Overnight at Avon Downs

I've been really surprised at the number of overseas readers of this blog. Why people from overseas would be interested in the miscellaneous ramblings of a 68 year old grey nomad is a puzzle to me.

We left Mount Isa mid morning (we always try to leave at 9 but it rarely happens). There's always plenty of preparation before we hit the road.
Heading firstly to Camooweal we headed out through the scrubby countryside areas that slowly made way to open plains. The country looks fabulous with mile upon mile of grassland and still plenty of water in dams, creeks and waterholes. Plenty of cattle and, of course, quite a few triple roadtrains carrying general freight as well as cattle.

We stopped at Camooweal for lunch and to top up with diesel before the trip across the Barkly Tablelands. Bit of a surprise here, diesel was $1.90 a litre, dearest so far this trip. The next available fuel is not until Barkly Homestead some 260km away and I reckon its always good to keep the tanks full just in case.

Have a look at some of the pics for the open plains area.

About 70 km west of Camooweal we crossed the Stuart River, right near a nice free camp so we stopped there for the night. Explored the river and took a few pics of the plentiful water birds, quite a nice spot. Got a little cool after sunset, glad we had collected some wood for a fire.

After a very restful overnight stop it was off  across the Northern Territory border and on to Barkly Homestead where our original intention was to stay but seeing I was in the groove, we kept driving though to Tennant Creek.
Hope you enjoy the pics.

Back in the Isa

It's nice to be back in a city after travelling through some fairly small towns, I've been hanging out for a Super Cheap Auto for some small projects - now done.

Robyne had obviously missed K Mart and Millers and disappeared into each of them as soon as we arrived in the shopping centre.

Mount Isa is an interesting place with  number of contrasts. It's quite hot and dusty and still has quite a buzz, with the streets full of mining vehicles complete with high set blinkers and stop lights and more often than not a high flag to avoid being run over out on the mine site.

Not far out of town is  a very pleasant lake where we also spent some time.

Next stop, the road to the Territory     

Cloncurry

The morning we left Winton the reason for the cattle activity became apparent.
Around 07.30 a very large cattle train arrived to collect all of the cattle that had been trucked in and mustered into the local yards in the last couple of days.
I did hear of a woman in the caravan park who was complaining of  "the dreadful noise of the cattle and the stockmen last night" - clearly she needs to take her next holiday somewhere other than in the country... what a sook.

Approaching Cloncurry from Winton is interesting.  The country starts to close in from  the wide open plains country to more heavily wooded country with quite a lot of interesting rock formations .

Cloncurry was not really as I remembered. We called in here on the way to the gulf 11 years ago and at that time we stopped for a cup of coffee in quite a nice little place in the main shopping area. Not this time.

I don't know what has happened with the barista training in  western Queensland, it's absolutely impossibe (so far) to get a drinkable cup of coffee.The prices are like Sydney, the espresso machines carry  the same brand names and are still impressive looking and nice and shiny, but the so-called coffee tastes like warm milk!! I've switched to tea - hard to muck that up.

By the way, I need some help.
Any blog I have ever read has archives of (naturally) previous posts including the pictures relevant to those posts.  This blog won't allow me to do that, although it's possibly because I haven't read the instructions properly, so if you know what I'm doing incorrectly you could email me on tj991@bigpond.com

Tonight we arrived in Mount Isa so I'll have some more to add tomorrow.

Winton. Hot, dusty and fairly isolated, but lots of cattle

We arrived safely in Winton from Longreach, but after a bit of a scare.
About 40 km out of Longreach we were following a triple road train at about 85 / 90 kph.
I like to travel at about 2,500 revs in 5th which gives a true road speed of just a tick over 90 kph so I was in no hurry to overtake. The road was a little twisty and we noticed that the third trailer had a tendency to sway.
All of a sudden the whole rig drifted on to the shoulder and the third trailer slewed sideways in a huge cloud of dust and stones and then the trailer began to tip to the extent that the right hand wheels were about 4 0r 5 FEET off the ground.
I said to Rob "he's gone" and braked so we didn't become part of the prang but in the thick dust it was hard to know where the trailer was. As the dust cleared we saw that somehow the driver had kept the shiny side up. I called him on the CB radio but got no reply.... he was probably too embarrassed !!
We followed him (not that closely) for another 30 or 40 Km and then stopped at a rest area for a cuppa.

Winton is quite hot and fairly dusty and dry. There is little grass to speak of in the caravan park but the people are friendly and helpful, cheerful and friendly and the amenities are clean and tidy so that's the main thing. We are well set up with flooring to cover the dust and stones and a screen to keep out the afternoon sun.

