Blackall to Lightning Ridge 610Km
Out the door by 7am after a proper breakfast (carried with us). Beautiful early light. Fortunately, still low grasslands as a kangaroo hopped across in front of us. We could see it coming, so all ok. Definitely the time of day for it. Barcoo river looks a perfect place to camp. Tambo. Quite a lot of prickly pear in the fields. Saw a bottle tree.
Fuel at Charleville. GPS sent us off on a shortcut and side road that we didn’t fancy so we backtracked and went via Cunnamulla instead- a much better road. Red dirt, golden grasses and olive-coloured trees/shrubs. Red road sides reminiscent of Broome- Emus!! A couple of small groups. Not expected! Lots of groups of emus and singles. More dead red kangaroos. No live ones. Lots of water by the road coming into Cunnamulla, 2 emus at a puddle right by the road. An interesting encounter on the road as we approached a big truck coming towards us- he flashed his lights and we realised that someone was overtaking him! We pulled right off the road and the other car also went off the road on our side before seeing we had pulled over and got back on the road and drove past. Had motorbikes in back too! Could have been extremely nasty.
Lots of goats by the road. Road kill emu with small one next to it. Busy watching that and nearly ran over one on the other side! Lots of eastern greys on the road approaching dusk. Wallaby and other wallabies Cattle wandering by the road, Galahs on the road, Flocks of mid-sized dark birds. Pigeons on the roads. Magpies, Pee wees, Crows, Young red ‘roo across the road, Sheep, Young black cat, Mama pig and all the babies.
Arrived in Lightning Ridge just after dark and found our digs – the same place as we stayed at a few years before. It all looked very familiar and welcoming. A lady at the house came out and helped us with parking the trailer. We ended up opening up the big gates and going around the block which worked really well, unhitched the trailer and headed off to the local Bowls club for dinner. Roy had rissoles and I had a yummy calamari; Thai calamari salad which was delicious.
