same among the living, except that we also saw some brolgas in a paddock. Well, I think that they are brolgas. Feel free to comment and correct me if I am wrong.

It’s funny how at home, we never really worry too much about fuel because there is always another fuel station around the corner. You have choice of stations according to the retailer your prefer, where you get the best discount, and how much you want to pay.

Out here in the west, you find yourself looking at the fuel gauge each time you get in the car and doing a calculation to figure out of you’ve got enough fuel to get you to where you are going, and – if the place that you are going has no fuel options – get you back again.

We had just over half a tank when we left Quilpie this morning, or 400-odd km according to the trip meter, so there was no real concern … but if any of the (4) stations in Quilpie ran out of diesel, we could have a problem.

The road to Eromanga was just like every other road we have travelled so far out here – alternating between wide enough for two cars, to barely wide enough for one. The roads are straight, well surfaced, and the scenery is ever-changing.

We got to Eromanga at about 10.45 and went in search of the museum, which is about another 10km on the other side of the township. Eromanga is also a pretty little town, with an emphasis on “little” – population 30ish.

Eromanga’s claim to fame is that it is the furthest town from the sea, a claim that is disputed in various “reputable” forums, like Wikipedia. But their “welcome to Eromanga” sign states it as a fact.

The Eromanga Natural History Museum is an interesting place, with a good tour of the workshop and demonstrations on how the bones are found, extracted, and processed.

Apparently they have 90 years of bone processing to do based on the bones that they have extracted so far, so job security sounds like it is pretty good at the museum.

The trip home was much the same as the trip out, except in reverse.

We were back at the van for a late lunch, then out to fill the car at one of the few fuel options in Quilpie – this one an unattended card-only station.

A bit like in the USA, you prepay $100 for fuel, then fill up, then collect your receipt. For my $100 of prepaid fuel, the pump clicked off at $96.43 and then shut itself off, and gave me a receipt for $96.43 … yet the tank wasn’t full. Maybe it thought I was panic buying, so limited my purchase?

In any case, after getting fuel, we went and (unsuccessfully) fossicked for opals, then went to the local free vehicle wash down facility and gave Elsie a nice bath with hot artesian water, then off to Baldy Top to watch the sunset.

Baldy Top is a local lookout in an otherwise very flat landscape, a beautiful spot for watching the sunset, and one of the local “must do” attractions in Quilpie.

The track up to Baldy Top is at best tricky, and at worst treacherous, and certainly not for the faint of heart or fleet of foot … yet the old(er) couple coming down the track ahead of us were both walking with the aid of walking sticks.

I offered to help them down the track as I felt that would be easier than having to carry them down on a stretcher if they fell, but they somehow made it down unscathed.

Tomorrow will be a lazy day looking around Quilpie, and we will be heading to the Newsagent to get “the best coffee in town”.

Today we did about 250km just going out to Eromanga and back, plus some running around and then out to Baldy Top this evening for the sunset.

I’ve realised that I haven’t been putting in the daily mileages and statistics, so I will go back and start updating them. If you have just read the previous posts and they have travel details and mileage, then you know I’ve already done it.

Ciao

It was a bit of a day for funny signs today. If you consider two funny signs a “day for funny signs”, that is.

As I described in yesterday’s post, we decided to pull up stumps a day early and head off to Quilpie. We also figured that with a population of 595 peeps, it has to be at least twice as exciting as Thargomindah with a population of only 270 peeps, right?

We checked with the caravan park in Quilpie if it was OK to arrive a day early and stay for the three nights, and the next question was “are you here for the football?”

You know that unpleasant and uncomfortable silence that happens when you are asked a question that seems completely out of context and borderline stupid? Wasn’t the 3rd of 3 State of Origin games LAST Wednesday night? And has the State of Origin EVER been played in Quilpie, or are they just planning to watch it here 3 days after it was played?

Have I missed something important?

Me: “Sorry, what football game?”

