Day 45: A day in Charleville

An interesting piece of trivia:
The original owner, Poppa Corones, of the Historic Corones Hotel/Motel (where we are staying) - supplied the first in-flight catering for the fledging QANTAS airline.

We take the ute out to the Suncorp selected smash repairs and walk back into town.
Fortunately they have a windscreen to fit in stock - but it woill not be ready until about 3 or 4 pm.
So we make the decision to stay another night- as it is a bit late to start the 210 km trip back to Quilpie at this time of day - as there is a lot of wildlife along this road and we would be driving at dusk.

The rest of the morning is taken up with shoppin for tomorrow's brekkie and lunch today and coffee at the bakery.
i also decide, with the time on my hands- being here today, to have a haircut at one of the 8x local hairdressers.

Back to the hotel room for lunch and we then headed out to the Bilby Experience centre & National Parks office - another deent walk for us today to get here.

The Bilby section was not open - so no Bilby viewing for us today!

The National Parks have an enclosure of yellow-footed rock wallabies on view to the public - I think there was about 15 in the enclosure and many of the females had joeys.

See the little joey poking out of the mohers pounch!!

It was great to see these little fellas as it is almost impossible to sit them in the wild as they blend in so well to their environment and as they are very timid they quickly hide in or behind rocks.

They also had a display which included a magnificent Wedge-Tailed Eagle (a previous road kill victim - that has been stuffed):

Ruth had a chat with the Ranger about the Currawinya NP down south from here - and he has confirmed that there is water in the lakes there - so we have now decided that this will definitely be on our planned agenda once we get back on the road.

We then walked out of town a bit further, to the parklands, to view these Vortex Guns.

Vortex guns had been successfully used all over Europe to disperse hail-bearing clouds and thereby protect crops. In 1902 in a vain attempt to break the long standing drought in QLD there were 13 lf these ortex Guns manufactured and trialled in Charleville and a couple of other locations. The trials proved unsuccessful and most of the guns were broken up for scrap metal.

We picked up the ute and headed back into town at about 3.30 pm.

Since we were here in a bigger regional centre we had taken the opportunity and pre-arranged earlier today to drop the ute at a service centre to have the oil changed, new oil filter as well as a new air filter fitted. We thought it was a good idea since we have done almost 8000 km since leaving home and we have been travelling in a lot of dust in the outback.

Tomorrow we will drive back to Quilpie to pick up where we left off - hook up the tvan and head for Toompine for the night.

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Day 44: a tow truck ride into Charleville

Mike the RACQ tow truck driver arrived around 9am to load the ute for the trip to Charleville. He was a very friendly and easy to talk to guy and the 2.5 hr trip went relatively quickly as we chatted easily with him all the way there.

The guy from Cairns (Cindy and Russ will remember - the Blue Heeler van man) came over to see us and told us he had broken his rear canopy window.
The guys we had been chatting with last night also came out to see us off and we had almost everyone waving us off this am at the park - the lady in the office included.....very funny stuff!!!

I must say there is lots of wildlife along this road - including goats. We will have to be very wary on the return leg.

By god downtown Charleville is a hip hop happening place on a Sunday arvo - it's pretty much a ghost town!!!
No one around and nothing open!!!

We had lunch at the RSL and looks like that will be the go for dinner as well as no where else seems to be open - not even the hotel we are staying at.
At least the food was pretty good at the RSL.

We booked to go the Cosmos Night Observatory show tonight and it was great. They have an outdoor observatory ( the roof of the building slides back) and 4x impressive telescopes that they use for public viewing of the night sky. The staff were very knowledgeable and the presentation was really easy to understand and interesting.
* Alpha Centauri - brightest pointer of the the 2x pointers of the Southern Cross. Is actually 2x stars.
* a star cluster - which has red, yellow and blue stars in it - amazing to see.
* Moon
* Saturn - this was awesome - was a perfect view and crystal clear - able to see the rings and even a moon - the biggest of 16 Titan.

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Day 34: Off to Diamantina Lakes National Park

We are all very excited this morning to be heading out to Diamantina NP as we are now entering 'Channel Country' proper.
The name 'Channel Country' comes from the numerous intertwined rivulets that flow intermittently across 150,000 sq km in Queensland and parts of South Australia, Northern Territory and New South Wales.
The principal rivers are: Diamantina & Georgina Rivers and Cooper Creek and when there is sufficient rainfall these rivers flow into Lake Eyre.

