Day 42 (July 10th, 2015)|: Jondaryan Woolshed - our last night on the road for now!

This morning we said our goodbyes to Wendy and Mick - promising to visit them in Mildura one day - they are on the back end of their regular 6months travelling on the road that they do each year. They love their fishing and usually head upto NT for quite a bit of this time - regularly meeting up with friends they have met on the road - and basically living on Barramundi whilst there.

Our original plan today was to head for Lake Broadwater, just out of Dalby, for our last night. This is another spot we had enjoyed 2x years ago on our travels. 

But we had a late change of plan and decided to check out Jondaryan Woolshed.

We have rated the road from the other side of Roma as the worst tarred road we have travelled on in QLD.  It didn't improve much until we got past Dalby.

Well this turned out to be an interesting stopover for our last night. The Jondaryan Woolshed is a great place - but currently some aspects of this historic place has become quite a bit rundown.  

However they are working to get it back on track and there are some big plans for it in the next 18mths.

They have a huge amount of old machinery there, a massive Woolshed where they hold functions and dances. They cater to school holidays with activities on for the kiddies and have an animal nursery for them as well. They also seem to do well as a wedding venue.

There is brand new very good amenities for campers, a large camp kitchen with a big fire pit in it and a new cafe located near the campground. 

Since this is our last night on the road we decide to enjoy a lovely meal in the cafe /restaurant.

Tonight we get some drizzling rain - the only rain we have had the entire 6 weeks of this holiday. So we were looking at a wet pack up on this last morning - but although the canvas was a bit damp and the weather threatening we still managed to sit outside for tea and breakfast next morning.

Then it's off on the road looking to be home by lunch time - unpacking, washing and getting used to the idea of having to go to work on Monday.  

No prize for guessing we will probably soon be planning when we can do this again visiting new places in this vast country of Australia.

Day 40 / 41 (8th & 9th July, 2015): Fishermen's Rest at lovely Mitchell - just as good as we remembered!

It was a very cold morning in Augathella this morning - until the sun peeped out and started to warm us up.

We are only going about 180km today one of our favourite towns and free campsites - the Fishermen's Rest free camp at lovely little Mitchell on the Maranoa River.

Our drive today was a short one but we probably encountered more Roos on the move crossing the road ahead of us than we have all the days previously on this trip. 

We have noted that on this road trip we have not seen anywhere near the amount of emus we saw when travelling in outback and western QLD 2x years ago.

We arrived safely (without hitting anything) thank goodness at our campsite and happy to find that we would be able to get a spot in here tonight. 

It was at this free camp that we had met up and spent our first night of travelling with Cindy & Russ. We could have had exactly the same spot again - but opted to get down closer to the river in a more open spot where we would get more sunshine throughout the day.

We got setup, had our lunch in the sun on the rivers edge. it was just devine!!!!

Then it was into Mitchell to take a dip (and to have a shower) at the Mitchell Artesian Spa. It was just sooooo beautiful and warm - 38 degrees - in this water from the Great Artesian Basin!!

next stop was the bakery for a coffee - and we just had to share one of their fantastic sausage rolls.

We spent the late afternoon/ early evening at happy hour round a monster campfire with our neighbouring campers and then after dinner watched the Final State of origin for this year. We were lucky that one of our new found friends had a big caravan and Television that they set up outside to watch the game as we sat by the campfire. These guys were from Mildura so we're going for NSW - but they suffered the loss well.

This was to be our coldest night of this trip - but fell just short of a frost - and as soon as the sun started to peep out from the horizon we were positioned in uninterrupted warm sunlight.

I got up and scrambled around in the bush up the back of the campsites to gather enough would to get our little fire going again and just to take the chill off til the sun got a bit warmer. 

We had already decided (the previous day) that we would make this favourite spot 2x night stopover - and after getting the fire going I decided we would have some toast - something we have not had very often and had been missing.  It was really yummy - so we made bacon and eggs and more toast and had a breakfast feast by the river.

