Mt Isa

We are staying at the caravan park for 2 nites. Due to wet weather, road closures we have had to abandon our plans to go to Normanton/Karumba.
Now heading to Barkly Homestead, Tablelands Highway up to Cape Crawford.

more photos



red claw



The Beach Mole's tramp

After their impromptu concert, the band decided to climb the rocky outcrop opposite the campsite. Fortunately the day was cloudy and a cool wind accompanied the trio plus ‘Pat the dog’-the band’s mascot.

I was the official photographer, staying behind to take the photos as proof that the band had conquered the rock.

Clem Walton Park

Camp spot at Corella Dam. 65km E of.., thru gate, 1^st Y veer left, 2^nd Y….., veer right to camp spots near river, toilets, no drinking water, rubbish bins, freshwater crocs, bird life-green parrots, ferral cats, kangaroos, kites, eagles, green budgies, kingfishers, willy waggies…. Fish-grunter, catfish, turtles…

Currently there are 4 vans camped along this section of the river, around the bend are another 2-Stein-we met at Clare back in January is at the end-he keeps to himself.  At ‘our’ end are; John and his dog Pat (Pat the Dog is her full name), Mark-whom we met back at Paradise Beach in February-chief chainsaw operator, and ourselves-we take turns at cooking the evening meal-tis lovely to go out for dinner every 3^rd night… no need to worry about whose turn to drive…

Now and again other campers stay the night-we met Terry and Karen-left work a week ago to get away from the rat race-now they have to keep moving to meet up with friends at various spots, they loved this spot-but they had people to meet, deadlines to keep-and they stopped work to avoid this! Karen had seen the Coopers creek flower about 10 days ago-she couldn’t believe she had met the creator!

It is cool at night, but during the day warm-t-shirt, shorts and jandal weather. Warm enough to have a solar shower.

We do all cooking on the fire; boiling the billy, using the camp oven for roasts, casseroles, damper date scones, bread-making, the bbq plate for pancakes, bacon/eggs etc.

Mark and Murray spent a morning wooding and we have a good pile. Wood and fresh water are precious commodities. Our pile has attracted other campers to enquire if it is provided-alas we inform them we have gathered it-it is a no touch zone-some campers joke that each piece is numbered or branded-that is how valuable wood is.

Drinking water is also a valued commodity. Most people carry plastic containers that only contain water from a safe known source; for instance we get water from Info centres, service stations, camping grounds, parks. You can buy a special tap from Bunnings that fits onto taps that do not have a handle. Or some campers have separate water tanks in their vans. We have 3/ 55 litre water tanks fitted on our van-all separate fillers-depending on cooking methods and showers-a tank will last 3-5 days. So when we are camped by a river – this water is used for washing and showering.

We fill in our days with walks-Murray, Mark and I tramped up a bluff to the dam wall, although we appeared to have tramped higher than the wall. We came across old porcelain power isolators-too heavy to carry back to our campsite, but the many stones/rocks of a sparkling black material were attractive enough to lug back in our pockets. The breathtaking views at the top of the hill left me – WOW – I made it to the top. Looking down on the other side-we decided to try and climb down the rocky hillside, only to find a huge rocky cutting. Clambouring over these, and up a steep track, we came to the dam lake.

We spent many happy evenings, making new friends, discussing where and how long each had been ‘on the road’. Some are green-having the most upmarket van-using 100litres of water in 2 days to those who have been on the road for 11 years. Some finance their trip with the pension determining their movements-park up until the next payment, rental investments, self-funded super schemes, working holidays, some are on holiday, or extended leave, some on benefits, most of us are free/bush camping. With camping ground fees around $30 per night, this would eat up your weekly budget/pension very quickly.

Each day is different, as people leave more arrive. Over 2 nights and 8 vans/campers, 14 were men and me the token woman.  We have come across more single men than women travelling, often the men have a dog. The couples we meet are retired and on the road on average 10 months a year.

All have a story to tell…

We have only met 3 vanners from WA. Many are from Queensland.

The most exciting event at this campsite has been the fresh water crocodile-apparently they are not man eaters. Even so, I am not game to kayaking or swimming in the water hole – we eye each other from a distance. During the drought 35 crocodiles were sighted.  Also I have seen a monitor lizard swimming-didn’t realise they swim!



Change of Plans

We are leaving Cloncurry, tomorrow and heading east towards Mt Isa. Our friend Mark is camping at a dam. We met Mark, while camping at Paradise Beach, we went our separate ways, but now he is only 55kms away! So off to catch up with Mark and do some fishing. There is intermittent coverage over the next month.

Longreach flower

Longreach and beyond

Time to leave Longreach, we have contributed a few hundred dollars to the town with no carrots and no bananas! Yes, there are none left in this town with a population of 3100. We spent 3 nights at the caravan park at $30 per night. There is plenty do here, but the entrance fees are pretty steep – Qantas Museum $32-concession, Stockman Hall of Fame - $64.00 concession for 2 of us.

We enjoyed the Stockman Hall of Fame and Murray enjoyed the Qantas Museum. The show at the Hall of Fame was a bit weak, but we did get so see bullocks yoked and pull a log. The hall is divided into the history of farming, explorers, the flying doctor service. The displays were well done especially the camp fire with the animated faces portrayed on the static displays.



Inside the Hall of Fame



From Longreach we travelled to Winton. Winton is renowned for the only museum dedicated to a song – Waltzing Maltida. Advertised as a 3d show and interactive museum-this was very disappointing. The 3d was a screen set in the floor showing the history of the song and the interactive – taking billy lids off gave you a short commentary on the history of swagmen.