Lady at Caravan Park: “The footy game between Redcliffe and Ipswich.”

Me (thinking): ”Seriously? Redcliffe and Ipswich are playing football in Quilpie?”

Me (saying): “Er, no. We are not in Quilpie for the football.”

Apparently the NFL decided to bring some “real football” to Quilpie. No, I don’t understand it either.

In Thargomindah this week we have seen some hand-written signs in many of the store windows and public bulletin boards simply saying (in a child’s handwriting): “Bruiser is missing. Please find him and bring him to Nicholas’s house.”

I have a working assumption that Bruiser is a dog, because it would be an unusual name for a canary, or a cat, or a pet snake.

Now while I have absolutely no idea who Nicholas is, I am quite confident that you could walk up to any local and ask “who is Nicholas?”, and I’m sure that you would get a reply like “Nicholas? He’s Jimmy-Don’s and Mary-Lou’s oldest. He’s lost his dog, don’t you know?”

I also feel compelled to point out for the purpose of completeness that the sun rises and sets much later in the west than in Brisbane. In Quilpie today, sunrise is 7.09am (Brisbane is 6.36, Thargomindah was 7.14am as it is even further west), and sunset is 5.48pm (Brisbane is 5.11pm). I just needed to make that clear so you don’t think that we are lazy and sleeping in every day.

So we woke today at about 7.15am and did the normal stuff. Over breakfast we estimated that we should be out of the park by 9.30am, and at exactly 9.28am we were rolling out the front gate. Overachievers that we are!

The road out of Thargomindah is a single lane, narrow bridge over the Bulloo River.

To get to Quilpie you travel about 7km back towards Eulo and Cunnamulla, and then take the Quilpie turnoff …

… and then the road gets very narrow …

… and then it turns to dirt for about 20km.

The road from Thargomindah to Quilpie is roughly 200km, and it’s a great road for the majority of the trip, but some bits are pretty hard going. The dirt sections had us doing no more than 80km/h, and we were kicking up a dust cloud that Richard Branson could have seen from space.

Elsie is starting to look like she needs a good bath 🙁 Either that, or I could probably plant potatoes.

At about the middle of trip – around the 100km mark – you are starting to look out for a McDonalds drive-thru, or even a dodgy “Hepatitis Harry’s” truck stop, just to have a reason to break the journey and stretch your legs.

Sadly, there is no Hepatitis Harry’s, and certainly no McDonalds drive-thru … but you do come across the Toompine Pub (which is closed for renovations), and the Bowerbird’s Rest coffee shop, where you can buy a fabulous coffee and some passionfruit cake and gooey Caramel Anzac Slice, and it is absolutely worth the stop!

It doesn’t have quite the facilities of a McDonalds drive-thru, but there was plenty of parking and the coffee and cake was outstanding. MBW even tried (unsuccessfully) to prise the Caramel Anzac Slice recipe out of the lady running the place 🙂

I’m not sure what the population of Toompine is, but I suspect that I saw them all inside the coffee shop.

Which brings me to the second funny sign of the day … the enterprising spirit of the Toompine community in opening a coffee shop in the middle of nowhere is one thing, but a junior member of the Toompine community placed this sign out the front of the coffee shop offering an additional service while you enjoy your coffee and cake.

After coffee and cake, the trip was just another 100km of the same – all bitumen, no dirt, and the grand total of 10 other vehicles that we passed for the entire 200km. Plus some more emus, some cattle (both dead and alive), and more bug DNA on the windscreen than I care to think about.

We got into Quilpie around 1.30pm, unhooked, unpacked, did a couple of loads of washing, did a quick reconnaissance of the town and discovered – not unsurprisingly – that everything is closed on a Saturday afternoon.

Had a soak in the spa bath …

… and planned out the next couple of days in Quilpie.

The football game – remember the football game? – was in full swing by mid-afternoon and I’m pleased to report that Redcliffe beat Ipswich 26-22.

We swung by the campfire to meet some of our fellow travellers on the way out for dinner.

