Towards Yaraka

It was almost impossible to tear ourselves away from our three relaxing days at Lara, but it was time to move on.

Today's drive of just 94 km is the sort of distance we should do more regularly. We steered ourselves south to spend two days camped at Blackall. 
The Barcoo rest area is beside the town with a nightly fee of $8.00. This gets you toilets, drinking water, a dump point and within easy walking distance to town.

We stayed here in October several years ago with just three other vans, but this has now become a very popular campsite. This time we shared the site with upwards of thirty vans.

A tour of the Blackall Woolscour (wool washing) today. It operated between 1908 and 1978. After sheep were shorn, the fleeces were washed in water to remove dirt that had accumulated in their wool. Originally the wool was washed by hand in large vats then rinsed. You can just imagine how labour intensive that process must have been.

The wool scour process was fully automated using a steam engine and powered by the abundant amount of wood sourced from the surrounding area. 
The sinking of bores provided unlimited amounts of water, required to wash and rinse the fleeces.

Our two day stop at Blackall turned into three days and on our last afternoon the heavens opened up for about twenty minutes. The normally dry black soil that surrounds the Barcoo River quickly turned to mud. 

We eagerly watched several vans leave the site the next morning and even though I walked to the rubbish bins and came back with mud stuck to the bottom of my thongs we really had no trouble making our way towards the safety of the bitumen.

Another shortish drive today of just 164 km. When we first visited Yaraka, the vast majority of the road was unsealed but it's now fully sealed from the Blackall end. 
We stopped briefly at the Emmet railway station, to take a photo. At one time this busy railway siding was home to thirty people but sadly now there are just two living here.

Last year we camped behind the Yaraka Hotel and that's where we are going to spend the next three nights.
Camp fees are $3.00 per night, yes I know its hard to believe but this includes toilets, showers, water and even a swimming pool. 
Mind you the pool might be a tad too cold this time of year. The fees are collected by the pub on behalf of the Longreach council. 

Friday night is pizza night and because we enjoyed our pizza here last year we ordered one to be ready for us after we arrived back from the sunset tour to Mt Slowcombe. A gold coin donation to the RFDS gets you a bus trip to the summit.

Our plan was to head towards Windorah the following day but our travelling companions required some repairs to be carried out on their van in Longreach. We retraced our steps to Emmet before heading north through Isisford and onto Longreach.

We are booked in to the caravan park here for the next six nights waiting for some parts to arrive and be fitted.

Lara Wetlands Again!!

We arrived in Barcaldine to meet friends Deb and Hank who have recently picked up a 17' Zone RV which was built for them on the Sunshine Coast at Coolum. 

They are interested in a shakedown trip to test their van, so we thought we would introduce them to the outback and desert areas, that we love so much. 

It's guaranteed that their diesel heater will certainly get a work out fairly early during this trip as well.

This will be our fourth visit, so we have decided to introduce Deb and Hank to this wonderful area with its wetlands and for them to take a tour of the homestead built-in 1912. 

Our other visits have been very relaxing and enjoyable and I'm sure this visit will be no different. At this time of year, there are usually more people out and about, but we did stop here in October one year, and there were just three other vans here. Just the sort of numbers we prefer.

On our first evening, we camped several hundred metres away from the water and then moved the following day to spots that had been vacated earlier the next morning.

We were also joined by Peter, Vonnie, David and Wendy who both previously owned Bushtrackers but have now purchased  Zone vans. Both had relatively new 20.6' vans.

They joined us each night for drinks around our campfire and on one of those nights Peter and Vonnie supplied a lovely New Zealand smoked trout that their friends had bought over with them. 

Towards Longreach

The Bash finished on Thursday and we left Big Red on Friday the 13th of July in convoy with the many thousands of other people returning to Birdsville.

It was much slower exiting the "Bash" than when we arrived. 

We could only imagine that the three access roads leaving Birdsville, would be choked with traffic and dust, with people either heading home or heading north to the Bedourie camel races that were being held the following day.

