Queensland's Central Highland

We left the plains behind and headed east - through poor Longreach which is still dry - onto have lunch at Barcaldine. (We do however believe Longreach has since had a heap of rain which is great for them.) Here we also left much of the traffic as those coming from the south usually head west.  

We set up at this quaint place called Jericho on the banks of the River Jordan. Here is a sculpture of Joshua from the Bible story, blowing his trumpet - to made the walls of Jericho fall! 

         

And here are the walls falling down:

    

They also operate the smallest drive in theatre, showing movies once a month. We missed out unfortunately! 

     

We had a lovely night at the expensive Showgrounds ($10 per night!) sitting around our campfire. The landscape changed even again as we travelled to the central highlands and fossicking country. We stayed at Sappphire and it's a lovely park set in bushland with the best amenities we've seen for a while. 

           

It's hard to describe this area as its so different - we can't believe how higgledly piggedly and untidy the towns are - it seems people stake a site to mine and put up any sort of shed or structure or even a caravan. There doesn't seem to be many gardens or orderly streets - it gives the impression that it's not a very profitable venture this gem fossicking! The gems however are just beautiful and the array of colours amazing. Pity we didn't have a few spare hundreds of $$ to buy a momento!! 

      This is a typical mining property - probably better than most!

Our time here has unfortunately been spoilt by the weather as it's been cold, overcast and showery all day. It hasn't been ideal for fossicking either so our only bit of touring was to drive around the towns of Sapphire and Ruby Vale, enjoy a coffee and buy a homemade pie for lunch. Other than that we are sitting in our annexes reading and catching up on diaries etc. Dennis did catch up with some locals - we think he's become a twitcher too!! 

         

It's been nice to be able to catch up with Roger and Jenny Moore from Junee. They are travelling north with a group and we joined them for a BBQ in the pleasant warm undercover BBQ area. 

Tomorrow we have to stop in Emerald to grab a few supplies then we're heading to the Carnarvon Gorge. It's evidently beautiful there so hope this weather improves so we can enjoy the walks. 

We trust everyone enjoyed a happy long weekend and we send our love till the next blog xxxxx