Badger Galore
Staying ‘Up Over’ for a while.
In the once Forbidden Zone - Pt 1.
So...we are down at Ashby with Tracy for the week after the Queensland border opened to most of New South Wales (Parts of Greater Sydney are still declared Covid hotspots). We will still need a pass to re-enter Queensland on Sunday but we won't have to quarantine for a fortnight. It has been lovely to spend time by the river and the sea.
We are off camping further south tomorrow night to explore the coast around Wooli and Red Rock.
Here come the Cicadas.
Min Min Adventure - Day 10 - Charleville to Yuleba...No! Hang on a minute. Let's just go home instead.
So...we actually had a good night's sleep and were woken, about 6.00 am, by the inconsiderate people next to us talking loudly while making and eating their breakfast. We got up, packed up and went into Charleville for our breakfast before heading off on the road again to the East.
We stopped at Mitchell to visit the Great Artesian Spa. There were two pools, a hot one (about 40 degrees) and a cold one (about 25 degrees). The weather was hot and knocking 30 degrees today so I spent more time in the cold pool than the hot one. It was lovely and refreshing and a relaxing break from the journey.
We had planned to bush camp tonight at Yuleba but as we were gradually getting nearer to home, its pull became strong and we decided to just head home instead, even though it meant another 6 hour car journey. We returned home via Roma, Surat, Meanderra, Moonie, Billa Billa and Inglewood again. We took it in turns to drive the car and arrived home just before 7.00 pm.
Our Min Min Adventure is over but it will be nice to sleep in our own bed again tonight.
Min Min Adventure - Day 9 - Longreach to Charleville.
So...as I mentioned yesterday when we arrived at the Caravan Park at Longreach, the manager warned us of a stormy forecast. He gave us the opportunity to pitch our tent under a shelter. We did look at the weather forecast ourselves. It said '70% chance of 1 to 5 mm' and when it says that, where we live, we usually get nothing. So we pitched the tent on grass out in the open but in the shade of some trees.
Big mistake!
First the wind started, and this wind was worse than the wind we endured down at Betoota, Our poor little $50 Aldi tent was buffeted terrible. Will went out to peg down the guy ropes and then the rain began. There were two storms that passed over us last night and there was way more than 5 mms!
The first storm lasted about an hour from 12 midnight until 1.00am and after that our bedding was damp. I awoke about 4.00 am in the middle of the second and wilder storm. The lightning was like strobe lighting and the thunder rumbled loudly all around us. The strong wind was blowing a gale and was pushing the outer tent onto the inner and the rain was just coming straight through. By morning the bottom of our bedding was sodden but we had survived the night. We just packed up straight away, had breakfast in Longreach and then set off for Charleville.
I drove for the bit first and the road was flooded in three places but we got through OK.
Our first stop was Barcaldine to see the Tree of Knowledge, a dead ghost gum, that once proudly stood on the same site and it was the site of the reading of the Labour Party Manifesto in 1892 that lead to the formation of the Australian Labour Party.
The tree was poisoned and killed in 2006. They never found the culprits, but cuttings and a few clones still survive and we saw one of them at the Australian Heritage Workers Museum nearby, called 'The Young Un'.
After Barcaldine Will drove us to Balckall , where we saw The Roly Poly, a steel tumbleweed and the Black Stump.
We stopped in Tambo for a pie then I drove us on past Auguthella to Charleville. We drove over 500 kms today.
We have set up our tent again. The bedding has dried but the mattress is still a bit damp but not too bad now.
We went to a Thai restaurant for dinner and then headed on out to the Cosmos Centre here in Charleville. We spent nearly an hour there. Our guide was Matthew, from Stoke on Trent. He took us into a large shed and we were directed to sit on the spaced chairs before the roof opened up and the open sky was above us. We had the chance to look through two telescopes at Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and the Butterfly Cluster near Scorpio. It was great apart from the fact that Will and I were feasted upon by mosquitoes!
