Day 46: Back to Quilpie and on to Toompine.

Nice bit of trivia on a sign as we were leaving Charleville this morning (very disappointed that we could not stop for the photo)

"Australia's longest road - The Diamantina Developmental Road at 1334 km - from Charleville to Mt Isa".

It has been quite a luxury for us for the past couple of nights to have our own (In our own room) flushing toilets and hot showers.
But I am already missing the open space and the lifestyle of being in the road - so cannot wait to get back out there!!!

We made it back to Quilpie in good time - before lunch - with no issues - only one roo crossing the road well ahead of us.
We hitched up and got on our way at about 11.30am

With fingers crossed for no more issues on the road to Thargomindah we headed off again. We were going to be very careful travelling this road - as the sides of this highway (the tar down the centre of the road) has mostly large rocks on the verges of the road.

We made it further this time thank god with no issues and were at the Toompine Hotel safely for lunch.


This is a hotel without a town and officially has a population of 2.

They offer a free camp with powers if you want, flushing toilets and hot showers.


So here we decided to stay for the night.

We had lunch in the pub and the selected a site and set up camp.
With all the goats, donkeys, alpacas and the rest of the menagerie - including a few other campers!!

Could be interesting going to the amenities if it is gun club night - as they are in the shooting range grounds!!!

About 4.00 pm a multitude of goats started appearing behind our campsite - they were queuing up along the fence around the small dam behind us. They stood around for a while as more and more started coming in. Next thing - about 45 mins later we here motor bikes and we see the cook / bar maid / owner of the pub flying by on a bike - still in her dress still with her apron on. So she now heads off along with some other young guy and they appear shortly after with a whole lot more goats they have herded up and a couple of donkeys.
She apparently has about 180 goats (many appear to be pregnant) - she locks them up every night as they have had trouble with dingoes, foxes and wild dogs getting the goats.

Interesting that a town with population = 2 has a "progress association". -----


It is a pretty quiet evening and we end up playing scrabble in the tvan before bed as we did not have a fire and it was getting quite cool.

Tomorrow we plan to go just down the road - not far south to Eulo (160km) and hopefully go to the Artesian Mud baths. I have been trying to ring them to book in as the people camped next to us tonight have been there and report - "It was magic"
We had tried to ring this place a few times the afternoon but no one was answering.
Yes in the middle of nowhere with only a pub we had pretty good phone coverage.