The museum did have some interesting displays of shoes, medical equipment. At $18 each concession, I would not recommend this.



quilt

That night we stayed at campsite on the side of the road-our worst so far-great during the afternoon waving to everyone, but come the night, we shared with the cattle road trains. Imagine listening to 4 trailers of cattle moving, rattling around from 1-4 am, and the smell-road train, after road train came in. Earlier in the evening the army boys stopped off to check their gear. Superman was keen for a photo shoot, but alas not to be – he was refused!

The army trucks were in a convoy of 30 carrying hospital vehicles, bulldozers - container city were driving from Sydney to Broome-expecting to take 7 days.

Today – Mother’s Day we drove to Cloncurry-the landscape changing constantly from lush brown/green feed to termites mounds, stony ground that resembled the moon’s surface, spinifex blown onto the fences-we came across a willy willy full of spinifex coming towards us.

Today we spotted more road kill and a bus towing a wee van.

Where's Julia

Desert Flower

School of the Air - Superman writes...

We are in Longreach, staying at the caravan park and today, Brenda and Murray took me to visit a real live school and to watch and listen to a lesson.
This is a paid tour-I was free-there was no provision for infinite persons-but the lady still gave me a sticker.
First we listened  and watched a video about School of the Air and then we had a tour of the school.
There are approximately 170 students spread over an area twice the size of the state of Victoria. Some children are supervised by their parents or a nanny or by a volunteer. Their lessons are posted in 6 week blocks with a daily timeframe of 6 hours. Each student spends 1 hour a day on the air talking with their teacher and classmates.
 We watched a 'live' lesson with year 1's reading a book about 'wheels'.
We saw dormitories that could hold 50 students - they come for week long visits to attend on site school lessons and some studios where the teacher talks to the students and a very well resourced library.

 Each student is allowed 40 items for 6 weeks. I had my photo taken with Liza and Wendy - the library staff.

I liked the furniture in the conference room, especially the mushrooms!

Images of our roadie

Superman met another copper - Doug from Yaraka - he covers an area the size of Tasmania-with a population of 200! - mainly doing stock work-checking the stock as they are loaded onto the road trains.

and here is the road train - if we park on the side on the road to camp-we often share with the road trains-in the interest of safety we often camp in the grass or drive as far inland as possible.

Some roadside campsites offer dump points - (where we can dump our human waste - it is amazing how quickly we can fill our cassette toilet-the cassette is accessed from a 'cupboard' on the outside of the van), of course it depends on what we have eaten....

Murray pouring the 'breakdown' chemical into the 'cassette'.

Coopers Creek Flower

Toompine Flower

Spotting - Superman writes...

Superman writes….

Spotting is our new game that Muz and I play when we are travelling in the truck with Murray and Brenda.

You don’t need to know how to spell or know your alphabet-so long as you can see-you can play ‘Spot’.

Never before have road signs, road traffic, seemed so important, but when you are the only vehicle on the road for hours on end and all you can see is endless open paddocks of scrub, tussock grass, spinfex, the odd green tree – spotting becomes important. Spotting helps Murray to drive safely – giving him time to decide whether to drive over the road kill that is lying in the middle of the one lane road or to pull over for the oncoming traffic.

Muz, myself, Brenda and Murray play spot – the first to see a road sign-can be hand written, or the grey lizard, or road kill, or the best spot is another vehicle.

On a stretch of 3 hours driving we spotted  12 dead kangaroos, 2 dead pigs, 3 live wild pigs, 1 live piglet, 3 dead foxes, numerous eagles, 2 live snakes, one 3 trailer road train and lots of dried creeks, live emus, live kangaroos, live cattle and cows.

There are no fences but every 5-8kms there are grids, and often this is where the handwritten signs are-“wandering stock”, “no lines”, “single lane widens”, “overtaking lane – next 2 kms”,  animals on the next 5kms are our PETS”.

 This sign intrigued us – PETS out here – what were we going to see – alas we didn’t see any pets, but later that day when we arrived at the Toompine pub for our next camp –all was revealed. Around 5pm each evening the pets come home to the fenced paddock with an endless supply of dam water and whole oats to chew on. Over 100 goats – many pregnant, 2 alpacas, 2 donkeys, 1 horse, 4 chiwaua cross dogs, 1 red dog come strolling along the road. They are locked in for the night and at 8am the next morning, off they go to graze the roadsides.

The “overtaking lane” was the RFD airstrip.

Toompine is the pub with no town, whereas Yowah is the town with no pub or liquor licence. There is about 1 hour between the two. Toompine offers the traveller ‘motel’ style accommodation-tin sheds!  - Shared toilets/showers with the campers who receive free power and water, all provided by the shire. Meals at the pub were huge and very tasty.

The lizards are hard to spot-they look like a dead stick or a curled tyre snake.

Muz and I were sitting on the gas bottles at Cooper Creek – keeping an eye on things –as we do each day – and we spotted the ‘cops’ coming towards us…

Out jumped 2 cops – Mark and Brendan-they had seen us and wanted to know who we were, where did we come from, Muz reckons they were checking up on us – cause they asked if we had a gun… and what our plans were and lots of questions. So we suggested a photo for ‘old times’. Mark and Brendan are posted at Quilpie – 240kms away and were on an ‘Operation’ –so they said – they were part of a 4 vehicle operation.  We saw them later – wel,l we saw 4 police vehicles.