Beyond the Black Stump

Yesterday we were able to walk to the Stockmans Hall Of Fame from our caravan park and we enjoyed  the many displays all set out in a lovely building. This is the stockman statue outside the Hall with the building in the background.

            

And this is an amazing sculpture of a horse - some people are so clever!

        

In the afternoon Darryl and Dennis visited the Qantas museum and enjoyed that - while Tops and I enjoyed a quiet afternoon catching up on jobs and relaxing in the spa.

        

This morning we packed up again and left Longreach and this time left the bitumen - and the traffic  - and drove through some great station country. Tops described it as a no plate road as no plates broke this time! There is a bit of dust in her cupboards though! We drew the short straw and followed Dennis's clouds of dust but the Ultimate is dust free! We had morning tea at a place called Muttaburra - a great country town with most inhabitants very curious about us!

       

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This is as tough as the sheep have to be out here! Iron tough! It is made from all bits and pieces - amazing! Look at the sheeps face -complimented by an ear tag from the artists family farm.

        

We saw a camel in the wild too -this time not in a truck!

           

After our trek through the very dry station areas, we came to this oasis on the Tower Hill Creek which is very picturesque and a haven for birds so Darryl's pretty excited! The creek is a series of waterholes at the moment but is so pretty and we'd love to see all this area when the rivers run! This creek runs into the Thompson River then into the Cooper Creek and on into Lake Eyre - it's some water system! 

        

 We are set up at this place called Kooroorinya Falls - quite different but very friendly caretakers and next to the creek it's lovely. After being in a caravan park with hundreds of people, tonight it's just us - does it get any better than this?? 

        

We now will head for Charters Towers and then Townsville so will be leaving the outback behind for a while! We really could stay in this spot for longer but Cape York beckons! We've travelled over 2,000km since leaving home so haven't done too badly.

Till the next blog, (I have to be able to publish this one yet once we hit civilisation) love from us travellers xxxxxxxxx

       

Longreach.

We are now officially beyond the black stump!! This stump is situated in Blackall (and a bit disappointing as it's not black -well this petrified tree stump isn't!) 

  

        

       

We are now here in sunny Longreach which is on the Tropic of Capricorn and we have all put our shorts on as it's quite warm! I even had a swim and spa in the park pool. Lovely!! They haven't had rain here for 3 years they tell us - and we can believe it! We are set up by the billabong which is so picturesque! 

  

       

We had thought to camp at the free camp out by the weir (it's the Thompson River here) but we had been warned it's rather full - which it certainly was!!  We recon there would have been a hundred or so caravans out there. So we are in a big park which initially looked ordinary - this is the view from the road! 

              

But it's been pretty good as we've set up away from the road and because we are on unpowered sites have plenty of room and aren't squashed in alongside anyone else. Tops and I have been busy in the laundry this morning and winter clothes will be packed away from now on.  We also met 2 couples who have just come back from Cape York and had a good chat to them last night and gleaned tips about the trip ahead of us! 

On our travels, we are constantly amazed at the road kill on the roads and you'd think there wouldn't be any live kangaroos around - but there are! And when we get to a town, we see all the caravans and campers, and wonder who is at home working!! But mind you the average age of travellers is a long way off 30!! We saw our first camels - albeit in a truck!!

          

            

We were also excited to see some bustards roaming along the roadside - our books say they are quite rare these days.

          

Today we are tidying up our campers, then will set off to visit the Stockman Hall of Fame and the Qantas museum. It looks very strange to see a huge jumbo jet just off the main road as you enter the town and people tell us it's a great museum to visit. Qantas began here. 

Tomorrow we leave here and head north and then we'll head towards the coast at Townsville. Our next trip is off bitumen and camp will be in a bush camp in a National Park - more our style of camping.

We hope everyone is well and hope we get reception to write next blog within next couple of days.

Love from Marg & Darryl,Dennis & Tops xxxxx

Cunnamulla

Well after 2 days of travelling here we are in Queensland set up beside the lovely Warrego River at Cunnamulla. It's  sunny and conditions are perfect. We hear that it's a great fishing spot although we haven't got the rods out yet.This is actually a sort of caravan park with an amenity block you wouldn't believe as it's just lovely - spacious and brand new - but here in our unpowered section we could be miles from everyone. 

             

 

The travelling has been easy with good roads and not much traffic. We are surprised the country is so good - it's not at all desert like we'd  imagined. The road kills on the roads are so plentiful and you certainly wouldn't want to drive at night.  The number of feral goats along the roadside from Hillston to Cobar were amazing - as we've come further north there has been less. We do wish we had taken a photo of the feral goat depot we passed!! 

            

Our first night at the Cobar caravan park was good except Cobar people don't seem to sleep as we heard vehicles all night - and their dogs bark all night too. We ran into Andrew Haig who used to live in Murrabit - he was on his motor cycle and heading to Cape York too - but he was travelling a little lighter than us!  He came across and joined us at our campfire. 

We had lunch at Bourke and what an interesting place! There were lots of very nice picnic areas and we enjoyed our picnic lunch by the Darling River. Darryl was so excited to see a car wash place he had to do a U turn and give the car and camper a squirt to get rid of that Moulamein Road mud! 

        

This is the wharf at Bourke - can you believe paddle steamers used to come all this way up from Wentworth and South Australia?  

        

Yesterday we travelled further than we expected and today to even it up we travelled not as far as we'd originally thought. ( we had thought we'd get to Charleville tonight but that's another 200km away!) But  we have to remind ourselves it's not a race and we are very happy with this camp spot. 

It was good to pass into Queensland and we had some laughs trying to set up the cameras to automatically take a photo - but we succeeded to get us 4 by the sign.

          

It's got warmer as we've headed north and think tomorrow we'll shed our thick winter clothes and don T shirts and thongs! The mornings are chilly but not frosty and the sunshine warms things up quickly. 

We have apostle birds squeaking all around us which us a reminder of camping at Silverton - hope they aren't too pesky. 

Our touring partners are lovely company - except Darryl is so shitty with Dennis as his fuel consumption is much better than ours - how he wished he'd borrowed Josh's Ranger!! Dennis will end up having much more beer money by the end of the trip!! 

So our travels have started really well and we have so much to look forward to. Hope everyone in the cold south are well and we do think of you all in your winter clothes! 

Lots of love to everyone from us and Greenwoods! 

Xxxxxxxx