An absolutely amazing thing happened this morning. Something
that it has taken us nearly 200 days to accomplish! We left the rest area before
7 other vans! While this I am sure doesn’t excite those who are not of the caravanning
fraternity, and even less so for those
in the greying part of said fraternity, but for us Grooters (Grey at the roots)
it is a massive achievement!!
Happy with our efforts we rolled south, pulling up to talk
with a broken down car by the side of the road 15kms north of the Burke and
Wills Road House. The poor bugger chassis had snapped and he had been there
since 1pm yesterday waiting for the RACQ from Mt Isa to come and get him. As a
note this is the second time we have seen the same thing happen to a Mitsubishi
Triton, so anybody considering what 4WD to buy might be well advised to steer
clear of these.
At the road house we followed up the RACQ and found that (at
around 11) it had just been dispatched, we let a north bound traveller know and
asked him to pass the message on, in the hope they could at least ‘relax’ as
much as they could.
We rolled into Cloncurry, had a quick lunch and then did a
MASSIVE stock up. This was the first Woolworths we have seen for a few weeks so
we parted with $400 there, filled the diesel tank, another $100, and a carton
of beer had gone from $65 to $50 so I had better have one of them as well as some
wine for the little lady and then $60 worth of gas bottles!
Once we had made our donation to the towns economy we
visited the original QANTAS hangar that still stands today and then went to see the RFDS meuseum but it was $25, even though it would have been good for the boys to see we had already spent enough today. We moved onto the tourist information centre and were asked for $30 to visit their
small museum! I almost felt like taking everything back, instead we leaned over
the entry gate to have a brief ‘look’ at Burke’s original water bottle (which is a pretty significant item) and a tree,
well part of one, that had been blazed at one of the camps near Cloncurry by
Burke and Wills’ party. I think I need to write to the local council and thank
them for their hospitality!
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| Burke's water bottle is the flat black thing lying in the middle |
We happily left Cloncurry behind us and drove 40 kms east to
a rest area. The country out here could not be in any starker contrast to what we
have seen all the way across the top end, where ‘paddocks’ have been filled
with waist deep grass so thick you can hardly walk through it. Even two hundred
kilometres to the north, while the feed was thinning, there was still a lot around.
Now the paddocks surrounding us were virtual wastelands, with hardly a blade of
grass to be seen. Initially I thought it might have been poor farming but it
continued kilometre, after kilometre. I felt really sorry for the poor graziers
who are trying to make a living off this barren land.
At the rest area the boys were stoked to find a few head of
cattle in the paddock next to it, so the whip was out and off they went chasing
the poor half starving buggers across their paddock that resembled and Indian cricket pitch rather than a grassy
savannah. The remainder of the day and into the night was uneventful except for
De’s chair finally giving way to the rigors of the road. The supporting bolts had long been replaced by bent nails
and the sort so I think I will be off to the hardware store in the morning!
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| Yet another magnificent sunset! |
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