Dinner tonight was at the Imperial Hotel Quilpie and was a disappointing rump steak (mine) and a well-chosen Chicken Schnitty (MBW), and then back to the caravan park for coffee.

And another spectacular western Queensland sunset …

On our way back to the van, we thought that we would get a last 10 minutes of the camp fire to warm up, and some of the Redcliffe Dolphin’s players and hangers-on were also sitting around the campfire so we got to chatting. It appears that they are staying here at the caravan park in the “Ensuite Cabin” section.

You know that uncomfortable feeling when you are talking to someone and they seem vaguely familiar? One of the football crowd just gave me that feeling. MBW said that he played in the State of Origin, but I couldn’t place him and I didn’t want to be rude …

Apparently we were sitting around the fire with Justin Hodges. Who would’ve known?

JT (that’s Jonathon Thurston) is going to be in Quilpie on Monday night, hosting a free community meal at the Bulloo Park Racecourse and everyone is welcome … so we might pop down for a feed and a night out.

Don’t let MBW ever tell you that I never take her anywhere!

Tomorrow we are doing a trip out to Eromanga (about 100km) to have a look at the dinosaur museum, and if I remember to get fuel before we leave Quilpie, we will be making a trip back again in the afternoon … but you will hear about that tomorrow.

Ciao

The weatherman got it right today. None of this “43% chance of rain”; today was forecast to be windy and dusty and guess what? It was windy and dusty.

Possibly even very windy and very dusty.

So windy in fact that we rolled the awning in before heading out for the day just in case it tore off the van and disappeared.

It was one of those funny days where the wind was so cold that unless you put on several layers you froze, but as soon as you got out of the wind you couldn’t get those layers off fast enough!

Ok, so just to give you fair warning, there will be some audience participation required for today’s post. Specifically, a quiz. A bit like Where’s Wally, but … different.

I’ve completely lost track of days, but according to my watch today is Friday. If I’d been at work today I would have been … nope, it doesn’t matter.

Today was a pretty relaxed day in Thargomindah. Remember yesterday that I said we are here for 3 days? Well, that has now changed. One of the great things about being on holiday is that plans can change, things can be fluid, we can break some rules.

It’s a safe assumption that every day starts with ablutions, breakfast and coffee … so I’ll stop telling you that every day.

We started the day with a walking tour. Someone had told us that for $10 you can get a card that gives you entry to a number of the historical things to see in Thargomindah, so we purchased our $10 cards yesterday for $12.50 (don’t know, so don’t ask) and did the walk today.

Maybe not the smartest move to be out walking down wide open streets on a very windy and dusty day, but that was the choice that we made.

We are staying at the Explorer’s Caravan Park, which is a pretty little council-run park at the end of town.

Our first stop for the day was the Old Jail, which is almost next door to the caravan park.

Remember that I spoke earlier about breaking the rules … ? This was right across the road from the Police Station!

After the old jail, we had a nice wander down the Main Street of Thargomindah. As you would expect, everything is close in a small town like this.

One of the things that I love about these small towns is that they have very wide main streets and – on some streets – rear-in angle parking. I expect that the width of the main street is a throwback from the days of bullock teams, as the streets are wide enough to be able to turn a whole bullock team around in the one move.

Some of you may recall that I worked for Telstra in a previous life, and when I started my apprenticeship it was still Telecom Australia. This was renamed to Telstra in 1993-1995 … yet things do not change quickly in Thargomindah …

Also along the main street of Thargomindah are a number of buildings showing art work paintings.

We walked up a couple of streets and across a couple of streets and we had a look at the 2nd historical attraction – the old hospital.

We wandered back to the Main Street and went in search of coffee, finally tracking down a place called “Coffee on Dowling” … which is closed until further notice. Just a word of warning – if you are in Thargomindah, your coffee options are limited. Very Limited 🙁

We headed back to the van via the IGA after picking up some essentials, and made our own coffee.