The morning was spent relaxing and reading - bathed in the warm sunlight of a lovely winters morning.

It was then into town again for another swim (and shower) at the Artesian Baths. 

Then back to camp for an afternoon of reading and relaxing by the river!!

The second night we had offered to make a camp oven for our Mildura friends since Mick was keeping his campfire going around the clock and would have lots of good coals for us.

We had happy hour again around his campfire - I think we had about 10 people again. Then we enjoyed our yummy camp oven dinner with Mick and Wendy.

Our second night was not quite as cold as it had closed over late afternoon.

Day 39 (July 7th, 2015): Back to Augathella for a night!

We left Isisford this morning heading for Tambo for our stopover tonight.

The sign leading out of town indicated a "Caution" for the Blackall - Isisford Rd that we were planning to travel this morning. 

Thanks to good Telstra range and the magic of Internet we were able to get more specific details of the condition of the road - which was rough in patches and what he for potholes.

Well I have to say that this road was better than a lot of other roads we had travelled and part from one short section that was a bit rough it rated pretty highly amongst the roads we have travelled in QLD.

We got to Tambo by lunch time and after checking out the free camp we were headed for "Stubby Bend" we decided to pull up for lunch and then keep on going the extra 116km today to Augathella for the night. This free camp at Tambo was not to our liking and we new that Augathella has a nice free camp in town opposite the pub.

Augathella was a lovely over night stop our first night out of Brisbane at the beginning of this holiday road trip.

There were quite a lot of caravanners/campers here in Augathella opposite the pub for tonight - on our first stop at the beginning of June there were only a few of us - there are many more of the grey nomads on the road come July.

We enjoyed some afternoon sunshine with cup of tea and our books - and then decided since this was our second free stopover here we should go spend a bit of money into the town. The obvious choice was a late afternoon drink on the verandah of the pub in the beautiful late afternoon sun.

They have an interesting display in the park here about "Meat Ants" 

With even a large sculpture of a Meat Ant on a pole in the park.

This was to be the first night that we closed up all the camper and threw on the extra sleeping bag as it was shaping up to be a pretty chilly night for us.

Day 38 (6th July, 2015): The little town of Isisford in the Outer Barcoo Region

Today we are heading for Isisford, on the Barcoo River. 

We head back through Longreach - having an obligatory stop at the Bakery here. Then to Ilfracombe and take a right turn down the Isisford-Ilfracombe Rd. 

I was a bit unsure about how this road would be - but on the whole it was a pretty good "one lane highway". 

Our challenges on this journey are no different today - roadkill (wallabies & cows) to dodge and the live Roos that decide to bound across the road - as well as the roaming cattle to watch for.

We encounter no road trains - which is a bonus - but today's journey brings a new challenge - dodging  cyclists - about a dozen spread out along this narrow road - riding to Isisford.

We arrived about 2pm and found a great spot on the Barcoo Weir campground - they charge $3.00 per night per site - and supply treated water, flushing toilets and showers in town behind the shire office. 

It's a popular stopover for the grey nomads for all these reasons and the general store has got a small laundromat (3x machines) available for the travellers.

It's a short walk into town - like about 5mins and they have a new interpretive centre about fossils found in the area and a lovely little cafe attached to this. 

We headed over to the shire office to pay our $3.00 camping fees and then into the cafe for a coffee.

Seated at a table outside in the warm sun we chatted with a couple of the cyclists we had passed just coming into Isisford. They are on a holiday ride (privately organised) from Charters Towers to Charleville - over 12 days.  The people on the ride have all paid to do this organised trip and are from many different locations around QLD. 

The guy that organised it all has a couple of support vehicles and he supplies the tents and food - so all they have to do each day is ride!!!

They were having a ball and loving it - 12 people getting to know each other each day riding and camping and socialising along the way!!

Good luck to them - but damm sure I would not like to be out on these roads with the road trains and my god they must get a good whiff on recent roadkill as they dodge it riding along!!!!

We were soon back at camp relaxing by the waterside at the weir with the Pelicans.

