Travelling Across Queensland

Ahhh .... time to get back on the road with us heading west on our main adventure. My apologies for this post being delayed - telecommunication across outback Queensland is not all that good, here goes.

To begin with we travelled up through the Mingala Range, then bypassing Charters Towers,  and onto quite a number of tiny towns like Pentland, and onto Torrens Creek for the night.

Wow, the pub dinner at the Torrens Creek Hotel was fabulous and quite a reasonable price too. We set up our vans in the small caravan park at the back of the pub - not far to roll home to your van after a few drinks!

From here, we continued to head west for another 300 odd kms through more tiny towns, like Prairie, then Hughenden where we refuelled and Des (bless his socks) didn't have to pay for his cup of tea, but we had to pay for our coffee - just goes to show you, drinking tea is a lot cheaper than drinking coffee! Having refuelled ourselves and the vehicles, we moved on through to Richmond where we stopped for lunch at Kronkasaurus Korner (an area known for dinasaurs from way back when).

Our nights stop was at Julia Creek where the caravan park was full to overflowing and we were directed to local showgrounds for the night, where we set up camp amongst the dried horse stuff, and oh didn't the flies just love coming around to greet us. I have to say though that the sunset was absolutely breathtaking.   However, the flies got to Peter, he went off to have his shower later in the night only to find, the lights had been turned off - no worries, had his torch with him, but then realised that he had forgotten to take his towel over to the ammenities block. OK, looks like a shower in the morning.

Now we are really getting into the outback, long straight roads, big skies, and large flat landscape. Not a real lot to see, however have to say it has a beauty all of it's own. Our morning tea stop was one we know well - the bakery in Cloncurry, our first bakery of the trip!! Oh yumm. Peter got onto the two way radio to Des about stoppping here, only to have a lady from another vehicle asking if we could get here a pie with cheese please!  Guess who was first in the door?

Not only were pies and cakes/slices the order of the morning, but the vans were parked right outside a bottle shop - well of course the beer fridge had to be topped up didn't it? It is thirsty work all this driving. 

From Cloncurry we pushed on into Mt Isa for the night, and after setting up, we went for a look around, including the Info Centre, and re-stocking of the food fridges. Let's face it, you can't live on beer alone, you do need a bit of food. With plenty of steaks purchased, we are in for quite a few barbeques I think. 

Mt Isa is a fascinating place with the mine right at the end of the main street. Then there is the four (4) trailer road trains coming out of the mine - they are massive. I mean a three (3) trailer road train is some 53m long, so imagine the length of a 4 trailer one.

Poor Peter, is not having much luck with showers, he went for a shower later in the night, only to find the hot water was non existant and strong winds blowing through the gaps in the walls etc. Some people have all the luck, don't they?

Our last day travelling in Queensland was a short day to Camooweal, and the reason for this was that we didn't know how long we may be held up at the border into the Northern Territory with the border passes that we had to fill in.

The fuel stop here at Camooweal has to be one of the busiest I have ever seen, it is the last fuel before you head west across the Barkly Highway and the first one once you have crossed the Barkly. 

For now though, it is time to get things ready for our crossing the border tomorrow, so .....

'Til next time,

June