Diamantina Lakes Station (a pastoral property) was purchased by the Queensland Government in the 1950's and dedicated as a national park in 1992. This 507,000 hectare park conserves the vast open plains and sandstone ranges of the Channel Country in far south-west Queensland.

The trek from Winton to Lark Quarry and onto Carisbrooke was approx 180 km (plus driving around the property).
The remainder of our journey into Diamantina NP, the 90 km Warracoota Circuit Drive we plan to do, and then onto Bedourie will be just shy of an additional 600km (making a total from Winton to Bedourie of approx 780km).
Most of it towing the campers and most in 4wd mode - so fuel economy will be lessened.
It is a challenging journey requiring us to be well prepared as there is no fuel, food or water for the 780 km we will be travelling in this remote area. Hence the need for us to carry the extra 80 litres of diesel.

From Carisbrooke Station we headed along the "The Cork Mail Road" to Cork and then the "The Old Cork Mail Road" to Old Cork.
Leaving Carisbrooke there we lots of kangaroos and emus around the paddocks of the properties we were passing through so we were on full alert.
We passed mesa formations and the first of the thousands of red sandhills that ripple across Australia to Broome.

This called for a serious photo opportunity
- with Russ posing on the Kimberley!!

Moores on the tvan

And Ruth having to do the "Oh what a feeling" jump!!

Isn't this little yellow wildflower and grey leaves stunning against the red sand!

We stopped briefly at the The Old Cork Homestead for our morning tea. The property was first settled in the 1870's and became the local mail distribution point before the establishment of Winton.

The remains of the original sandstone homestead:

From here we travel on the Diamantina River Road into Diamantina NP passing by the Mt Windsor Station mail box - which is arguably one of Winton's largest mail boxes and the mail arrives here once a week.

Our journey today through remote desert areas with spectacularly variable landscape and scenery left us just awestruck!!!

Just before we reached the Park Headquarters Information Centre we took the bush track off to "Janet's Leap" lookout where we had a birds-eye view of the Diamantina Gates where the many braids of the Diamantina River converge and are squeezed through a narrow gap between the Goyder Range to the west and the Hamilton Range to the east.
It is hard to imagine what a sight this would be in the wet season.

From this vantage point we are also overlooking Hunters Gorge - where we would be camping this evening beside this permanent waterhole.

This is where our paths first crossed with a Swiss woman - "Helga" (we did not yet know her real name so we made one up for her) travelling on her own in a hired 4wd camper.

The turn-off to this campground is 10 km along the Boulia–Springvale Rd from the Diamantina National Park HQ.
A pit toilet is the only facility at this campsite - which Cindy and Moores just love -- Ha! Ha! They would rather go bush!

We set up or camp along the banks of the waterhole.

We had too pinch ourselves to take in this oasis - in the midst of all the desolate country we had passed through to get here.

We also could not believe how many flies joined us there.
We had forgotten to bring our fly nets - but Cindy and Russ had been smart enough to pack them which gave them some relief when trying to eat lunch. We had to make do with just a small piece of bush to use as a fly deterrent until the flies abated with the ensuing dusk.

There were already about 6x other campers here when we arrived and the Swiss woman ('Helga') arrived on dusk to set up camp just a bit further along the waterhole from us.

We spent the late afternoon watching the many 'Little Corella' that frequented the waterhole and quite a few Pelicans and herons.

We also saw a feral cat nearby when taking a walk along the bank of the waterhole.

The scenery about the waterhole as sunset progressed was quite stunning

- with Ruth even enjoying the view from the "loo"

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Day 33: Exploring Carisbrooke Station

Today was spent exploring around the 4wd tracks of Carisbrooke. It has an amazing variety of landscapes and we found ourselves clambering up hills to lookouts, rock hunting and generally exploring the area around the property.

Speaking of rock hunting Cindy was given a limit on the size of the "rock collection" she cold take home - so we had to sit down back at camp and sort through the bucket of rocks and make a selection of what could be taken home.

Here is one of the Australian Bustards we saw along the way today:

There was apparently a French "survivor" type show filmed here some years ago and there is still some evidence left behind of the props/sets they had set up for this.

