13th April Murgon

Another beautiful morning. Fuelled up, bought a water container, and now I'm trying to up last nights Blog.......it doesn't want to work! Perhaps it will if it post this. I'm sitting in the information centre as they have good 'free' WIFI.

Enjoy your day, we are enjoying ours.

12 April. Murgon

Yesterday morning this is what greeted us. God once again painted a beautiful sunrise over Lake Broadwater.

Another hot & wonderful day. We were having a coffee mid afternoon when my beloved husband moved his foot & killed an ant. Next thing he tells me Dr Ant has arrived,' look the dead one is moving.....oh, look, here come 2 Nurse Ants to assist'......and sure enough ,4 get up and scurry away. Life has its interesting moments!

3.30 the huge 5th wheeler took off (funny time to leave!) and another van pulled in. We were soon talking to Heather & Bill from The Sunshine Coast who were on their way home from visiting friends in Bright. Our stories were very similar, sold house, moved into retirement appartment (in their late 60's) travel as much as possible, young grandchildren but unlike us have elderly parents to care for.  After dinner I had my shower & got all set up to watch Downtown Abbey......... It's not on until next week!!!!

Brian spent the evening chatting with the neighbors while I sat in my dressing gown playing on my iPad!! Dumn bunny me!

This morning we were all set to leave at 9am and the van door wouldn't lock OR open! HELP.

We drove the 30k to Dalby and stopped at an engineering workshop and asked for help. Jason was so helpful, he didn't know what to do, we knew what had happened and what was wrong but it was Jason that had the tools & technical know how to fix it. It took half an hour & only charged us $20 & he made & gave us a tool in case it happened again. Naturally it happened as soon as we parked here in Murgon. .... My wonderful engineering husband looked at it and said, if we detach the top lock it can't happen again (there are 3 locks on the door so it's OK) he shocks and amazes me at times!

Another wonderful thing about stopping at that particular Engineering workshop was that we met the perfect TOY for our 4 grandsons.

Isn't it a stunner?

Murgon is a small town about the size of Sunbury, they have a caravan park, right in town that went 'bust' & the Council bought it, they have disconnected the electricity but everything else is here, concrete slabs, showers, toilet, water, a dump spot & it's free! We had to go to the Information centre & pay $10 (refundable) for a key to the ablution block and can stay 48 hrs. They ask that we put any receipts for anything that we buy in the town in the 'Blue' tin, It's a way for them to judge if it's worth maintaining. It's very nice. I have been to the shops and bought a few little things we needed & we went to the Services Club for dinner, 

The drive here was very different as we are nearing the coast, we have gone from dry & flat, cotton fields, to hilly , green and very beautiful. The soil is either black or red depending on were we are. It looks much more prosperous.

I went to the Information centre for free WIFI and updated the Blog, so will go again tomorrow to post this. Golly you should have seen the password and it was only for me for 1 day. Wonder what tomorrow's will be?

10th April. Still Lakeside.

The White Cockies have been singing God's praises as we enjoy this lakeside venue. 

This morning I made up & packaged a few cards & this afternoon we both went for a 'dip' in the lake.

That shows 'selfies' with wires of both sides of the lake.

it was a bit like a mud bath, it's big but shallow. Some water skiers told us you can actually walk right across it. The bottom was sandy mud and then there was a wonderful hot shower provided. 

Toilets, showers & water, and $6 per person per night! We are having 4 nights here......Downtown Abbey final is on tomorrow & we have very good TV reception so I don't want to risk the reception at Murgon, our next stop. It's 5pm and half a dozen kangaroos have just hopped past our van to have a drink at the lake.

A beautiful Sunday.

9th April.

Does this give a hint of 'Life on the road'?

Perhaps this explains it a little clearer.......

We are on a lake 30k SW of Dalby Queensland. We called into the tourist information centre in Moonie and this was recommended to us. We have quite fallen in love with it, understand that it's $6 a night. We have been watching speed boats, skiers, jet boats, swimmers all having a wonderful time on Lake Broardwater in the National Park. All this in my front yard!

Mind you somethings just have to be done,

It looks as if I'm being very well looked after. Doing my part in the kitchen.

7th April. St George, Queensland. HOT,

The road from Lightning Ridge to St George is very good, we had lost a washer for the stableiiser bars of the caravan so this nessitated a stop at Mitre 10. Very expensive .... 40 cents! Now we carry a couple of spares! While Brian was making this major purchase, I made a mighty major 'ROYAL WE' decision, no free camping tonight, a powered sight so we could have air conditioning. I felt empowered!

Pelican's Rest Top Tourist Park was beautiful, even had green grass! With aircon on I made salad AND coleslaw ready for tea then we set out touristing. St George is on the Ballon River, small town, nicely laid out. The main industry is Tourism, Fishing and cotton growing.