A I an writing this it's 10:20 pm on Monday and all I can hear is the the mooing of cattle and the crack of stockwhips as the cattle are unloaded from many road trains that have come in off the plains late this afternoon. The road trains full of cattle are quite a sight. This is the second night there have been hundreds of cattle trucked in, there's either a sale day coming up or they are to be loaded on to trains for a trip further south.

We took a drive out into the never-never following some some old bush tracks out across the plains and into some of the local swimming holes and fishing spots. It was very hot and dusty - I'd hate to be here in summer!
you would need to be sure to carry plenty of drinking water and have a reliable vehicle.

We keep meeting the same people as we all head north west, but some will soon be turning north to head to Karumba. The majority are like us, heading to Mount Isa then across to Tennant Creek then up to Darwin

Well, Here We Are in Ilfracombe

For the uninitiated, Ilfracombe is a small village just outside Longreach. We prefer to stay in smaller places where possible and travel in to the cities. In this case it's only 25 Km to Longreach.

The trip through to here was interesting, but I suppose I should back track to our last post in Charleville.
Charleville was most uneventful, in fact I don't remember much about it even though it was only a few days ago (no comments about short term memory loss thanks).

From Charleville we drove  through to Blackall, quite an interesting place. Now you wouldn't think a wool scour was all that fascinating, but a lot of time, money and effort has been spent bringing the wool scour back from a derelict state to its current condition as a tourist attraction.
The Blackall area was a very important wool growing area and in the days when wool was worth a pound a pound, wool that had been cleaned was worth more than greasy wool (for a start it was lighter to transport and more easily handled).

Jackie Howe, a local Blackall blade shearer shore 321 sheep in 8 hours and (I think) forty minutes, a remarkable achievement. His statue now stands in the main street.

There were a number of wool scours in Queensland, but Blackall is the only one remaining in working order. If you get up this way it's worth a look.

Blackall, like Charleville and a number of other towns in this area use artesian water. It takes a little getting used to, it has a bit of a sulphur smell when first poured, but it is reasonable to drink. It makes the shower a little smelly but the advantage is that there is no shortage of hot water (it comes out of the ground at about 53 degrees) and you can have a long shower and the shower heads are not of the water saving type (I absolutely detest showers where you have to run around under them to get wet!!).

From Blackall we took a back road through the Outer Barcoo area. You may remember Banjo Patterson's poem "The Bush Christening" that started :
On the outer Barcoo, where churches are few
And men of religion are scanty
On a track seldom crossed but by folks that are lost
One Michael Magee had a shanty.

Michael Magee was based on a real person.   

The outer Barcoo area is fairly isolated but the people of the small main town in the area - Isisford - have done a lot to preserve the history in their town with small museums being made of some of the now closed down shops. There are still two pubs in the town. Again, worth a visit but beware, the road from Isisford to Ilfracombe is of the one lane type and a little rough so if you're not used to that.....
Here are some pictures from the last few days.

Finally on the Road

Well, it was a struggle, but we finally hit the road on Tuesday 10th May around midday.
Having set 10 am as the off we kept finding additional things to do and take it's amazing how much organisation it takes.
First overnight stop Mudgee, after the traditional beverage at Marrangaroo (it's a long story!!).
We awoke to a minus 8 morning at Mudgee.
Next overnight stop Nyngan on the lovely Bogan river then on to Bourke.

Bourke has improved since my last visit about 10 years ago, but our indigenous brothers and sisters must still play up from time to time (well some of them) because all the shops and commercial buildings have roll down metal screens or shutters to protect the shopfronts, makes the whole place a little sad looking really. We stayed in Bourke for three nights and did a lot of exploring along the Darling River and some bird watching along the Weilmoringle Road - finally tracked down some Major Mitchell cockatoos and got up close to some red tail black cockatoos, well worth the effort.
The Bourke show was on Saturday 14/5 not bad, a little smaller than I expected but good to see the community support keeps it going.

On to Cunnamulla just overnight, and now we are in Charleville for another quick look and then just overnight

LESS THAN A WEEK TO GO!

It's 22.30 on Tuesday 3rd May 2011 and in 6 days we'll be off again, heading west from Winmalee and heading to Sydney... via Bourke, Mt Isa, Tennant Creek, Darwin, Broome, Perth and Adelaide, definitely the long way to Sydney!

Preparations for the trip have been affected by about three weeks of rain, but we're almost there.
We are a little better prepared this time with the generator fitted to the rear in its own very flash genny box. I can run the genny in the box just by opening three doors, it's going to be really easy this time.

I've also had the washing machine built in to the bathroom, makes it really simple to do a small wash just about every day. Paul Tall at Londonderry (NSW) did the work and he did a really good job.

The Patrol goes in  for a 120,000 service tomorrow (not bad for a 2003 model !!!) and once that's done it's a matter of packing the van, packing the Patrol and finishing the gardening. Can't wait.