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A taste OutBack
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After seeing enough sand, sea and surf to last at least a few weeks we've decided to head inland a few hundred klicks and see some of the real Australia. This place is all about long straight roads, red dust, white cotton fields, road trains, cowboys and girls and country.
Started off in Charters Towers an old gold town which has now lost two thirds of its population since there is not enough gold left. From 33,000 down to 11,000, it's still relatively big for an outback town but nothing really special. You see an enormous number of dead wildlife on the roads, after seeing the beastly road trains you understand why, they can be 4 trucks long and stop for nothing and nobody (probably stop when there's no fuel left). We must have counted 2 dead animals every 50 kms and after over 1000kms that's quite a few. Lots of wildlife is still living though and there are large populations of kangaroos, emus and koalas away from the coast. Something not for the faint hearted was a two way road which was only wide enough for one vehicle where the speed limit is set at 100km/h. Both vehicles usually pull half over into the gravel, but it's rather like chicken to see if you dare not pulling over or doing it very last minute.
Roma, not that in Italy but in the middle of Queensland, has the oldest winery in this state and over Easter it's Rodeo time. Although we didn't participate in any of the events with bulls we did manage to sup a beer in the stands and what a few of the nutters thrown into the dust. The scoring for the different events, lassooing calfs, bucking bronko, raging bull was not always obvious but it's pretty good fun for the whole day and into the evening. You can tell the cowgirls and boys from the way they walk - the jeans are so far up their .... that they naturally sway along from side to side. A few national park visits to break up the distance. Carnarvon gorge has been devastated by flooding, the small part of walking track reopened shows just how powerful the water flow was with huge trees being uprooted and just tossed aside. Warrumbungle is a great national park with actual walking loops where you can almost choose your distance 18km seemed quite good until we got to the middle of it :) Saw at least 5 kangaroos here, each of them being quite curious as to what we could be doing. They shake their heads in a most puzzled way from side to side (Indian ?) before hopping off.
Continuing down to Melbourne in this epic drive we camped for a night outside a one pub (pub only) town. The campsite was free as were the showers, only had to pay for the beer. It's difficult to believe but just over easter there were apparently 400 people in the pub of Nindigully which must have been something to see. Now things are getting cold to camp, the autumn is well advanced with nighttime temperatures of 5 degrees and only just over 20 in the daytime. The skies are some of the clearest we've seen and stargazing is a particular hobby around here with some of the biggest observatories in Australia, they reckon it's the lack of pollution and general flatness of the land, both of which are certainly the case. When you do get any height you can see for miles through the clear sky.
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