On the road after breakfast by 7am. An unexpected lovely drive out of Mt Isa.
Took a few videos of the rolling hills and escarpments along the way. Stopped at the bakery at Cloncurry for a sausage roll (Roy) and hot chocolate (both). Back on the road, and back into vast grasslands. Various little bridges over waterways which still had water, but not moving. Flocks of little birds in the vegetation around the water. Some cattle. Pit stop at McKinley. Snapped Walkabout Creek hotel as an homage to Crocodile Dundee (the movie). Plenty of circling kites. One dead red ‘roo. Lots of winged insects deflected before hitting the windscreen. Sporadic groups of cattle. Areas of fencing where grass has been blown into clumps on the fence posts. Lots of butterflies flying over the road. Mostly missing us…
Pasture starting to green up, and increasing numbers of multicoloured cattle. Mix of Brahman and Angus. At roadworks, hundreds of butterflies congregating around damp patches on the dirt road. Stopped for lunch at roadside stop. Strange rocky outcrops. So windy everything had to be weighted down or it blew away, including our lunch. Tricky to make sandwiches as all the ingredients kept blowing away! Moved the car for a windbreak but it didn’t help. Lots of butterflies, white, flitting around. Back into vast grasslands in all directions. In dinosaur country now but haven’t seen any yet😆 Road is getting lots of repair but is pretty rough in some areas.
Got expensive fuel at Winton. No Optus signal, so couldn’t use Petrol Spy. In fact, couldn’t even find the petrol stations! Thanks to the car gps we did find both fuel stops and put some fuel in to get us to Blackall. Hoping it will be cheaper there. Drive through long flat plains and then into Longreach, home of Qantas. Large roofed structure turned out to be a cover for historical Qantas planes. Pretty water tower in town. Quite a thriving town after the last few! No stopping.
After Longreach, we passed through Ilfracombe where there was a long line up of old cars and machinery on the road into town. We backed up and took a video as it was so odd! Ilfracombe Machinery and Heritage Museum.
On to Barcaldine. After Longreach, an increasing numbers of kangaroo road kill. Brief pit stop at Barcaldine. Looked at the Tree of Knowledge and bought some beer. Next stop for the night, Blackall 101km. At 4200km on the trip meter, spotted out first live kangaroo! Then we saw more and more, and as it was dusk we were very careful. They are eastern grey kangaroos, not reds- we did see a couple of reds though.
Once we arrived in Blackall, we found some fuel at a reasonable price and filled the car up. We backtracked a block or 2 to the Oasis Motel where we were booked in for the night. What we did not bargain on was that the rodeo was in town. This meant that there was no one in reception. We had had no communication from them during the day about any codes or room numbers so we were in a pickle. There was a phone number to ring but there is no Optus network in this town so we couldn’t ring. Fortunately, we were talking to another couple who were looking lost because, due to the rodeo, all the food places in town were closed and they were wondering what they were going to eat for dinner. Fortunately, they were on the Telstra network and we were able to ring the reception number on their phone, and find out what room number we were and that the key was under the mat! There was no good place to park the car with the trailer so we ended up parking on the street outside. Someone told Roy there might be a pub open so we went hunting around the streets but to no avail.
Once we established that there was a microwave in the hotel room we went across the street to the little supermarket (only one open) and bought some microwave dinners and brought them back for heating. They weren’t too bad. When I went to have a shower, I let the hot water run forever it seemed and still no joy so I ended up using the washer for a ‘bird bath’. Very disappointing. Roy came in and ran the shower even longer and finally got a bit of warm water for a lovely hot shower! The hot water in this region does smell very sulpherous though!
