Day 39: Birdsville to Windorah (good-bye to Cindy & Russ)

Today we were up early, packed up and in at the bakery by 7.30am.
Cindy wanted to purchase a sausage roll from this iconic bakery to take home to Robbie (her dad) - she would freeze it for the 3 day trip home to Newcastle. Hope you enjoyed it Robbie!!!

Having bacon & egg sandwiches was just too much to resist once we were there - so we had our final coffee and meal from the Bakery. Luckily we had arrived before anyone else this morning as there was soon a line up and the place was hopping not long after we had our meals in front of us.

I just loved the unusual toilet roll holder - a rabbit trap - in the toilets at the bakery:

We fuelled up and set off for the long drive to Windorah today. Cindy and Russell would be leaving us there and heading onto Quilpie for the night as they now had 3 days of driving to get home to Newcastle.

It was an interesting drive with the usual wildlife that we are now used to encountering - but the landscape was changing again as we now journeyed East of Birdsville.

Today we were treated to a reasonable dirt road for the most part (the Birdsville Developmental Road and then the Diamantina Developmental Road), We traversed many sand dunes and passed through the northern sections of the Sturt Stony Desert.

Quite a lot of sections of the Birdsville Developmental Road are already now tarred and they appear to be working towards the tarring of the entire length of it - which I guess saves a lot of maintenance in the long run.
The worst sections of the road we travelled today were encountered after we passed into the Barcoo shire - really the road deteriorated considerably from this point.

The view from a lookout on the drive today - great view over his part of the Channel Country:

We also passed through the ghost town of Betoota - where they still hold the annual camel races. The local landholders still get together to hold this event at Betoota each year - the rest of the year there is nothing there now that the pub has closed.

Unfortunately Russell had another flat tyre today (opposite back tyre to the previous one) - and this time plugging it did not work so the spare had to go on.
This put a bit of a hole in the plans for the day as we did not reach Windorah until after lunch and he then had to set about sorting out the flat tyre at the local servo.
So after a long day already of driving - Cindy and Russ had a quick very late lunch lunch and our journey with them ended as we said our goodbyes and they made their way on further (another 240km) to Quilpie for the night.

Thanx again Guys!!! We have had a great time travelling with you guys on this adventure!!!!!!!
Lets do it again sometime!!!!!!!

Having elected to stop overnight in Windorah freshened up with a shower at the local shire caravan park in town, for a gold coin donation to the RFDS.
We fuelled up the ute, bought some wine from the local hotel and then headed out 10km east of town to a free camp on Cooper Creek.

Whilst we were fuelling we saw a guy head over the road into the servo with a 6mth old donkey (named "hank") - he had got out of his yard and wandered off and been found down in the local schoolyards or a change of scenery. The things you see in the outback!!

On the way out of Windorah we passed by the experimental solar farm that has been set up for this town by Ergon Energy. Hopefully this will be a successful trial as it could be beneficial to many smaller towns that rely on Diesel to provide power to their townsfolk - which is apparently quite expensive.

We located the camp area relatively easily and what a beautiful location it is on this lovely stretch of the Cooper Creek.

When we first arrived there was half a dozen horses roaming around the campsite and the banks of the creek - we are not sure if they are wild or from a local property perhaps??
There is also quite a lot of bird life around this creek area - kestrels, herons egrets & pelicans are just a few of the ones we can name.
It is also apparently a popular fishing spot and they catch lots of "yellow-belly" fish on this creek.
Actually Windorah means "Big Fish".

We selected our campsite under a magnificent tree - with a large kestrel nest in it (as we later found out). The tree directly behind us also had a large kestrel nest in it. We saw the kestrels coming and going - but we don't believe they have any babies as yet as we could not hear anything in the nest high above us and they did not appear to be bringing food back to the nest - they may have eggs in the nest.

We managed to collect enough firewood to get a nice little fire going and we settled in for the evening. We really did not need much warmth as it was a cloudy night and the temperature was really quite mild.

We slept in the tvan with just the back open - just fantastic!!!