Charleville To Bourke

We could not believe the amount of road kill on the side of the road from Charleville to Bourke. We have seen it a lot in our travels at various points but it really stood out in this particular stretch of the journey. Having said that we also saw many animals on the roadside and surrounding paddocks including Emu, Bilby, Goats, Horses, Cattle, Sheep and Kangaroos which are nice to see in their own environment.

We arrived at Bourke mid afternoon, we set up and then popped into town to have a look around. This time around almost everything was shut because it was a Sunday. In fact all of the shops in the entire town were barraged up which wasn't giving a great first impression of the town.

On further inspection today we found that its a town full of history and not as bad as we first thought. Having said that I don't know that Id ever stay here for an extended period of time. We spent some time at the Back 'O' Bourke exhibition centre, followed by a wander through town around the river area. We then explored off road areas before heading back to have our ride on the paddle steamer.

Longreach To Charleville

Leaving the warmth behind us. Spent the day on the road today and had every intention of spending a couple of hours at Cunnamulla on our way to Charleville only to find that the town was completely shut because it was a Saturday. So we continued onto Charleville. We booked a 7.30pm session at the Cosmos Centre to learn about astrology. Much to our disappointment they cancelled the evening due to cloud cover. So that was our experience of Charleville!

Longreach - Qantas Museum

Chris and I decided that going out for breakfast would be a  nice thing to do this morning seeing as the day was once again so magnificent. So we walked into town to find that the best venue for breakfast was only open on Saturdays and Sundays. So that's now on tomorrows agenda before we head toward greener pastures. With empty tummy's on board we did a spot of shopping and walked back to the van for an early lunch before our afternoon at the Qantas Museum.

The Qantas Museum was great. We started off with a 1.5 hour jet tour followed by  a wander through the museum. We then booked a tandem flight simulator which was a fabulous experience for Chris and the kids. I enjoyed watching and taking photos because I don't even like to pretend to enjoy flying. Lastly we wandered through the original Qantas hanger before heading home to prepare dinner and do a little boomerang throwing with Lachie.

Standing Inside The Jets Engine

Mel In The Flight Simulator

747 That We Had A Tour Through. Absolutely Huge When You Stand Next To Them.

Longreach - Stockmans Hall Of Fame

Longreach is well known for the Stockman Hall Of Fame and the Qantas museum both of which we plan to visit whilst we are here. Firstly we thought we would start off with the Stockman Hall Of Fame, it is situated just down the road from the caravan park so we had a slower start to the day. It's certainly well worth a visit. So much to be learnt in the museum about life in the early years as a stockman in comparison to how they manage their stock today. Whilst we were here we booked a dinner and show package. The show was fabulous, lots of humour and the animals had obviously had a lot of time invested in them because they were very clever. I was particularly impressed with the horses. Tomorrow is our last day in Longreach so we plan to make the most of this beautiful sunshine and blue skies like we did at lunchtime today when we wandered around the Thompson River. The outback is such a beautiful place to explore.

Stockman Show

Thompson River

Mount Isa - School Of The Air and Isa Underground Mine Tour

So much to explore at Mt Isa. We particularly enjoyed the School Of Air and the Mt Isa Mine Tour.

 

The school of air currently has 160 students located throughout outback Queensland and Northern Territory. We were lucky enough to go into a studio when a teacher was taking a grade two class. We heard the interaction between teacher and student which was done via phone and the internet. The kids hook up with their teacher for 1/2 and hour a day via phone and participate in classes of no more than ten students. Our kids thought that would be fabulous!

Each family had to do a plaque that showed life on their property to be on display at the school in Mt Isa.

This boys dad is a fencing contractor and travels for his job. He does his schoolwork via satellite phone. He has to move far away from his Dad whilst doing his schoolwork as he has to have the generator going so he can communicate with the school.

This is a Year 6 teacher taking her class in her sound proof classroom.

The mine tour and museum were very informative and the gentleman that was our guide for the afternoon was a real character. He has worked in the mines for approximately 20 years and is currently on long service leave. His name was "Smithy" and he had many interesting stories to tell. The mine that we toured was about 30 metres below ground level. We learnt a lot about how they mine for copper, zinc and iron in Mt Isa and had the opportunity to try using some of the equipment. Lachie in particular really enjoyed this experience. He was up the front ready for all of the hands on participation.

