Catching Up

 My goodness where has the time gone. I looked at this the other day and realised that I am way, way behind - have not even written anything about our time up at the dam this year.

Well, to be truthful, not much happened! It was a very quite time, very few caravans in the park, and even less boaties going out fishing. Here is a photo of the 'locals' on the dam.

The dam level was one of the lowest we have seen at 6.5%. Not all that great for fishing and I think hubby and B-I-L only caught about 6 between them over a four week period. Not good at all. For me, a lovely quiet time with my feet up and reading - just bliss! However ........ because I did not have any support under my knees, and that has created a few problems, hobbling around like an old woman. Off to the Specialist next week.

Other than the ducks, one day there were about half a dozen hover craft buzzing around the dam creating problems with there wash etc. but hey, that's life, got to share these places. 

We met up with hubby's sister and brother-in-law for a few meals out over the period we were up there, however, this year was very disappointing, and if the dam levels get lower over the next year, we may consider giving next year a miss - will just have to see.

Other than that, once we were home, it was a case of emptying out our caravan ready for it to go in for repairs - hopefully (?) we will have it back by Christmas, although to be honest, I have my doubts.

So, I guess for the moment that brings you up to date.

'Til next time, take care,

June

A Country Wedding

We have begun our annual fishing trip up to Bjelke Petersen Dam, some 3 hours from home, however after setting up with our caravan etc. we will be making our way to join other family for dinner at the Wondai RSL. It is great meeting up with them and we got the details for the wedding the following day.

 Time to head 'up country' and attend the wedding of Pete's nephew out on the bride's family property. It is some 40 min drive from our camp site, so a light lunch was had and we set off with Peter's brother and sister-in-law - made sense to take just one car. 

The 'homestead' and surrounding property looked lovely, and to make the day really good was the beautiful fine weather.

Time for the ceremony itself and everyone looked beautiful.

After this, there was a wonderful spread for afternoon tea.

It was then off to another property for a 'camp oven' wedding breakfast. Under a large outdoor area which was set up for the reception, we began with nibblies before we sat down to beautifully decorated tables.

The meal, having been cooked in massive cast iron camp ovens was of so tender and delicious.

We finished this wonderful meal off with the wedding cake made of the lightest sponge you have even had. It was a lovely idea to include the names of both sets of parents on it as well.

It was one of the loveliest weddings I have been to, so relaxed and no hassles with who should/should not sit near who that you usually get at weddings.

The following day Peter's sister and brother, along with their respective partners joined us for a barbeque lunch at the camp kitchen at the caravan park - it is not all that often that we all get together.

Here is Peter with his two siblings - L to R Peter, Wendy & Jonathon (Wendy and Jonathon are twins.)

From L to R: Peter & June (me), Colin & Wendy, and Jonathon & Bernie.

Time now to put our good clothes away and begin our time here out fishing. All will be told in the next posting.

'Til then,

June

Time At Home

 Goodness, it seems forever since we got back from our trip to Western Australia, and I have finally come up for air, and decided I needed to get going with some sewing and other matters around the place.

It is springtime and I I am feeling fresh and ready to get things going.

To begin with, I need some new summer nighties this year, so I went looking in the shops and no such luck - just nothing that has taken my fancy. I was beginning to wonder what I was going to do, when my friend Karen (from Karen's Korner) suggested I make them. It is quite some years since I have made any clothes for myself, and my shape has changed considerably, to say the least. However I did go get my self a couple of patterns and I am quite pleased with my effort for my first nightie.

A very simple pattern, pin tucks down the front, sew up the side seams, across the shoulders, add bindings to armholes and neckline (even cut my own bias strips too) and turn up the hem. Easy and all ready for summer. Have a different pattern for a second nightie, will do that one down the track.

It is now time to put everything back in our van and get ready for our fishing trip up to Bjelke Petersen Dam this year. Added to our packing this year will be some extra outfits for us to wear to Peter's nephews wedding to be held at a property up near where we set up camp. Never been to a country wedding before, so am quite looking forward to it.  For now though, I think heading for the dam will be as good a place as any to be out of the way of lockdowns etc. so .....

'Til next time,

June

Southern Queensland and the Run Home

 Not long now, 'til our trip is over, however there is still a little way to go.

