Barkley Homestead to Queensland

        

    

      

This was the sight as we left Borroloola - hundreds of these gorgeous red tailed black cockatoos - they put Darryl in to a clicking frenzy!!  We've never seen a flock this large so it was rather a special moment for us. 

At Cape Crawford we saw the Jones's helicopter - they were the family on that TV show - we never actually watched it but would be interested to see it now.

        

The road from Cape Crawford was the most interesting strip of skinny, undulating and patchy bitumen we've experienced - but hey it wasn't corrugated or full of potholes! The vegetation changed from a tropical rocky range, to lovely big gums, to scrub to about 150 km of barren plains like the Hay plains! This is the Barkley Tablelands - great cattle station country. 

We also came across several Wedge Tailed eagles, beautiful brolgas and pelicans (not captured on film!) 

        

 and these very contented Brahman cattle:

   

At Barkley Homestead, Dennis was very happy as there were a group of Ford model A cars - they'd been on a rally at Katherine and Darwin. 

       

  We can tell we're out of the tropics as upon arrival at 4pm at Barkley, the temperature was only 26 and we sat closer to the camp fire and slept under our quilts! However, the forecast is still around 30 so we're not back in cold territory yet. 

The road from Barkley Homestead to Mount Ísa wasn't as interesting but road conditions were excellent. It's incredible how many vans are on the roads - we reckon they'd account for at least 90% of all traffic. We wonder who's home working!! We were however interested to learn that this area is part of the Lake Eyre catchment. 

We've now left Northern Territory and are in sunny Queensland: we've now been in all states except ACT and Tassie this trip.

    

     

We've decided to not stay in Mount Isa itself but on a farm stay 35 kms out on the Leichhardt River. That's more our style!  So our next blog will be about Mt Isa and the station. Trust all are well - it's 9 weeks today that we left home so no wonder it seems a long time! 

Love from the happy travellers 😀😀😀😀