After lunch we took Elsie out for a spin to the old powerhouse, the 3rd and final local historical attraction.

Here is a fun fact: outside the old powerhouse are the British flag, the French flag, and the Australian flag. Why?

Because Thargomindah was the third place in the world to have electric power supplied to homes, after London and Paris. The electric power here was generated by hot water coming out of an artesian bore under high pressure, which was used to turn a turbine, which generates electricity.

This blog may be many things, but we try to make it informative.

We also swung past the old cemetery to have a look (if you are interested in looking at old cemeteries), and it was … disappointing. Or maybe empty is a better word? But at least we can say we stopped and saw it.

We decided to take a spin out to Lake Bindegolly National Park – about 40km before Thargomindah – to have a look at the lake. It is one of the “must do” things when you are here.

We (foolishly) followed Google Maps directions and overshot the turnoff to the National Park by about 3km, so we turned back to find that the turnoff doesn’t actually exist. So instead of following good old reliable Google Maps, we decided to follow our instinct instead and kept heading out of town until we found the real turnoff to the National Park.

Now remember right back at the beginning that I said there would be a quiz? Here it is: Can you spot the lake in any of the photos above?

Nope, I didn’t think so. Maybe a glimpse of a sliver of water waaaaaaay off in the distance in one of them, but really not anything worthy of being called a “lake”.

It was a nice drive anyway, and on the way back we were rewarded with all manner of wildlife wandering aimlessly across the road into town.

We got some photos of the Bulloo River heading back to the caravan park for the night …

… and we were rewarded with another spectacular sunset.

Now I also mentioned at the start that our plans had changed. Originally we planned to stay 3 nights in Thargomindah (population 270), but other things that we would like to see require some significant driving to get to some very small places – Hungerford (population 23, and a distance of 147km away), or Noccundra (population 3, and a distance of 130km away).

Both of those require the best part of a day’s driving each, so we decided to save them for the next time we are in Thargomindah. We have decided to hitch up Ernie (that’s the new caravan’s name, BTW) and head instead up to Quilpie (population 595) for the next three nights.

We will be staying at the Channel Country Tourist Park and Spas. They have artesian spas at the park so we will be taking a dip or two.

And after that we will turn east and start the run for home. Sigh 🙁 But that is still a week away and I will worry about that later …

Ciao

I really need to start tonight’s post by going back a couple of days just for context.

Two nights ago, we were at Charlotte Plains Station, remember? Tuesday night – grumpy lady, dead tree, vague instructions, bathtubs with artesian water, campfire, no mobile reception, no Google, no TV reception …. so we missed the Masterchef grand finale.

Fast forward to Wednesday night and we were free camping in Eulo and once again we had phone reception, access to the intergoogle, and 10Play catch-up TV. So after the Bogans went inside out of the rain, we played catch-up to see who won Masterchef.

We heard the Bogans cheering every so often, so I assume that they were watching the State of Origin, but because we weren’t watching it, we couldn’t tell who they were cheering for. Probably NSW. They seemed like those kind of people.

You may also recall that the forecast for today (Thursday) is 43% chance of rain. We watched the end of Masterchef, then the end of State of Origin, then – exhausted – I tried to get to the land of nod as I listened to the rain falling steadily on the van.

For reasons that I won’t discuss here, I needed to use earplugs last night and ended up having a terrible sleep. Not the fault of the earplugs, but probably more from the rain and that it was much warmer than we had been experiencing.

And because NSW won the State of Origin.

I woke this morning wondering if the Bogans and their giant Kermit caravan was just a bad dream, by alas they were still there and all stomping around in the mud.

Clearly that gene pool needs a little more chlorine.

So this morning we did all of the usual stuff. Showered, had coffee and breakfast.

During breakfast, I thought that it would be nice to put on some music, so I found a Spotify playlist called “happy morning music to wake up to” (and yes, it was written just like that).