After leaving Tambo we headed south through Augathella and onto Morven where we had morning tea of beautiful scones, jam & cream with our coffee, in the newsagent, come cafe, come gift shop!! Both Augathella and Morven are both little 'whistle stop' towns, and it is a case if you blink you will miss it.

From there it was onto Roma, and oh my goodness, what a state this part of the Landsborough Highway is in - if you had had a smoothie for breakfast, it would well and truely be a curdled milkshake by the time we got Augathella. To be honest it was not that much better once we had turned onto the Warrego Highway at Morven and heading for Roma. This is where we did a final bit of shopping before having an easy afternoon. We continually heard the rattle of the cattle trucks/road trains coming through the town on their way to the sale yards for the cattle sales the following morning. It is believed that these are the biggest sale yards in the Southern Hemisphere. After all the trucks and road trains we have heard of late, the noise didn't bother us at all.

Our pace seemed to slow down a tad, and we had a reasonably good trip into Oakey via Miles and Dalby. Decided that as the distances weren't overly long, we would stop at Dalby (when we refuelled the car) to have a bite of lunch ourselves at the big new shiny Service Centre that had only been open 7 weeks. One could say that all we wanted to do was get home, however, the milage is too long to do in one hit, so it is off to Oakey where we stayed the night is a lovely little park with lots of grass - yes!! Something to sink our toes into after all the red dust etc that we have encountered along the way. Pete says the showers were about the best he had had anywhere on the trip.

Sadly my photos from Oakey are no where to be found!

Our last day ..... heading towards Toowoomba first, then down the reasonably new 2nd Toowoomba Range crossing which is such a breeze of a run now. We stopped off at Gatton for our last morning tea on the road for this trip, and as the journey for today was under 250 kms it gave us time to head home at a reasonable pace, and yep ..... start unpacking the car and van.

It has been a long and tiring trip, but a most enjoyable one, and we saw places, things and events that we never had envisaged we would ever see, so yes, it makes it all worthwhile. Here is a map with our trip on it, but sadly no lines across the bottom of the map (the way we were supposed to come home). We covered in excess of 18,500 kms all up from start to finish.

Trust you have enjoyed joining us on our adventure - now it is time to do some chores around home, washing, lawn mowing etc.

Hope you will join us on another adventure 'on the road' sometime in the future.

'Til then,

June

Through Western Queensland

I must show you this photo before we leave Barkly Homestead - bear in mind you are in the middle of the Barkly Plains which is kind of desert like conditions, and, not your average sight in the morning, when we woke to find this parked at the rear of the caravan/camping area, and yes, the couple slept 'aboard' for the night!

Yay!! We are finally back in our home state, and have to say, we are relieved to be here. It was interesting to note when we came through the border entry facility just how different it was to when we headed west into the Northern Territory some 8 (?) weeks ago. Then we just drove through, no checks of border passes etc, but a board that said to keep your pass handy if required.

Now, there is a 'pop up' border check point for those heading from Queensland into the Territory, and a long line of caravans as well as trucks etc.

Our first stop is for fuel at the roadhouse at Camooweal, where we spotted a sign welcoming us to Queensland and reminding us to put our watches forward by half an hour, although for the life of me, I do not understand what the 5 years part is supposed to mean.

After taking on fuel and a cuppa, it was then onto Mt Isa. It was here that we encounted again the mines right at the end of the main street of Mount Isa. 

After Mount Isa, and it's lovely sunrise,

it was onto Cloncurry, where we understand the Royal Flying Doctor Service was begun.

From here, we turned south and pulled into McKinley, where quite a bit of the film 'Crocodile Dundee' was filmed, and this is the famous pub as seen in the movie.

Sadly with Covid and the lack of travellers/patrons, the pub has been forced to cut it's hours each day. The traffic along this highway as you can imagine is not all that much, so me being me, stood in the middle of the road, out the front of the pub, and took the following photo!!

Just a bit further to go for our nights stop at the Blue Heeler Pub at Kynuna. We have stayed here before and yet again, decided to have a yummy pub meal. Can't get much better than that.

I also have to mention a quirky thing about this place - they have the Kynuna Surf Club, AND they have their own surf boat - no kidding!