Lachies 2nd Blog To 3/4 EW

Hi everyone,

We are currently in Mt Isa. Mt Isa is a town that has one of the largest mines in the world. They mine for copper, silver, lead and zinc. It's been reasonably warm compared to what we have had most of the time on the way up. We probably wont travel any further North and we will take our time coming home. Today we visited the underground hospital that was built in 1942 because when Darwin was bombed by the Japanese in the world war Mt Isa thought that they would be next on the list because Mt Isa was fairly rich from mining minerals. We also toured a museum to learn about mining. Tomorrow we are going into the mine for a tour of a replica underground mine. But today we had a treat of McDonalds for lunch and Dad and I shared a Big Mac that had 4 patties, 2 on the top and two on the bottom. And a quarter pounder that had 3 patties. Altogether there was 7 patties and we had 3 and a half each in two burgers, it was delicious!

A little while ago we went to a hot spring called Dalhousie Springs it was 38 degrees and the water is heated from underground. We also went to the edge of the Simpson Desert and climbed Big Red which is the second biggest out of all of the sandunes in the desert.

 I met this kid at Uluru called Orlando and his brother Jack. They both played soccer but couldn't because their trip interfered with it.    

We've done lots of other stuff but you can read about that in the other blogs.

From Lachie

The Hospital Beds In The Underground Hospital in 1942

 

The Hospital Beds Today

 

Me On A Piece Of Mining Equipment

Birdsville To Mt Isa QLD

The Sky Was So Pretty As We Headed Out Of Birdsville This Morning

We are over the red dirt roads, so we've headed for more of outback QLD that you can get to via bitumen. So here we are in Mt Isa Qld.

Birdsville QLD

There is not a lot to Birdsville. There is the iconic Birdsville Pub, Bakery, Roadhouse, Airport and Information Centre. Having said that we managed to fill in a day wandering around and really enjoyed the day we had here. It is another town full of so much history. We discovered that 40% of the towns power is generated from a geothermal plant.  Power is generated by steam from water collected via a bore that reaches the Artesian Basin. We spent a couple of hours at the towns information centre reading material and watching videos on the history of the area. The fun part of the day was heading out to Big Red. Big Red is 40 metres high and is the first of the 1100 sand dunes that you encounter when crossing the Simpson Desert. We played here on the dune and the kids loved the experience. Crossing the Simpson Desert will have to remain on our bucket list for the time being.

Cooling Ponds From The Geothermal Power Plant

 

Big Red Sandune - Simpson Desert -  The Picture Does Not Do It Justice As It Stands 40 Metres High

 

Standing On Top Of Big Red

 

 

Iconic Birdsville Pub

Marree To Birdsville

The morning started by having a wander around Marree. It's quite sad the history behind this town. The Ghan railway was a lifeline for the town and the day the last train left unhappy locals tried to decouple the carriages. The town changed forever at this point and what was once a thriving town is now a sleepy hollow.

 The road from Marree to Birdsville is approximately 530km. We planned to do this in two days as we thought that we would have a few sights to see along the way. We found that there wasn't a lot to see along the track. We discussed the history behind the Birdsville Track with the kids whilst on the road and decided to make the dash across the track in one day. It was a long rocky road that is pretty much cattle and desert country. The way the landscape changes as you cross it is beautiful and difficult to describe. It is however one of those roads that we wont bother doing again.

Old Ghan Railway Line At Marree

Tom Kruse Drove From Marree To Birdsville For 20 Years To Pick Up And Deliver Mail In This Truck.

Camp Kitchen At The Oasis Caravan Park We Stayed At In Marree - Pretty Basic But I Guess It Does The Job!

William Creek To Marree via Lake Eyre North

Halligan Bay Lake Eyre

Lake Eyre was on our to do list. The turn off to Lake Eyre Nth was 6km down the road from the William Creek campsite. We travelled a further 60km inland to Halligan Bay Lake Eyre. As far as the eye can see is the salt lake bed. Not easy to describe but a great sight to see!

From there we stopped at various points of interest along the Oodnadatta track and finished up in Marree for the night before we head up the Birdsville Track. 