Tonight was too good an opportunity to miss for being able to have a camp oven dinner again we had another great night around the fire with good company,good food, wine and port.

The sunset was as always spectacular- and the light ever changing as the sun disappears:

This station is unfortunately not quite what we expected for a station stay. It is not actually a working station as such any more - which seems a shame although they do still do some sporadic agistment of cattle.
The marketing for the property does not make this clear in and we thought we would be getting more of a working station experience.

However we did enjoy our time exploring the property and Ruth enjoyed the driving - getting more confidence with simple basics of off road driving.

We also enjoyed chatting with other people camped here - most from Brisbane area with kids. Some of the kids had never been into the bush before and were having a great time climbing rock hills and just collecting lots of rocks.
In fact these people were from a suburb not 5 minutes from where we live.

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Day 43: Quilpie - Not the place to have a broken windscreen!!!!

Up before day break to be able to enjoy the bird life and wildlife at the lake before sunrise.

With binoculars out and checking out what was around this morning - I was very excited to spot 6x wild pigs on the opposite bank of the lake - all scurrying away from the shore as an old farm vehicle on the adjoining property trundled down towards the lake.

Our friend "Bruce" (the emu) also came down to see us this morning!

We cooked toasted sandwiches for breakfast, over the coals of the fire, and had a leisurely pack up this morning.

On the way back out to the main road we saw a couple of Brolgas - which took flight as we approached.

We had set off about 10.00am heading for Thargomindah via Toompine - with a plan to probably camp at the Toompine Hotel overnight. This was to be only a short hop today (76km)- but we had been told this is a great spot and we thought a Saturday night there might be fun.

Unfortunately we did not get far out of town (approx 7- 10 km) when we had a truck speed past us throwing up a rock, the size of a cricket ball, that broke the windscreen.
We had an impact area on the passenger side the size of a golf ball and almost all the way through the windscreen with many large cracks radiating from it.
Ruth had small shards of glass all over her and we were noth relieved that the rock had not come all the way through as it would surely have caused some injury.

There was nothing else to do but turn around making our way slowly back into town.

Let me paint the scene -
A small outback town on a Saturday morning and it has no windscreen refit or repair service.
So Moores spent a good hour & half on the phone to Suncorp Insurance trying to work out a plan of action.
Ruth sitting in the local coffee shop writing this blog.

It seems Roma is the closet service centre with Obrien's Glass and that is almost 500 km away. Understandably they were not keen on the idea of Suncorp request to have them send a truck to Quilpie to fix it!
The Insurance company considers the car is undriveable as both layers of glass have been broken in the windscreen and after much toing & froing the plan is for the local RACQ towing contractor to put the car on his tow truck and take it to Charleville - just a short (Ha Ha!!) 211 km away. He was busy a fair way out of town, at Thargomindah, and could not take us until tomorrow.

The up side of this story is that Moores upgraded to car insurance before we left on this holiday and we are covered for absolutely everything and sundry to the max.
This means the towing, accommodation here and in Charleville, the replacement windscreen & other sundry costs like food in Charleville are covered.

We have booked into the Caravan park here in Quilpie for tonight and tomorrow (Sunday) we go in the tow truck, to Charleville, with the ute. We are booked into a Hotel there for just he one night at this stage - hoping all will be fixed on Monday for us.

The caravan park is happy for us to leave the camper with them (which is great) and they are also going to put our fridge out the back of the office on 240volt power for us whilst we are gone.

We had planned to go to Charleville anyway after heading down to Thargomindah and Cunamulla area - so we will just be doing it in reverse now.

The other upside is being here again in the caravan park for a night I have washed absolutely all sheets and clothes and given the kitchen area of the tvan a good clean up.
However I am not looking forward to a 2 - 3 hour trip in the tow truck tomorrow. There are no hire cars in Quilpie.

We booked in for the big spit roast and baked veges dinner put on at the caravan park tonight. This was a great meal for $17 each and they also had entertainment in the form of the resident country and western singer who is pretty good, as well as a local bush poet who was excellent.

The meal and entertainment area is set around a huge communal fire which sets the scene and provides a nice comfy warm zone for the evening.

We enjoyed chatting later with 2x couples, travelling together,who we had previously met at the free camp at Cooper Creek. They are passing through here just for an overnight stay tonight and we enjoyed this evening with them.

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