Happy birthday secretary Mel!
Last night in NT. We stayed at a rest stop about 60kms short of the Qld border across the road from the Police Station – nothing else here, just the police station. That would be a lonely posting.
Thursday 1 July
Lots of excitement from the kids, happy to be in the home state. Of course we had to park halfway across the border so that the front seats were in Qld and the back in NT. We drove through Camooweal (not much there) and continued on to Mt Isa. We spent the day looking around, restocked the supplies and bought some more books for the kids to read. To be honest we weren’t too impressed with the town but you probably can’t expect too much from a mining town. In the afternoon we took in the views from the lookout on top of the hill…
…and then moved on to the Fountain Springs rest area. It was very busy. Apparently all the caravan parks in Mt Isa were booked out – not sure why. Must be lots of travellers on their way to somewhere else.
Lots of long drives of this sort of scenery.
Friday 2 – Monday 5 July
Happy birthday Tim.
It was a cool, windy, cloudy day in Cloncurry. Not the sort of day we were expecting in north Qld. The local gem festival (Rockana) was on in town so we had a look. The kids enjoyed making some pet rocks with a very friendly lady.
These will go well with all the other rocks, sticks and shells we have collected on our travels! Better check the van weight.
The Maxwelton rest area was home for the night. Grey nomad check in time is about 2.30pm around here – have to get a spot! We settled in for an afternoon play ready to do some dinosaur hunting in Richmond the tomorrow.
We arrived at Kronosaurus Korner early on Saturday and spent plenty of time looking around. The kids had been looking forward to this for a while, especially Luke.
Lots of interesting exhibits of the many discoveries from around the local region. Most of these have been dug up by farmers working on their land.
Next we had lots of fun fossicking for dinosaur fossils. A map from Kronosaurus Korner guided us to the fossicking site about 12km out of Richmond and we were into it. Luke carefully peeled away the layers of rock to see if anything was inside.
We were lucky enough to find a few interesting items which we took back to Kronosaurus Korner for identification. Ashley found part of a squid (the bullet shape where her finger is)…
…and Luke found some fish vertebrae…
Remember this is outback Qld. It’s been a long time since there was any ocean life here. We were told that these fossils would be over 100 million years old. (More stuff to add to the van weight).
After a big play at the lakeside park we headed on to the stop for the night at Marathon rest area. The bitumen surface was great for skipping.
On Sunday we headed into Hughenden for more dinosaur exploring. The Dinosaur Discovery Centre isn’t as big as in Richmond but still has lots of interesting exhibits. Is this “Night at the Museum”?
While in town we ran into one of Ashley’s class mates from school, Byron and his family. Even though they are friends at school and haven’t seen each other for a while, you can’t be too enthusiastic about meeting (that would be uncool). We had a good chat and heard about each others respective adventures.
Continuing east we stopped for lunch at Prairie.
Didn’t use the loos though…
..and then had a fairly long drive to the Macrossan rest area just the other side of Charters Towers. This was an ok spot next to the Burdekin River.
On Monday morning we drove back into Charters Towers and checked into the Big 4 caravan park. After the last week or so of long drives through barren nothingness (except for more road kill than we have seen anywhere in the rest of the country), staying at roadside stops, it was great to be in Charters Towers, a very nice little town.
It’s also wonderful to be able to have a wash without setting up the outdoor shower – small luxuries. The best thing for the kids of course was the jumping pillow. They spent much of our stay bouncing away there. While in town we went to the lookout on Tower hill. Great views of the town and surrounds…
Due to a gold rush in the 1930’s Charters Towers was the second largest town in Qld (after Brisbane) with a population of about 30,000 and was known as “the world” because you didn’t need to go anywhere else to get any supplies.
After what seems like a long time of long boring drives we are nearly ready to head south at Townsville instead of north. We’ll see what happens when we hit the coast.
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