Territory bound

There was no real rush to leave camp this morning, with only 240 km to drive today. Sunrise was quite special, and the expected overnight temperature of three degrees thankfully didn't happen. 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 a tree filled with well over a hundred corellas. From past experience, we know that these birds choose a tree and repeatedly strip the leaves until the tree eventually dies. This particular tree had very few leaves, while 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 little 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 exploring 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, taking with it all the wonderful displays that will never be replaced. These included Qantas artefacts and an exhibit honouring the district's 620 ANZACS. 
Tonight's campsite is just a further 65 km up the road. Ayrshire Hills is listed in the camp book, but we drove 1 km past this site and camped behind a hill that would help limit any road noise from passing B doubles. We shared our campsite with a father emu and its three chicks.

Over the next 90 km offered little to see until we reached the small town of Kynuna. The town was established in the 1860s and once had three hotels, but now only The Blue Heeler Pub remains, originally built in the 1880s to serve Cobb & Co stagecoaches. We stopped briefly to check our tyres before continuing towards McKinlay. The town became famous with the filming of the first Crocodile Dundee movie. A quick photo and morning tea, then we pressed on.

As we approached Cloncurry, the Mitchell Grass Plains gave way to a rocky landscape of low hills covered with spinifex and eucalyptus trees, which made for a wonderful change. It's 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 camping 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 his wife, Mary Kathleen. It's just 50 km west of the 'Curry', and the dam was originally constructed in the 1950s 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 were low, we were actually surprised by 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 blow 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 the day before. 

We emptied our toilet cassette and filled our tanks, then headed off to refuel at $139.9 cpl. While I waited in line to refuel, Ros ran across the road to buy some groceries at Coles. She also purchased a rack of lamb that we planned to cook in the camp oven tonight. The lamb was a test before we moved on to cooking the other meats we had bought in Longreach. We now had just 190 km to travel to our next campsite just outside Camooweal. Our campsite for the next two nights 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 downloaded a chart from the internet indicating how many heat beads were needed for our size camp oven. For the test, we placed sixteen beads on the lid and twelve underneath. The lamb was cooked with onions, potato, pumpkin, and garlic seasoned with macadamia oil we bought at Bauple. It was absolutely delicious. Dessert consisted of plain yoghurt and strawberries drizzled with Byron Bay honey.