Territory bound

There was no real hurry to leave camp this morning with just 240 km to drive today. Sunrise this morning was quite special and the overnight expected temperature of three degrees thankfully didn't eventuate. Instead we had fourteen degrees at 7 am.

 Before hooking up the van we headed into town to the local butcher where we picked up a boned leg of lamb and a piece of pork. 

As we left town we passed this tree that was filled with well over a hundred corella's. We know from past experiences, that these birds choose a tree and continually remove the leaves until the tree eventually dies, and this particular tree had very few leaves but the others nearby were full.

We were now heading towards Winton a further 175 km away. This section of the Landsborough Highway is long, straight, flat and quite featureless with nothing much to see. We have stayed here before, so today we are just passing through, but not before we purchased fuel and stopped at the bakery for a coffee. 

During our last visit we spent considerable time going through the very informative Waltzing Matilda Centre with its magnificent displays, so it was very sad to hear that the centre had burnt to the ground and with it all the wonderful displays that will never be replaced. These included Qantas artifacts and an exhibit honoring the districts 620 ANZAC's. 

Tonight's campsite is just a further 65 km up the road. Ayrshire Hills is listed in the camps book but we drove 1 km past this site and camped behind a hill that would help limit any road noise from the passing B doubles. We shared our campsite with a father emu with three chicks.

Over the next 90 km there was not much to see until we reached the small town of Kynuna. The town was established in the 1860's and at one stage had three hotels but all that remains is The Blue Heeler Pub originally built in the 1880's to service the Cobb & Co stage coaches. We stopped briefly to check our tyres, before continuing on towards McKinlay. It was made famous with the shooting of the first Crocodile Dundee movie. A quick photo and morning tea before continuing on.

As we approached Cloncurry, the Mitchell Grass Plains gave way to a rocky landscape of low hills covered by spinifex and eucalyptus trees which made for a wonderful change. Its just over forty years since I last drove this section of highway and I had  forgotten how scenic the countryside was. 

Our original plan was to spend three nights camped near a popular free camping spot at Clem Walton Park, which is at Corella Dam. Clem Walton was one of two men who discovered uranium at Mary Kathleen in 1954 and the mine was named after is wife Mary Kathleen. Its just 50 km west of the 'Curry' and the dam was originally constructed in the 1950's to supply water to the Mary Kathleen Mine Township.

Even though the majority of Queensland is in severe drought, and the water levels at Corella Dam where low we were actually surprised by just how much water there was. We changed our plans for two reasons and we are glad we did. We wanted a view of the water however these were all taken and there was a very strong easterly blowing that would have made staying very uncomfortable.

We drove the several kilometres of dirt road back to the highway before turning west towards Mt Isa a further 65 km away. The trip into the "Isa" passed through the same lovely country we had seen yesterday. 

We emptied our toilet cassette and filled our tanks then it was off to refuel at $139.9 cpl. While I waited in line to refuel, Ros ran across the road to by some groceries at Coles. She also purchased a rack of lamb that we would try in the camp oven tonight. The lamb was to be a test before we progressed into cooking the other meat we had purchased in Longreach. We now had just 190 km to travel to our next campsite just outside Camooweal. Our campsite for the next two evenings was on the Georgina River.

We have been cooking camp oven meals for over thirty years but have always used coals. This time we are using heat beads as our source of heat. We purchased  a heat bead basket that sits in our pig at a recent show and tonight was its first test.

Before leaving home I had downloaded a chart from the net indicating how many heat beads were required for our size camp oven. For the test we placed sixteen beads on the lid with twelve underneath. The lamb was cooked with onions, potato, pumpkin, and garlic seasoned with macadamia oil we purchased at Bauple. And it was absolutely delicious. Desert consisted of plain yoghurt and strawberries drizzled with Byron Bay honey.