Jessie Kedrons's Excellent Adventure Days Three and Four

On Good Friday, I cooked some Hot Cross Dampers. I made the crosses with jam. They were very nice.We went to the fossil fossicking grounds. Every rock you picked up had a fossil in it. So I kept about four of the best.

This was a laugh. This stretch of road had a speed limit of 110! It was only one lane wide!

This was my first church. This was the Presbyterian Church in Richmond and I went to Sunday School here. It looks kind of sad now and is no longer a church, I think it is inhabited as a house, though sadly neglected.Across the road is a block of land that I think our house used to be on. This is the school. In the middle of these bulidings is the old original school house in which I started school.

Next day we headed off towards Cloncurry. Lots of long straight roads, KISA thinks it is boring being a SAT NAV in Australia! On the way to Richmond, we lost our Anderson plug, which recharges the van's batteries from the car. So in Cloncurry we had to get it fixed. After a night in a van park, that we hadn't planned on, as we had to be at the mechanic at 7.30am, and getting the plug refitted, we headed off over the part of the trip across the red dirt.

This is Jessie Kedron's first foray off the bitumen and the reason we chose an off road van, as this is the sort of travelling we want to do while we are still young and fit enough. She handled it very well, and we are learning as well what needs to be packed better! We are seeing a lot of wildlife as well. This is a wedge tailed eagle (I think) judging by its size, that we interuppted in a meal of road kill. It flew off to a tree and with the zoom it still looked quite large. We have also seen, roos, emus, dingoes, lizards, and lots and lots of a wide variety of birds.

Easter Sunday was a big day on the road, lots of wide open spaces and vistas like this. No trees. Because of the recent heavy rains lots of green grass where normally it is desert and red dirt.

I chose this route because I wanted to see and show KISA the red outback. So it was all covered in green grass! We came across this amazing landscape between Boulia and Middleton.

We settled for the night in Middleton, population of 3. This is the ladies loo at the pub. And this is the shower block at the pub. It is under the water tower. Outside the pub is this Cobb and Co coach. Middleton used to be a staging post on the Cobb and Co routes out this way in th 1800s. KISA on the verandah of the Middleton pub. We had a drink at the public bar with two thirds of the town's population. It is certainly a place of character.The Hotel Hilton, over the road from the pub where we camped.

Outback Sunset, totally glorious. Next morning we woke to this sunrise.

We set off to Longreach. We booked into a caravan park here as we needed to see an Auto electrician to fix our Anderson plug issues with the van. Even though the mechanic in Cloncurry had fitted a new plug, it was still not changing the batteries. As we travel, the fridge in the van was draining the battery too much which meant we could not free camp.

So this morning, finally normal working hours resumed and we were able to get it all looked at. A fuse had blown and he was able to find it and fix it.

We went for a walk to town to relenish our food supplies, then took ourselves off to the Stockmans Hall Of Fame. It was fantastic and of course the 4 hours we spent there was barely long enough to have a quick look.

On our second and last night in Longreach, we went to Harry's Restaurant. It was amazing - a fantastic meal of the standard you would expect in the city.

Tomorrow, we are heading towards Emerald. We may stop in the gem towns nearby or in Emerald. We will decide when we get there. Then we hope for 3 nights at Eungella Dam, before heading home.

By the time we get home we should own our house. we left as tenants and will return owners!

Jessie Kedron's Excellent Adventure Days One and Two

We set off on a shake down trip with the van, finally we can get away for longer than 3 days, so we have set off on an outback Queensland ttrip of 10 days or so. the first day we set off to Townsville, to get a couple of things we needed that we couldn't get in Bowen then headed for our first free camp just east of Charters Towers. we stopped at Reid River for lunch, where we saw this creative graffiti on a "Water not suitable for drinking" sign.
Our campsite overlooking the river just east of Charters Towers. It was very high, but you could see evidence that floodwaters had been there recently.

KISA travels with his computer...and internet..which is why this blog is being posted on the road!

Life is so easy when you don't need to unhitch..you just drive up, and put down the stabilisers and climb inside.

The sun went down and of course that meant it was time to open a bottle and watch the light show. That is the Burdekin railway bridge in the background.

Bikkiesand cheese and music. First sunset of the trip, be warned, lots more to come!

White Mountain, when you finally get to see the great inland flat expanses, it it amazing.

The big Comet windmill at Prairie. We stopped here last Easter in the camper trailer so had to take a pic with Jessie Kedron this time.

Our camp at Richmond was at the Lake Fred Tritton Caravan Park. This shot looks over to the Richmond Hospital, where my Dad worked in the early 1960's. There are lots of these rocks around Richmond. It is also full of fossils of dinosaurs. This one looks like some fossilised dinosaur poo. But it really isn't :-)

This lake is quite nice though it is man made. Fish were jumping when we walked around it. The bush tucker gardens were interesting. I think every Australian should know how to recognise the edible natural plants of this country. Many of our early explorers would have lived longer if they had known this stuff. We found the water park. It was about 37 degrees that afternoon, so KISA did not take much persuading to get his kit off and get under the water mushroom thingy.

He said it was REALLY nice and cool. More lake shots on a beautiful Good Friday in the outback. We went for a walk to the pub on Easter Saturday evening, and found this road sign.

They found a dinousaur skeleton near Richmond, and have built up a tourism attration around it and called it Kronosauros Korner. KISA gets up close and personal with the dinosaur. In the grounds of the caravan park is the old Richmond Water Tower. My Dad has some photos of this from his days in the 1960s. It as all fenced off though, so I couldn't climb it. Pink clouds from the sunset. We were facing east so the clouds in front of the van were a lovely pink colour. It has been 46 years since I left Richmond. It was good to return, though it had a kind of air of decline about it, as many small country towns in Australia struggle these days. I wondered what my mother thought when she arrived here as a young bride in 1958.