Red Centre to Sea

Hi everyone!

As we left Alice, for the first time on this journey we had friends and family to say goodbye to! We said goodbye to Sue and Geoff at the caravan park after having dinner with them the night before at the local English pub in Alice. We then headed to Em and Sandors to say farewell to what seemed like our new family members! Em made sure Stuart was alert for the journey with the strongest brewed cup of tea in the world! Made to Em’s usual taste apparently, but Stuart thought he was never going to sleep again! Ha ha.

We headed north east along the scenic Arltunga Road which joins the Plenty Highway a little further out of town. Whilst in Alice, Stuart had rear suspension air bags fitted to the car so it was better equipped for towing and the heavy loads. An extra precaution against the Plenty Highway, which is all dirt and only recently opened after heavy rains! The car handled much better with the trailer in tow, however about 150km’s out of town, Stuart noticed a little rattle - the new airbag mounting brackets had worked loose and had to be tightened up! No problem for Mr-fix-it though!

The Plenty Highway was an interesting drive, with conditions varying from smooth and flat, to rough and corrugated! We had a couple of breakages, with a few cans of beer popping their lids (much to Stuart’s dismay!) and a carton of milk splitting open in one of the tubs. We didn’t find this until we smelt it!

We reached the border feeling great and excited about the next leg of the journey. Our plans were to visit Lawn Hill National Park near Mt Isa and then head to Cairns via the coastal towns in the gulf. But our plans changed when we encountered the Queensland National Park booking system and realised we couldn’t get into Lawn Hill as soon as we would have liked. Instead of hanging around Mt Isa for a week waiting, we decided to cut straight through the middle of the Queensland outback and get to those swimming beaches ASAP!!!

Our journey across the outback was quite fun and full of more country quirkiness! We stopped two nights in the town of Winton and were entertained for free each night in the caravan park by country singers and the Two Short Sheilas who were champion bush-poets and comedians. They were fantastic! We made a day trip from Winton to Lark Quarry, where footprints of a dinosaur stampede had been discovered. There were 3,300 footprints and you could see where the large carnivorous dinosaur had charged in amongst two types of smaller dino’s and had scattered them into a panic. We were both really impressed!

On the way back from Lark Quarry, I had a drive! Look out – everyone! I got into a situation where a car was overtaking me on the right, and ahead on the road was a dead kangaroo (a couple of weeks old at least!) As I couldn’t swerve right..... Stuart yells “Straddle it!” and I planted two wheels straight through the middle of the rotting carcass. Nice one Mish! Lovely bits of dead roo all up the car!

Stuart was hopeful that the dead roo was dried out enough that it would be ok...that was until we got back to the camper and he opened the passenger door! At this point Stuart decides it’s can be cleaned later as he is really tired and needed a sleep. Only, as he reclined in the camp chair, the wind changed and he couldn’t sleep because of the stench!! I creep off the front office to find where the car can be washed and return with directions to a truck bay with a high pressure hose. When we get there we arrive only seconds after a truckie has finished hosing down his livestock road train. As Stuart is washing the car, he exclaims that he’s not sure if the car is clean, as all he can smell is the cow shit he’s standing in!!

A quick overnight stop at Porcupine Gorge National Park (not sure how it got it’s name!) and on to Townsville. How the weather can change – rugged up in the morning and then breaking out the shorts in the afternoon. Once camp was set up, it was into the bathers and on the bikes to the beach. Yes the swim was fantastic!

My little ride on the bike must have worked all the collected bulldust into the brakes, as the next morning, the front brakes on my bike were locked on. Stuart bled the brake lines (their hydraulic) but it still didn’t fix the problem, so we rang a couple of bike shops who couldn’t help us until the middle of next week! So it was off to Bunnings to buy a couple of tools and Stuart spent the afternoon pulling the brakes apart and fixing them!

The bike problems didn’t stop there, as Stuart’s bike had a series of punctures. After many repairs, it was off to the bike shop for some new harder runner tyres which were fitted and finally we seem to have sorted all of the gremlins!

We also spent one night at a multicultural festival, consuming a mix of food, from El Salvadorian tamalies, Thai green papaya salad, finished off with Spanish churros, whilst watching a mix of entertainment from all over the world.

Today, we are off up into the rainforest and mountains for a couple of nights, before heading back out to the coast near Hinchinbrook Island.

Bye for now!