Bedourie - Mt Isa

I haven't written for a few days, and I already have to think hard to what's been happening!

From Bedourie we headed to Boulia, home of the min min light. We went to the expedition which was interesting, the kids were scared but it was all good fun. After that we we to the stone house museum, a national trust property with a shed of aquatic reptile fossils. Apparently there's a 23 foot plesiosaur in boxes in another shed, but the palaeontologist Dinosaur Dick, died a few years ago and no one is around to put it together. 

We arrived in mt is a in time to pick up the caravan keys, which were the right ones to open the weber hatch. The bbq has survived remarkably well in there, lucky H strapped it well and put it on some cushioning.

After we picked up the keys, we went and did some shopping at Kmart.

Back at camp we reheated some frozen spag Bol and had a drink with our camp neighbours, Mandy and roger. Lovely people. They had a small dog that the kids loved to walk and a tamed love bird.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Birdsville

Waddi trees

H at pub

Kids and I hung at caravan

C2 and H sat around fire, amazingly clear night.

Quiet day at Tibooburra

It's now 1.15 and we haven't done much today. It's been lovely! The kids all scattered into the rocks while we sat around the fire, bbqed some steaks for breakfast and put some scones cooking in the camp oven for lunch. At home, the kids all spend too much time in front of screens. They still have screens with them here, one of the perks of the caravan, but surprisingly and reassuringly, they prefer mucking about outside. The girls were using the pocket knife this morning to whittle, and the boys made a snare to trap 'something'.

At the moment, I am on a walk but saw a flat rock and came to lie on it. I've come across cows, goats and a donkey so far. Our camp is on the old Aboriginal reserve, which is attached to the common. It's unbelievable to think of how people were treated not that long ago. In the 60's, the Aboriginals of this land were driven out on trucks to the mission in Brewarrina, never to return. 

 

Tibooburra - Milparinka - Tibooburra

I'm sitting in front of the fire at camp. I should have a drink in my hand, but my body is protesting and I can't move. It's pretty icy and windy at the moment.

We are camping at the Aboriginal Lands Council for $15/night. The scenery is beautiful; Tibooburra means 'heap of rocks', and where we are camping is a nature's playground of climbing rocks for the kids. No one else is here tonight, so our 4 and our friends' 2 have disappeared. They'll be back when dinner is ready! Camp oven curry tonight.

Today we drove out to Milparinka, a historical village consisting of a pub, no more than a few houses and a couple of ruins. The old house, that used to be the post office, belonged to a family in the 1800's. The boys had normal names (Jack, mick and Ross I think), but the girls' names were interesting - Girly and Bub were two of them. 

After lunch at the pub, we drove out to Mount Poole were Charles Sturt and his expedition were stuck for months during the drought in 1845. To stop the team becoming bored, he set them the task of building a large stone pyramid on the top of a hill. There would have been no shortage of rocks!! We climbed right up to the top to see the 'cairn', and it was one of those times I wished I was just a little fitter. The walk just kept going and going, we were spread from the bottom of the hill to almost the top. C4 found a fossil of something in a rock.

After the exhausting walk, we drove to see Poole's grave. Poole was the second in command on the expedition, (spelled seccond in command on his gravestone), and died of scurvy. There were two other graves in the area; one was of a boy Carlyon Murray, who was 11 and 8 months when he died in 1924 and the other was his mother who had died in 1922. C1 is very interested to find out how they passed, so I had to record their details.

So now we are back, and I'm sensing an early night. 

Narromine - Tibooburra

I'll have to add words later, because I realised (after 11 hours in the car) that not everything can be captured by the camera. But here are the photos... Adding cardboard to our arsenal, to protect from rocks breaking the rear screen.

 We had spoken to someone the night before and was assured the road was 'beautiful mate, like highway' ...

 Yep, only about 500km of this!

 Stop at Wanaaring

 Assured the road was good...

Some of the road was not so great, but there were side roads to direct away from the puddles.

 

 

"Mum can I take my boots off and run in the sand?!"

 

 

 

We were trying to avoid driving in the dark, but at this point, we were never going to avoid it. Might as well enjoy the scenery! 

 

C2 left a message for future travellers

 

The sunset that can't be captured by camera. 

 

 

And we are off!

We were supposed to leave 3 days ago, but wow, so much to do. The kids and I slept in the van last night, in the driveway, because we'd packed all of the bedding in there and thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to see if we would need anything else when we were a little further away from the comforts of home. C2 ended up in my bed, and I decided that buying a kettle to go on the gas stove was essential to me getting out of bed in the mornings. 

Right now we are only an hour and a bit into the journey. It's cold and wet, and the dogs are stinking up the car at regular intervals. Made our ham and cheese rolls a little less enjoyable 😷 c1 and 3 have written in their travel journals already, but mostly everyone is playing technology. I'm testing this blog app I have - I hope I haven't published it 5 times!! Even though we changed to Telstra, service still sucks.

 I'm not having much luck posting this, maybe it'll be stuck on drafts until we get wifi?

We are here now, after a long 8.5 hours. It never usually takes us that long, but our old girl had an upset stomach this morning so we stopped a few more times just in case. The roads were often wet, with flooding in the nearby paddocks, and it was raining on and off. The car was great, I had to tell h that the speed limit for towing is actually only 100km/hour, because he was cruising along at the 110 speed limit.

With every stop, we also had a little walking try and find some Pokemon. Pokemon go is like a virtual geocache of Pokemon, and while I'm still figuring it out, it's a fun distraction from the driving.

 

The old girl might not see home again :(

 

 

Banjo has no respect for Charles Sturt! This showed up as a Pokemon gym, so the kids and I ran across the highway to see what that meant. Turns out I need to level-up before I can fight lol

C2's upper molar fell victim to a Redskin lolly. 

Getting closer!

So we have the van! It didn't go off without a hitch (haha, there's a pun there - pick up involved a lot of work around the tow bar/ball of the car to match the DC035 hitch on the van), but the beast is now home and in the process of being packed. There is so much to learn about the electronics of it all. C4 managed to get a DVD stuck in his player within 10 minutes of being allowed to explore inside yesterday, and the kids spent most of the day in there. It's raining, so it was good to know if it rains on the trip, we could still be comfortable.

Look at those happy faces :)

I lined the cupboards and draws with non-stick matting yesterday, to help stop marks from things moving around in there. I need to buy a few more containers today, and H needs to fit the Clearview mirrors onto the car. They arrived yesterday, as did the walkie talkie things. We've tried to buy second hand and/or locally, so things have needed to arrive by post.

The original plan was Narromine - Bourke - Tibooburra - Cameron Corner - Tibooburra - Innamincka - Birdsville, but I just found this:

from here:
http://www.dpti.sa.gov.au/OutbackRoads/outback_road_conditions/area_4_strzelecki_and_birdsville_track

meaning that it looks like the road we'd take to Innamincka is closed. Since we have left travel so late, and it looks like we'll be doing it ourselves (in a new van, that we don't know the capabilities/limitations of), this makes me nervous. If we can't get into, or out of, Innamincka, does that mean we'll be stuck at Tibooburra until the roads all open?