I headed up to "check out" the loos and came back armed with a mobile number for a local who would deliver some firewood for $10.

Since we did not want to unhitch for his one night and head out of town to collect firewood I gave the number a call. 

Sure enough it would not be a problem to bring some down for us and about a half hour later mum, dad and the young son turn up with our firewood in the trailer. It was gidgee - my favourite firewood  - and for the $10 we had enough for a couple of nights.

They were a lovely local family and after a bit of a chat with them I set up the fire ready to cook a small BBQ for dinner tonight.

The challenge cooking the BBQ was the interest of a couple of Kookaburras - so we had to be very vigilant watching over the sausages as they cooked.

My little barbie did a perfect job cooking the sausages yet again and we enjoyed a yummy dinner in this very pleasant and relaxing spot.

We are getting much cooler nights now as we head home and instead of looking for shady spots for our stopovers we are looking for the open sunny spots.

Day 37 (5th July, 2015): Into Winton to see "Mel & Susie on Tour"

Today we are heading south on the Landsborough Highway to Winton where we are planning to stay at the Matilda Caravan Park and go to see the nightly show they have there during the peak season.

Unfortunately this morning somewhere between Cloncurry and McKinlay we hit a large Kite. We had slowed for some road kill ahead as we usually do and watched for the birds to disperse - but unfortunately this Kite wheeled back and slammed into the bull bar. He nearly managed to miss us - but got caught on the far left of the bull bar just in front of the headlight.

We hoped it may drop off along the way Into McKinlay (there was nowhere for us to easily stop before that) - as we were not looking forward to having to prise is remains from the bull bar.

We pulled into McKInlay with it still attached but getting it off wasn't too bad.

We felt very sad for it - but we are lucky that we have not hit anything before this with the amount of kites and wedge tailed Eagles you see on the road kill out here. We were also pretty lucky it did not hit the windscreen.

With about 160km still to get us to Winton today we made a morning tea stop over at Kynuna Roadhouse (which is about the only thing at Kynuna) and found the people in the van parked next to us feeding a couple of Brolgas and their baby in the car parking across the road. 

The baby was very cute - about half the size of the adults and the mother was feeding it - putting bits of bread in its mouth.

Stupid me didn't get a photo - I think I must have been still traumatised from hitting the poor Kite!

We arrived in Winton and travelling down the Main Street we were shocked to see that the Waltzing Matilda Centre had burnt down. A fire went through this fantastic centre a few weeks back and it is now closed. 

We were very sad about this as it was an extremely well presented and interesting major tourism drawcard in Winton. We had spent a good few hours visiting this centre when we were here 2 years ago. 

The town is determined to rebuild it (hoping to have it rebuilt by the end of 2016) - and will be trying to rebuild their collection and start off again in a temporary location in the interim - they are apparently getting lots of offers of exhibit items and copies of documents from other museums to kick off their collection again.

The Matilda Caravan Park is quite a nice and popular caravan park - with lots of chooks, chickens, goats, a sheep and Banjo the Alpaca living there for visiting kids (that included us) to enjoy. 

We were set up here and enjoying lunch - giving us plenty of time to get a load of washing on and dried this afternoon.

We were looking forward to the show tonight - with "Mel and Susie" the resident bush poets here at the Matilda Caravan Park for the busy season. We had heard about this duo act the last time we visited Winton but did not get ourselves to see them.

The other interesting thing about today was the lovely Lyn that we were camped next to. She came out of her RV and sat with us in the afternoon sun and we learnt that she was we think just shy of 80yrs old, had been travelling solo in her camper for 18yrs and the camper was her home.

Her hometown was Newcastle and she has children living currently in Belmont North, Fern Bay & Wangi Wangi.

She is also a bush poet and as we sat there she told us some of her original works - which were very very good. She was also going to be performing a short work in the show tonight with Mel and Susie.

Lyn had kept us talking so long we had to rush ourselves to get showered and dinner over to be at the show for the 7pm start.