Fom here we continued south along some very unimpressive scenery and not so good roads, with plenty of tumble weed caught in the fences. If you had had a smoothie for breakfast, by now it would be a milkshake that was not sitting so well in the stomach.

next whistle stop was Winton, where a lovely new Info/Waltzing Matilda Centre was built after the previous one was burnt down some years previous. The Waltzing Matilda Centre celebrates the writing of one of Australia's favourite songs 'Waltzing Matilda' written by Banjo Patterson in the last 19th century. It is believed he had the inspiration for it at the Combo Waterhole half way between Kynuna and Winton.

Another qwerky feature in Winton is their sidewalk rubbish bins - they are encased in dinosaur feet.

From Winton it was on to Longreach for our next nights stay. It is a contentious issue as whether it was Winton or Longreach where our national carrier QANTAS was born, however Winton claims it as the 'birthplace where the idea of the airline was decided on, whereas Longreach  (I believe) is where the first planes took to the air. Longreach has a museum here that houses quite a number of planes from through the years. An interesting fact regarding the jumbo that is parked here, is that it was flown in, had just one go at landing and basically no fuel left in it's tanks. In other words it was there to stay and there was no way it was taking off again. Quite an incredible sight, considering it is right beside the highway.

It was in Longreach that, yet again, and for the last time this trip, we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn. Yep, that makes 4 times we have crossed it this trip.

After Longreach, we continued on to Barcaldine, which is apparently the birthplace of the Labour Party, and they also had the 'Tree of Knowledge' however some years ago, it 'mysteriously' was poisoned, and they now have preserved part of the trunk and created a beautiful wooden sculpture that chimes with the wind. 

It was then onto Blackall, which again is another spot of contention regarding the place of the 'black stump', however there are a couple of other places that also claim to have the 'black stump' their backyards. The next place we stopped for the night was Tambo - I love this little town, it is the birthplace of Tambo Teddies, which was the inspiration of a couple of farmer's wives who began making teddies from the fleece of sheep many years ago when the bottom dropped out of the wool market, and they came up with this idea to supplement their incomes.

We spent a night here in Tambo, and the photo of the board here at the entrance to Tambo says it all.

Then at the lovely little caravan park, and we created Tambo's own 'stump' for our happy hour.

So from here, we bid you goodnight with yet again another lovely sunset ....

'Til next time,

June

Back Across the Territory

 When we first began planning this trip, we put in pace a couple of alternative ways to get home, should the need arise as we were going around. Never in our dreams did we consider having to come back up through the north of WA and crossing back over into the Northern Territory. Ah well, stuff happens and here we are back into the Territory.

There was quite a  line up of caravans etc going into WA as we passed through into the NT.

Anyway, we were able to continue  and our first stop was at Timber Creek, where we celebrated our first hurdle back towards home, with morning tea and of course muffins etc at the bakery.

It was then through to our first nights stop was back at Victoria River Roadhouse. Here, we refuelled the vehicles and had a comfortable evening before it was time to begin our journey back towards Queensland.

These two photos above show the beautiful colours in the ancient mountain ranges as we left the Roadhouse just on sunrise (around 7am) and began our journey towards Katherine and our nights stop of Mataranka. It was whilst here at Mataranka that we filled in our Queensland entry border pass form, and surprisingly it was quite a simple one to complete -yay! All good, and we can head for our home state.

Plenty of those long flat straight roads that we encounted on the trip over to Western Australia, but we just got them in reverse this time, and it is quite interesting to see sections you have travelled over from a different perspective.

For our next nights stop, we decided to chose a different place (for a change)  and stopped off at Renner Springs. We have called into here for fuel and a bite to each on other occasions, but not to stop the night. This is actually 'Renner Springs' and what a lovely peaceful area it turned out to be.

From here we continued south down the Sturt Highway until we came to the 'Three Ways' which is where we turn east onto the Barkly Highway to head towards Queensland.

As you can see, the road heads north (the way we had come) to Darwin, the way south is towards Adelaide and the way east is heading into Queensland. MOre long straight roads as we head across the Barkly Plains.

However, we do have a nights stop at the Barkly Homestead which is about half way across towrds Camooweal and Mount Isa.

It has been a long trip from the bottom of Western Australia to get to this point, and all of us are feeling very tired, however, our next day will see us back in Queensland and I think that is lifting our spirits a little.

'Til next time,

June