We wondered what the low growing dark green fields were....

Found out that it was Cotton. There was a lot of white fluffy stuff on the roadside & it felt like wool but it didn't make sense, now we know it's cotton. It requires a huge amount of water, irrigation channels from great holding damns & it it very labor intensive.

We saw it growing in all its stages, planting, very green, green with a little white, brown dried out looking covered in white, then the harvested dry stalks.

It is harvested by mighty machines into bales that can be seen all over the area. They are bright yellow and must be very heavy w    And the as the Roadtrains can only carry 5 rolls per trailer.

In some of the fields which must be thousands of acres big, there are Container size bricks of cotton covered in plastic.

We also drove past the Cotton Gin.

All most interesting. Sorry, but Sugar Cane is my first love!

6th April. Lightning Ridge. HOT

We are at Opal Caravan Park, built in 2011. You should see the ablution block, showers are as good as home, glass door between shower & dressing area! It's a beautifully laid out park, naturally no grass, it's far to hot & dry.

We said goodbye to Steve & Elaine at Coonabarabran on Monday night as they had a 5.30am start on Tuesday. We left about 9.30 and drove 309 north through DRY land to a SUPER DRY place. We went to the out back last year and this place is out, out back. 

This morning we have driven the 'Red Door' tourist route & this afternoon we will do Yellow, Green & Blue. We have seen the tourist information DVD so know what to look for. Red Door etc is the sign of an arrow painted on an old red car door on the road side! This is Opal mining and the Black Opal is the prize gem. I LOOKED at the Opal jewellery $3,000 and rising!. One souvenir shop is enough, Brian didn't win the Lottery!, this is a little of what we saw this morning.

This is outside the actual town & in all directions.

A castle built by an Italian using 44galleon drums as scaffolding!

Everything is $5 to go into but as I'm not steady on my dainty little tootsies, we choose not to go.

It's amazing what people do. Like gold, Opals are addictive and the junk that is around is amazing.

These are old drums. Not the brass band type! I guess they actually the buckets used to haul stuff up from the mine.

It's now 4pm, temp 34 nice breeze and we have done all the other colour car door trips. It has taken us N. S. E. & W and some of the tracks were pretty wild.

I am not made of Pioneer stuff.....living conditions are often less than basic. Most miners live in shacks or humptys, or caravans. There are vehicle wrecks everywhere. No electricity in the digging area, generators, candles, gas, some windmills ....or go without!

How is this for 'being in the Cactus'?

Tonight we are going to the Bowling Club for dinner, it's our 43rd wedding anniversary tomorrow, so we celebrate tonight as we are Free camping tomorrow near St George in Queensland. After the Club we are going for a dip in the thermal hot pool across the road. It's to hot to go in the day time. Just went to see if I could negotiate it, looks OK. Its open 24 hrs a day!

Brian looking at an endless horizon across an opencast mine 'Lunatic Hill', now closed. No wonder with a name like that, they had to be lunatics to work there.

To nights swimming pool.

A very, very interesting place and an eye opener into old time mining..

3rd April. Coonabarabran

This is a real change of scenery, my brother, Steve Lill has a cattle station and they are in real drought.

We have our van parked under cover, it is between to huge Containers that are in the process of becoming one room living quarters.

It's very comfortable with electricity & water.

Today Elaine took me around one of their farms to check on some cows who were calving and there were 8 little ones. I was driven over hills, down gullies, over rocks, dry creek beds, ----- if we had milk & strawberries we would have ended up with a very thick milk shake. I had a lie down this afternoon and I could still feel the shaking when I shut my eyes, very weird.

Last night I was walking back to my van and I could hear a message come through my phone, no reception for phone here in the house but up on the rise near the office I can get reception. So up I went & phoned Chtisty........ They have had a horrible fire, lost their garage at 6.30 pm. Their cars were not in but, their garage is really an extension to their house and they had everything imaginable in it. Jamie's motorbike, Mark's car that Jamie had given him to rebuild. All the new camping gear that that bought at Christmas. Jamie's model helicopters that were very precious. If you name it, it was in their garage. They are all OK, neighbors rescued the 2 dogs and they had 5 fire trucks & 2 ambulances and the 100 or so neighbors who were overwhelmingly helpful.

Today the house is full of thick sticky tar type smoke that sticks to everything. Gumption plus elbow grease were needed to clean the kitchen bench.

Today was Bens 5th birthday & the party in the park still went on with a very happy little boy.

Now they await the insurance assessment!

This is the view from our van.

The land is so dry, the damns are dry, it's very sad.

Well that's it for today, I will post this now as Telstra have given me free download today.

We are here for 2 more nights then off to Lightning Ridge.