Well - what amazing talents these girls are!!! They combine bush poetry and comedy into a fantastically funny and very polished show. They are also both very good singers. 

We laughed and laughed so much all throughout their show and also enjoyed the slot that Lyn did.

They actually do a different show every night over a week - so they get campers coming back more than the one night.

Day 36 (July 4th, 2015): Back in QLD - Camooweal to Cloncurry

This morning we left Camooweal heading for Cloncurry for our next stop over on the way home. 

We are well and truly back in QLD now ----

--- and vehicle Max Speed limit is again 110km/ hr - which means we no longer see the insane 130km/hr speed limit road signs that you now see along all the major highways in NT. Fortunately we did not encounter too any drivers or road trains doing this speed and you can be sure that we were not one of them.

We are starting to also see a few goats around the roadside out along this road today as we head firstly into Mt Isa for a last grocery shop to get us home and also for a shower.

The visitors centre at Mt Isa has hot showers for travellers for just $2.00 - and since we had now had 2x free camps with no facilities we were looking for a nice shower.

Just coming into the western outskirts of Mt Isa we were pulled over by Police doing a roadside check of most of the vehicles coming from the west. They had been doing this for a couple of days looking to catch people bringing fireworks back into QLD after purchasing them in NT. Fireworks are sold to the general public in NT coming up to Territory Day and they are allowed to be used only on this day. 

Fireworks are banned completely for the general public in QLD - but people do try to bring them back into the state. We chatted a bit with a young policewoman and she advised they were catching a few today already.

We were simply asked where we had come from today and were we carrying any fireworks - whi'stanither couple of cops had a bit of a glance in the back of the ute and the canopy. Whilst they had you stopped they also did a breathalyser test and then we were on our way again.

Mt Isa was a long stop today - as along with the shopping and showering we also had a nice lunch at the Visitors Centre before heading off for Cloncurry. 

(No sight seeing in Mt Isa as we have been through here and had a night, and a day, to look around on our previous trip a couple of years ago)

It was surprising how we felt with being back again in the major centre that is Mt Isa with its traffic lights.

Cloncurry is quite a reasonable centre for this Qld Nth West region but we were not really able to spend any time looking around this trip - so when we arrived around 3 pm we were looking for a camp for the night and just happy to settle in and enjoy a relaxing afternoon in the warm sun.

We had been trying to work out our route for the rest of the journey home and tonight we settled with going back pretty much the way we came - but a lot slower and staying at a couple of places that we have really enjoyed on our previous travels through this part of QLD.

So tomorrow we will be heading for Winton.

Day 36 (July 4th, 2015): Back in QLD - Camooweal to Cloncurry

This morning we left Camooweal heading for Cloncurry for our next stop over on the way home. 

We are well and truly back in QLD now ----

--- and vehicle Max Speed limit is again 110km/ hr - which means we no longer see the insane 130km/hr speed limit road signs that you now see along all the major highways in NT. Fortunately we did not encounter too any drivers or road trains doing this speed and you can be sure that we were not one of them.

We are starting to also see a few goats around the roadside out along this road today as we head firstly into Mt Isa for a last grocery shop to get us home and also for a shower.

The visitors centre at Mt Isa has hot showers for travellers for just $2.00 - and since we had now had 2x free camps with no facilities we were looking for a nice shower.

Just coming into the western outskirts of Mt Isa we were pulled over by Police doing a roadside check of most of the vehicles coming from the west. They had been doing this for a couple of days looking to catch people bringing fireworks back into QLD after purchasing them in NT. Fireworks are sold to the general public in NT coming up to Territory Day and they are allowed to be used only on this day. 

Fireworks are banned completely for the general public in QLD - but people do try to bring them back into the state. We chatted a bit with a young policewoman and she advised they were catching a few today already.

We were simply asked where we had come from today and were we carrying any fireworks - whi'stanither couple of cops had a bit of a glance in the back of the ute and the canopy. Whilst they had you stopped they also did a breathalyser test and then we were on our way again.