Now I know that the English teachers among you will be horrified at that poorly constructed sentence, and the unforgivable sin of finishing a sentence with a preposition. I too was horrified. But it was a nice playlist anyway, with music of the genre that we enjoy.

And then the Spotify Gods had another laugh at me, with one of the first songs in the playlist “I can see clearly now, the rain has gone”. 43% chance of rain today. Very funny.

We hadn’t unhooked the van from the car last night, so because everything was still hooked up and connected, we just headed back into Eulo.

The morning went something like this:

• 9.30am – leave campsite
• 9.31am – arrive Eulo Main Street to look around
• 9.33am – finish looking around and head off to the mud baths – this morning’s adventure

Today we went to the Eulo Artesian Mud Baths for some mud bath therapy. Once you have soaked in the hot muddy water for 30 minutes or so …

… then you get out and apply this other mud all over yourself, and then when that’s dry you get back into the hot bath for another 30 minutes.

Clearly I hadn’t reaped all of the benefits of the mud at that point.

But all in all, a very relaxing experience. I’m not quite sure why, but after soaking in the mineral water for 30 minutes or so, you feel very heavy, and sleepy, and … ahh 🙂

The mud bath people had this boat in their front garden. I’m not sure if it is a garden ornament, if it is for sale, or they just haven’t used it in a while …

… but that reminds me that I need to sell my boat when I get home.

Remember I said that the forecast for today is 43% chance of rain? Well as we were leaving the mud baths and heading off to Thargomindah, this is what 43% chance of rain looks like …

Even the weather gods were making fun of us, but I’m OK that it’s not raining.

Now the trip from Eulo to Thargomindah is uneventful. I mean seriously un-e-vent-ful.

Naturally you would hope for a McDonalds drive through on the way, or maybe a road house, or a petrol station, or …? Nothing between Eulo and Thargomindah. No towns, no McDonalds, no fuel. Nothing. Zip.

The only thing we saw was turnoffs to other – presumably more exciting – places, and funny road signs.

And road signs to Thargomindah, just to remind you that this is a one-way road to one place only.

There were also a number of hand-painted signs that warned “Unfenced road: Beware of black cattle on the road”. I wasn’t sure if that is another way of saying “help yourself to some free steak”, but I suspect not.

As you can see, the roads are pretty good. Flat, fast, not particularly wide, but oncoming traffic slows down and allows you to pass safely. We are still seeing quite a number of vans coming towards us, although that has slowed to a comparative trickle since leaving St George.

We found ourselves in that strange place again today where there is no mobile coverage, no internet, and Spotify keeps throwing “American Pie” and “Piano Man” at you on repeat, because it can’t stream any other songs.

Without access to the internet, we find that we need to engage each other in conversation, so we have started a competition where we are tracking how many of various things we have seen so far:

• Other Supreme vans: 8
• Echidnas: 2
• Dead kangaroos: too many to count
• Emus: about 8 or 9
• Black cattle on the road: 2
• Unicorns: 0

We stopped about 40km before Thargomindah in a truck rest area for a bite of lunch, and I took the opportunity to get the drone out and take some more pictures.

I think that we sat at that rest stop for around 30 minutes, and only one other vehicle went past in the entire time we were there.

We arrived into Thargomindah at around 2.00pm to a glorious 24 degrees, checked into the caravan park, then went for a quick spin down to the Visitor Information Centre and fill up with fuel.

I paid a new record high of $1.65/litre today for diesel, but then we are in Thargomindah – one of the most western townships in south-western Queensland. And unleaded is still cheaper here than at home. Go figure!

Just before dinner we were rewarded with another spectacular sunset.

We discovered on arriving in Thargomindah that there is the Channel Country Music Muster happening in the rodeo grounds here on 17th to 18th July … so we may (or may not) partake. We will see.

We are here for three nights now, so expect to hear some more about this beautiful part of the world. Thargomindah is one of those places that I have always wanted to come to, so I hope that you are enjoying it as much as we are.

Ciao