14th May. Farewell Townsville

Today we said farewell to Townsville. Golly GPS has been a wonderful invention. How on earth did we manage with maps. "Jennifer" even tells us 'You are over the speed limit'!!!! I wonder how many people will have wanted to tell her to "SHUT UP" (in the nicest way possible!) She did lead us to all the places requested (good girl) 

Again a very nice park, Walkabout Big 4, friendly & helpful neighbours.. Yesterday we had a visit from Betty & Jim who were our neighbours in Charters Towers, they are in a different park & staying. Week. They are from Tassie, it was $1700 return in the ferry for them and car & caravan, wow, sure makes it expensive.

Also had a nice message from the Lady Owner of Charters Towers Tourist Park, saying she sorry to have missed saying goodbye........we left too early!

Tomorrow we are off adventuring again - Free Camping, heading toward Mt Isa.

Sorry I haven't been doing 'happy snaps' this time , must do better.

11th May. Stop press! Special Edition!

Today Brian had an encounter with the local 'Wild Life', he wea getting ready to pack up the weber into its carry case.......and........ ROSEMARY!!!!

The bag had been invaded.....

The dreaded Cane Toad!

Opportunity for a closer look, but not tooooo close,

Oh, well, it wasn't a snake. We have had our first 'Wild Life' experience for this trip.

11th May. Final day in Charters Towers

At last we feel safe......... Flu Injections! It's been quite a process, appointment made in one town, only to find that they had run out of supplies. Today, success, a very nice Doctor (from Wellington NZ!) and neither of us even felt it. That seems to be the story this year according to Christy.

Washing done and dry by noon, (Jan, take note!) just great. Chatted to interesting fellow campers. It's a continual amazement to hear the same story over & over. Sold our house, moving into a retirement village, just filling in time and enjoying our caravans.

We are all packed and ready to move to Townsville (137 k) for a few days of The Coral Sea before heading to Mt Isa.

This was on Facebook today and I thought it was beautiful. It applies to you who are reading this blog.

10th May. Charters Towers

To day we drove out to 'Bethal' Texas Longhorn property. The season doesn't start until the weekend & we will have moved on. They have 109 Longhorn cattle & do covered wagon safaris tours. They also make saddles ands all things leather. It was very interesting and being leather VERY expensive.

Their horn span is up to 8 feet, we couldn't see any, just this one in the shop.

We did a walk of the town it was the second largest town in Queensland in 'Gold' days, it had 65 hotels in its hey day, also the first rural Stick Exchange.

They have preserved so much of the beautiful old buildings and they are in use.

This is Target frontage, with individual window boxes for display,

The Stock Exchange.

The information centre.

A mural and also......

Some other signifi ate buildings.

31 degrees today, 29 tomorrow., Flu injection a laundry day tomorrow, cool breeze please.

8th May. Mother's Day. Charters Towers.

It's been a delightful day, not as hot as the last few weeks.

Charters Towers Tourist Park, Top Tourist, staff put on a mother's Day lunch. The staff had prepared baked ham, chicken, for salads, bread rolls and served this to the camper's in the out door community kitchen area. There was a charge of $15 and it was well worth it especially as it was followed by sticky date pudding, pavlova, and ice cream. There was also punch available and we all had a very lovely lunch together. There were even raffle tickets handed out for free and there were a number of prizes, I received the first one a very nice magnetic shopping list to hang on the fridge.

The Owners/Managers and relatives, cooked and served, decorated and provided the prizes. Congratulations to them.

After this lovely lunch Brian and I went for a drive through the town and up to what is called 'The World' or Tower Hill. It is the place where there were very many coalmines there are still some of them are open and also during world War two this was the place where ammunition was stored. There were 15,000 American troops here and this is the place where the bombers fuelled up and collected their ammunition for the Coral Sea war.

A view from the top.

A view from the bottom showing the lookout and 'The World' which is the town's water supply.

War time souvenirs end explanations.

The phone reception is good here so it's been lovely catching up with friends from Melbourne.

The day finished with an exciting episode oh ' Midsomer Murders'. Too many mozzies to be able to sit outside.

Loving seeing my 2 beautiful daughters working together on 'Messenger' with Sheena directing operations. Beautiful Mothers they are. 

6th May. Charters Towers

For the last 2 nights we have free camped 22k out of Charters Towers. The tempture is a constant 29 degrees, however yesterday had a very nice breeze so as long as we kept in the shade of the van it was OK. We do have a 3 way fan 240v, 12v (which is like cigarette lighter in a car, there is one in the van) and also battery. It is very effective and makes getting meals ready, possible.

Yesterday we actually had a very busy day !!!!! Did NOTHING, good books, checking out camping sites and routes for the next 2 weeks. I love being able to change from the plan I wrote up in January to be able to take in sights & places we learn about from folk we meet.

The free camp at least produced beautiful sunsets

The area around us was, let me say ..... Nothing

Well there was a railway, but we couldn't decide what the freight was as it was white covered wagons. There was also one train of huge gas cilinders, very impressive!

Now we are moving to a Caravan Park to sight see and also get a couple of minor things attended to on the van. 

It's 11am so will perhaps post again tomorrow.

4th April. Travel through Clermont to Charters Towers.

We really enjoyed our 4 days at at Lake Maraboon with the Great Fairbairn  and it's very low water level. It was handy being parked next to a really good BBQ, Brian's become a really good cook.

Our next stop was Clermont & we stayed the night in a VERY nice caravan park ($22) unpowered and had arranged to meet up for dinner with the couple from the lake. We had a very nice meal at the nearest hotel. The park is beautifully maintained and has lovely murals on their main buildings.

This morning we woke to a different view

The rain stopped and we packed up & on the road by 9.30. Drove 400k today, we had not planned to but it was easy and we were listening to 'Rain Music' by Di Morrisie. Very good.

We have come to a free park called Marcrossen Park. It's on a dry river and we are not far from a rail line..... hope they are not too busy during the night!! Temp is 29 degrees!

The scenery has been varied today some obviously flood plains 

and other grazing land for the Brahman cattle. There was quite a lot of Sogrum which is mainly for cattle feed. The out back is wonderful.