Mt Isa was a long stop today - as along with the shopping and showering we also had a nice lunch at the Visitors Centre before heading off for Cloncurry. 

(No sight seeing in Mt Isa as we have been through here and had a night, and a day, to look around on our previous trip a couple of years ago)

It was surprising how we felt with being back again in the major centre that is Mt Isa with its traffic lights.

Cloncurry is quite a reasonable centre for this Qld Nth West region but we were not really able to spend any time looking around this trip - so when we arrived around 3 pm we were looking for a camp for the night and just happy to settle in and enjoy a relaxing afternoon in the warm sun.

We had been trying to work out our route for the rest of the journey home and tonight we settled with going back pretty much the way we came - but a lot slower and staying at a couple of places that we have really enjoyed on our previous travels through this part of QLD.

So tomorrow we will be heading for Winton.

Day 34/ 35 (July 2nd / 3rd, 2015): The Tablelands Highway - now that was fun - NOT!!

We sadly drove out of King Ash Bay this morning. I think I could have happily stayed another couple of days - but if we are not to be driving long days and rushing home we need to get on the move again heading South West towards Brissie.

We were seen off with hugs and well wishes for a safe journey from our neighbourly campers - Spud and Pat, Diane and Allan, Phil and his wife (lovely lady but just can't bloody remember her name). Thanks guys for making this a very pleasant few days at King Ash Bay.

Back we drove to Cape Crawford (& the Heartbreak Hotel) where we took a left turn onto the Tablelands Highway.

A bit hilly and windy at first - and then the "forever flat" landscape of the Barkly Tableland.

Lots of people had warned us about the Tablelands Highway and what it was like - and it lived up to expectations - as the crappiest "highway"  we have travelled this whole trip. 

Very tiring and stressful driving - always looking to avoid the worst of the rough edges of the one-lane tar when you need to get off the tar for other vehicles, caravanners - and to top it off - road trains are coming at you. 

Then throw in worrying about the road trains coming up behind you and also dodging the road kill on the road, the live wallabies/ Roos hopping across the road, wandering stock and the Wedge-tailed Eagles that typically are very slow to move off any road kill on the roads.

A roadside stop for lunch (Kiena) where who should role in but Dennis and Robin - they had decided to take the same route into Mt Isa (as Dennis needed to get to see an Opthamologist and have one of his eyes checked out).  They told us they had nice fresh fish for dinner and were going to camp overnight at the next free camp on this road - "Brunette Downs". They invited us to join them for a BBQ fish dinner.

We were safely in camp by about 2.30pm and enjoyed a lovely late afternoon of drinks and nibbles with them - and a nice beer battered fish dinner next to a little campfire - all out in the middle of absolutely nowhere on the Barkly Tableland.

My kind of camping!!

It was another gorgeous outback sunset to top off the evening!!

And a full moon - low in the eastern sky and early to rise - just on sunset, this evening.

We were able to get well off the road at this camp stop - as there were many tracks leading back off the main roadside stop. 

It was a great overnight free camp - a bit windy out here on the Barkly Tableland - but we had no truck noise (where we were well back off the road) and we had a good cosy nights sleep.

it's starting to get much cooler nights for us now!

We woke to a beautiful clear morning - bit cool but no wind - and the sun started warming us up pretty quickly. 

On the way out this morning we were amazed to notice this birds nest that was built at the top of the old disused windmill at the road side stop!!

We were facing up to more driving on the Tablelands Highway - but only the 150km into Barkly Homestead - where we had morning tea and said our goodbyes to Robin & Dennis. We would be making our way a bit faster than them today (Friday) as they didn't want to get into Mt Isa until Monday.

We made good time after quite a lengthy stopover at Barkly Honestead and we were crossing the border back into QLD in good time.

By 3pm we had been into Camooweal for bottle of wine and were set up at Camooweal Billabong (another free camp site just west of the little town of Camooweal) with lots of other travellers.

The General store here is also the post office for this small population of 310.

A monument in Camooweal to the Drovers of the region.