So far there is no wind and no rain is forecast tonight here but we have seen on the rain radar that Longreach is copping it again.
Our little road trip is coming to an end but we still have one more day and night before we get back to Frogknot.
Min Min Adventure - Day 8 - Winton to Longreach.
So...there was no unusual wake up call this morning but I did hear some weird grunting noises, in the night, from the guy sleeping out under the awning of the caravan next door. He sounded like a feral pig having a nightmare.
We noticed this morning that we had pitched our tent underneath the nest of a pair of Black Headed Cuckoo Shrikes. It didn't seem to put them off though.
We had to kill a bit of time this morning as our dinosaur tour was not until 11.00 am. So we went to see Winton's Musical Fence. I was underwhelmed.
The Australian Age of the Dinosaurs Museum is about 26 kms out of town. We got there te required 15 minutes before our tour began.
We didn't know what to expect but the tickets were $55 each, which seemed a bit steep, but the tour apparently took 3 hours.
The Museum is atop a 'Jump Up' , a large flat topped hill that rises up from the endless plains below. It was certainly a spectacular setting with a breath taking view.
First we had to head over for a tour of the Laboratory across the top of the rocky plateau. This bit was very much like the tour we had out at Eromanga but not quite as good though our guide was lovely and knowledgeable. This Museum all began after a local farmer discovered some unusual rocks o his property. Guess what they turned out to be? Yes Dinosaur fossils. That first find ended up in a museum in Brisbane but the farmer and his wife, following subsequent excavations, wanted their finds to stay locally and attract people to the area and help the town and so the Museum was born.
Here in the Laboratory we saw the same kinds of plaster encased fossil finds waiting to be properly freed from their mud casings and works in progress the partially excavated remains of various recent finds. We also saw the remains of the first Pterosaur found in Australia.
Our next session was back where we came in and there in 'The Collection' we saw the remains of four dinosaurs recovered in the Winton region. The most important was 'Banjo' a carnivorous Terrasaur, the first found in Australia. They had found the complete bones of one of his legs, claws and his lower jaw. He was found in the same spot as Matilda, a large plant eating sauropod. There was much speculation about how they both died.
it was lovely and cool in The Collection but outside the temperatures must have been knocking 40 degrees. The final part of our tour was very 'Jurassic Park' with a trip on a mini bus down to Dinosaur Canyon. I was not looking forward to it in the heat at all.
Our guide for this part was the best yet. After a short drive we came to another area of the plateau where two new buildings were going up. One was to be a kind of Planetarium as the whole area had recently been named as a Dark Sky Reserve. The other building was to house a sixty metre set of dinosaur tracks that had been brought to this spot from a flood plain and the new building was going up around it. Both should be open by the middle of next year.
We sat in 'The Outpost' before heading along the walkway to Dinosaur Canyon and our guide told us that the whole plateau/ 'Jump Up' had been donated to the museum by a local landowning family. Now, I said I had been thinking the entrance fee seemed a bit steep before but, now, even if I only had had the chance to walk along the Dinosaur Canyon, I would have said it was worth it. I've said it before but the whole setting of the place was out of this world ,,as you will see in the pictures and it is not finished yet with plans to extend the walkway in future.
We would definitely go back in a few years to see how things have progressed.
It was 2.00 pm so we headed on towards Longreach. There was heavy traffic today. We overtook two vehicles! The other difference was we started to see clouds in the sky and then just before we arrived in Longreach our phones finally had signal again after 5 days.
We are camping in the Longreach Tourist Park. The guy who checked us in seemed concerned that we were camping because storms had been forecast.
'Oh, we'll be fine we' we said.
We had a dip in the pool because the temperatures are in the high 30's and we went into town and had dinner in the towns only Indian restaurant. The food was very nice even if the surroundings were a bit tired and the ambient music awful!
Back at the tent the wind has picked up considerably. It is even windier than that awful night at Betoota. We can't, surely, blow away but the poor tent is being buffeted terribly. Another night of very little sleep ahead I think.
