Whenever we are on holidays our aim is to make our campsite for the evening before or just after lunchtime, and after setting up which takes less than ten minutes we normally sit back with a cold beer and enjoy our surroundings.
Just 50 km after leaving Eumundi we passed through Gympie then onto the Wide Bay Highway towards Kilkivan. From here we took a minor road to Tansey which involved climbing the Coast Range with a maximum elevation of 357 metres.
Here we joined the Burnett Highway passing through Ban Ban Springs and Gayndah.
Our intention tonight is to camp at the RM Williams Learning Centre in Eidsvold.
The centre charges $10 to park in a very large open area adjacent to the complex. This includes access to toilets, water and the use of a BBQ but there's no power available.
We had plenty of time to explore the centre which we found very informative.
Camping is also allowed at the nearby showgrounds with fees paid at the servo across the road. Here your $15 gets you water, power and toilets.
Sad to see that the pub at Dululu has now closed down. We have stayed at the free camp nearby on a previous occasion.
We have stayed at Duaringa several times before. There are toilets, showers and a dump point and while we don't use any of these facilities, because we prefer to use our own, we are more than happy to make a donation all the same.
Continuing further west we passed through Blackwater, Emerald and Alpha and were going to stay at Jericho but after viewing the weather for tomorrow with the likely hood of a large low coming in from the west we continued on. Our plan was to camp at Lara Station and we were concerned that the 13 km dirt access road would be closed. We normally prefer to drive between 200 and 300 km each day but today's drive to reach Lara Station was 504 km. Thankfully a large tail wind helped with our fuel economy.
I purchased Road Trip from the App Store after reading about it on Face book and will use this to monitor our fuel statistics for this trip.
We have driven along the Capricorn Highway on numerous occasions but have never seen the countryside looking so green. The vast majority of flood ways and creeks we crossed on the 141 km stretch between Alpha and Barcaldine all had significant amounts of water in them as did the spoon drains beside the road.
We arrived at Lara Station after exiting the Landsborough Highway 28 km south of Barcaldine and driving the last 13 km over a very well maintained dirt road with just some minor corrugations.
We enjoy our privacy so chose our campsite well away from our fellow campers. Life for us just doesn't get much better than this. We enjoyed the ever changing colours around us as each day progressed and once the sun had set and we lit our campfire and out came the stars.
Our five days spent here were very enjoyable and totally relaxing and we will return here again.
The predicted low system did eventuate dropping 32 mm on the station and closing the access road for several days.
We had ourselves a mini muster at Lara with ten Bushtrackers parked up for several evenings. Most were heading to the muster in Winton.
We rejoined the Capricorn Highway at Barcaldine for the run towards Longreach. Today we are just passing through to a spot we camped at last year in the Ayrshire Hills which are NW of Winton.
As we passed by the showgrounds in Winton we could see Bushtracker vans arriving for this year's Bushtracker AGM Muster. Just over seventy vans are expected for the muster which will help inject some much need money into the community.
We topped up our diesel, shopped at the supermarket, lunched at the bakery and purchased some beer and wine. That was a total of $460, so you can imagine the dollar benefit to Winton having the muster here with over 140 people attending
There are no facilities here and we are again parking behind the same small hill to stop any truck noise that may eventuate during the evening.
A lightning stop for a cuppa at McKinlay
and then 106 km later we passed through Cloncurry where we joined the Barkly Highway.
Our campsite for tonight was just another 60 km further west at the site of the former Mary Kathleen Uranium Mining township. The entrance is just over 12 km west of the turnoff to another free camp that we stayed at last year called Corella Dam, built as the water supply for Mary Kathleen.
I was last here in the 80's when a school friends parents were minding the township after the mine had closed down and before any infrastructure had been removed. It was quite eerie being driven around the streets with no one living in the houses and not another soul in sight.
Well the place is still quite eerie with the remains of bitumen roads and slabs from houses and shops that were all relocated to either Mt Isa or Cloncurry.
This is a wonderful free camp with no facilities. There is room enough for any number of vans and there are plenty of building slabs remaining that can be used to park the van on.
We drove out to view the open cut mine that has now filled with water.
Another leisurely day's drive today with just 244 km to our next campsite which will have us set up around lunchtime. That includes stopping in the Isa to refuel and tend to some last minute shopping at the Coles supermarket. It will be another twelve days until we pass through Katherine and there are no other supermarkets in between.
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Last year on our way to WA we camped just outside Camooweal on the Georgina River, and are again staying in the same location, but this time we are spending five days here.
It's always nice to have a water view and camping here ticks all our boxes. The two main billabongs are Lake Francis and Lake Canellan.
We prefer staying at the later location which is several kilometres past the cattle yards. The majority of people prefer staying at Lake Francis which is closer to the highway and town. There are no facilities at either spot but Camooweal is just several kilometres away with a dump point, garage, caravan park and of course a pub. Just about every town no matter how small it is has a pub, with this town's population just shy of 300.
On our third day we drove out to Camooweal Caves National Park.
The majority of the caves here are just vertical sinkholes that have been formed by water filtering down through fractures in the surrounding land surface. The park is 22 km south of Camooweal along the unsealed Urandangi Road. The caves themselves are not very inspiring but the Nowranie Waterhole certainly made up for this with its lovely river red gums and quite long waterhole which is surrounded by dry grasslands that cover much of the Barkly Tableland.
Our yabby pots produced this haul of Red Claw last night which were polished off for lunch today.
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