As You Can See We Enjoyed Taking Pics Of The Old Unused Bridges Along The Old Ghan Railway

Old Ghan Rail Line - The Things Someone Will Do To Get The Perfect Picture

Blanche Cup - Oodnadatta Track

Eringa Waterhole To William Creek

Algebuckina Bridge

Algebuckina Bridge - We enjoyed taking a few pics here

As we were leaving Eringa Waterhole we noticed that there were some ruins nearby our campsite. So we headed off to have a look at those before we hit the road.  The road from Eringa was rocky in sections so you had to drive carefully playing dodge the rocks. When we hit Hamilton Station it was all smooth sailing to Oodnadatta.The landscape changed from flat and sparse to undulating hills after Hamilton Station and onto Oodnadatta.  The Oodnadatta track was in very good condition compared to the roads near Mt Dare. We arrived at Oodnadatta at lunchtime and went to the Pink Roadhouse to top up on fuel and have a bite to eat. We had been using the Pink Roadhouse mud map to navigate our way around the region and it’s one of those icons that you just have to stop and have a look at. Fuel was $2.33 per litre so it was an expensive stop at $266.00 for fuel. We continued onto Williams Creek stopping at various points of interest along the way.

Mt Dare To Eringa Waterhole via Dalhousie Springs And Ruins

Eringa Waterhole

Eringa Waterhole - Lachie Collected The Wood For The Campfire

Dalhousie Springs - Water Temperature Was 38 Degrees

Dalhousie Ruins - We Really Enjoyed Taking Pictures Here

Today was a lazy morning which began with delicious bacon and egg rolls. We packed up had a wander around the Mt Dare Pub looking at all of the old signs and machinery lying around the place. It was really neat and tidy and is one of those icons in the outback that must be visited.

We set off for Dalhousie Springs at around 10.00am. Again the track was good in some sections which lull you into a false sense of security and then it becomes rough and rugged. Not so much for the car but more so for the caravan. Nothing we encountered was impassable. You just needed to go slowly to avoid any damage from rocks and deep crevices made during the wet season on the road.

We ditched the caravan at Blood Springs and headed on into Dalhousie Springs. The kids really enjoyed there swim there as the water was approximately 37 degrees. The springs were a lot larger than I had imagined and was a really well maintained area that catered for tourists. The area was particularly busy with travellers coming in from the Simpson Desert, Birdsville Track and Oodnadatta Track.  After having a swim we drove a further 9km to the Dalhousie Ruins. This was a fabulous spot for photos.

We wanted an easier day today so from here we drove to Eringa Waterhole. We set up camp, had dinner, did some maintenance before signing off for the evening.

Alice Springs To Mount Dare via Lambert Centre

We left Alice Springs just after 9.30am having taken the caravan through the car wash to remove a few layers of dust before adding another layer later on that day.  We arrived at Kulgera at lunchtime, deflated the tyres and set off on the unsealed road towards Finke. It appeared that no one else was opting to travel this route as we didn’t see a car for a very long time. The road was in great condition for a dirt road and it made the journey relatively easy on the car and caravan.

We were making good time so we opted to take a detour down the 4WD track to the Lambert Centre. This marks the exact centre of Australia. It is one of those places that we will never go to again but we can proudly say that we have stood in the centre of Australia. We completed the visitor’s book and these records are held in the National Archives. They started taking record of visitors in 1991 and the first book had 9000 visitors recorded.

We continued onto Mt Dare and made it there by 6.30pm. The last 20-30kms were a little hairy as it was getting dark and was difficult to see the corrugations.  Mt Dare Hotel is the northernmost hotel in South Australia and an iconic outback location. The facilities were pretty basic and all of the buildings were surrounded by a levy bank to prevent flooding during the wet season. We were all pretty tired and settled for an early night.

Lambert Centre - Marks The Exact Centre Of Australia

Mt Dare Hotel - Australian Icon

Alice Springs NT

Today was all about recharging! We had housework to do, a car to clean and food to restock up on. Chris and Lachie went to the National Rail and Road Museum and that was about as eventful as it got today. We are now ready to hit the road tomorrow and tackle the Oodnadatta and Birdsville Tracks. Going to be offline for a while now so catch you soon!