Western Queensland

First off, apologies for the delay in writing this up, but of late we have had minimal phone reception and no internet for 5 days - not good, but that's the outback for you.

Now this is the real outback ..... after Kynuna, we continued down the Landsborough Highway, with our nights stop at Winton.  The Pub here has a caravan park attached to it, and being basically right in town, we could walk to have a look around the place. First off was the Pub - oh boy, this is beginning to sound like a 'pub crawl' doesn't it, but trust me it's not. These outback pubs really do have lots of history to them and are amazing to check out the insides as well.

And no, this is not my bear sitting up at the bar!

From here we walked down the main street taking in a great way to encourage people to use the rubbish bins. There is evidence of fossils of dinosaurs having roamed this region millions of years ago - hence the bins.

We continued down to the new Waltzing Matilda Centre (the previous one was destroyed by fire some years ago) and we were quite impressed with what had been created out of the ashes.

After Winton, it was further down the line, we pulled into Longreach, the home of QANTAS, and it was here we also crossed back over the Tropic of Capricorn.

As we have previously visited the famous Stockman's Hall of Fame, we decided not to include that on this trip.

Next came Barcaldine, a town that grew from the formation of the union movements in Australia, and is the birthplace of the Australian Labour Party. In the centre of town was the 'Tree of Knowledge' however unfortunately it died (or something) some time ago, and a new sculpture was created around the original trunk - quite impressive.

The centre pieces are hanging and as the wind blows through it, they chime - sounds really lovely.

Oh, and I couldn't help myself ...... I purchased some more fabric - just 3 fat qtrs. this time.

Time to keep moving, and onto our nights stop at Blackall. A bit of a hazardous journey though, with cattle being grazed in 'the long paddock' this meaning the cattle are grazed beside the road to get the 'best pickings' so to speak.

For now though, it's goodnight from Blackall.