Category: Australia

386 km

After packing away and Johan helping our neighbour with an injection fault in his car, we headed to Charters Towers to refuel and buy some food.

Took the opportunity to take some photos of the nicely restored old buildings in town.

Charters Towers,  like most of the towns around here, have a very strong mining background as well as regional farming hubs.

After camp was set up we headed off for a short walk around the walking track of the station. The Dam track lead us around three dams and through the bush. We were joined by many of the caravan park campers , some with sundowners in hand 🙂

No doubt, a highlight of the trip thus far… the showers here… clean , hot water …what more can one ask for?? The name of said bathrooms is also great…The Wee Stables ! Hehehe

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595 km

We left Bluff without having breakfast as we were heading to Emerald to pick up a good coffee and have good signal for Christo to be able to have a meeting. We walked around Emerald Botanical Gardens while Christo handed over. The botanical gardens are a bit patchy; but are a nice place to exercise around.

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After the handover meeting we had a quick stop at the Big Easel…one of Australia’s many BIG things. It is a huge enlargement of Van Gogh’s Sunflower painting.

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All these mining town roads are really bumpy with the heavy loads transported on them, including cattle.

Lunch was outside the closed Claremont Museum with mandatory photo of the group in front of a dragline bucket.

The road to Charters Towers is VERY long and boring! There is a warning sign saying that there is a high accident rate for 350km!!! Yes, kilometers!! That summarises it!

Our camp for the night was outside Charters Towers,  again a free camp with toilets and cold water showers

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423 km

Today we planned to reach beyond Emerald. However we diverted to Hurdle Gully Lookout, an unexpected 11km of dirt road followed to an unassuming view. We did have lunch here though.

The most exciting part of the day was driving through the coal mining town of Blackwater… yes… when you don’t stop anywhere and are off the beaten track…then this is excitement …hahahaha.

We ended up pitching camp at a very small pub backyard van park, in Bluff. Bluff has a shunting yard for coal trains, and is right along the highway. Thus its definitely not a quiet nights sleep!! It was too late to get to Emerald that day though.

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458 km

All excited and packed we left Brisbane early on Saturday morning. Two vehicles: Toyota Hilux towing trailer and Toyota Land cruiser. Five members make up our travel party: me, the documenter of the trip, Lara and Johan, as well as Christo and Matt. Matt just recently arrived from Vietnam. I’m the 5^th wheel and not a car owner , just lucky to be in for the ride J .

Several hours north of Brisbane we got signal and noticed that Brisbane is going into Covid lockdown from 4pm. We thought lucky we made it out way before the time! The instruction being lockdown if you can. We discussed our current situation , checked if any of us had been in hotspots, which we had not. Further, we decided to self isolate in the car, free camping, away from people  and cancelled all our accommodation up the coast, as we went up a much less busy inland route.

Our camp for the night was approximately 20km down a dirt road, sponsored by a rural fire station. Was great: had toilets, picnic tables and BBQ. The best was that we had it all to ourselves!

Everyone had a pretty cold night! I’m in my hiking tent and sleeping on 2x foam pads. I used my buff as a beanie and had my warm jacket on. It was 7C.

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