With that in mind, I think our decision to stick around for another three days and camp again south of town was a wise move. It also gave us ample time to wash and clean the interior of the van. It was almost impossible to keep the dust at bay while we were camped out at Big Red.
Mind you there were also many other people who had the same idea, but not like the numbers that were here pre "Bash"
Minimum temperatures have been very low here just like they were at the "Bash" Most mornings have been well below zero degrees, with the coldest at minus 3.1

We left Birdsville on Monday 16th of July and by then there were just a few stragglers like us heading north towards Bedourie.
The corrugations were quite bad, but then we expected that this would be the case with the thousands who had already left.
On the very bad sections, we were actually driving in the bulldust on the outside of the road markers to escape them.

We had intended to camp 319 km north of Birdsville at a spot we camped last year. It's close to Marion Downs Station and the creek has water and is part of the Georgina River system. We arrived there just after lunch but the flies were in plague proportions so we decided to remain in the car with the aircon going and drive the extra 64 km to Boulia.

We last camped beside the Burke River just outside town six years ago and thought that would do us just nicely. You can imagine how surprised we were on our way out to the river as we passed over one hundred vans camped near the toilet facilities at the racecourse. We then realised that the camel races were on here this coming weekend.

We continued towards the river and while we didn't camp right on the river we found a lovely spot close by. 

We enjoyed happy hour with a couple who invited us to sit around their campfire before heading back to cook dinner just after dusk.

I must say we had both forgotten how bad the Kennedy Development Road was. The vast majority of the 361 km road to Winton is mostly single lane bitumen and in a dreadful state. Our preference would have been to drive on the dirt rather than this road. 

The surrounding country is quite flat and featureless until you arrive at the Lilleyvale Hills. 
Cawnpore lookout is in these hills, and the surrounding flat topped hills or mesas are incredible formations that over time have resisted erosion.
Its now not possible to drive up to the lookout but even though the climb is quite steep its not that far. 

Just 55 km later we stopped for lunch beside the Middleton Pub. Its hard to believe that we camped opposite the pub six years ago, and spent time having a few beers with Lester the publican.

After leaving Middleton we followed a B triple cattle truck for the remaining 169 km trip into Winton. There were lots of vans and 4wd's heading towards Boulia for the races and they all had to move onto the dirt while the road train continued on with us following closely behind.

We arrived in Winton just after 3 pm and stopped at one of the pubs for a carton of beer and some wine. We have both become accustomed to drinking the XXXX bitter full strength beer. 
We spent the night camped at Long Waterhole just south of town with quite a large number of other vans.

We are currently in Longreach for the next two nights. Our anderson plug that connects to the vans battery charger must have been hit by a rock as we were leaving Birdsville so we are here to have this fixed.

The Most Remote Musical Festival on the Planet

The Big Red Bash is held 39 km west of Birdsville on private property and the stage for the artists who perform over the three days and nights has a 40-metre high sand dune as its backdrop. Big Red is the largest and first major dune to cross if you are heading west across the Simpson Desert.

Adria Downs is an organic cattle property, and one of the prerequisites for camping there is that no greywater is allowed to be dropped on the ground. There is a facility to siphon your greywater into but there is no facility for emptying your toilet cassette.

Even though the event organisers supply toilets, we still prefer to use our own. With that in mind and considering we are staying for five days, we purchased an extra toilet cassette just in case it was needed.

Our vans grey water tank holds 90 litres so showers will certainly be rationed during our stay. The purchase of several packs of extra-large wet wipes as back up was also a wise decision.    

Our early entry pass had us arriving at the "Bash" site two days before the music began. Mal Leyland gave a talk on one of these days along with one of their films displayed on the large screen. After the movie, the crowd were given the chance to ask Mal questions about his life which we all found very interesting. 
His fondest memory of the 1966 crossing of Australia was seeing rain cascading down Ayers Rock/Uluru.

This is our first "Bash" attendance so we are not really sure whether we will enjoy the experience or not. No doubt time will tell.
Our decision to take out insurance in case of breakdown or illness, was also a wise move considering we were handing over $1200 for the experience.

When away camping our preference is to avoid crowds whenever possible, but we thought we would give the "Bash" the benefit of the doubt, and see just what it's like to be surrounded by thousands of people. In this case, there were 10,000 who attended.

Saturday morning the 7th of July the "Bash" office opened so the mandatory car stickers and wrist bands could be organised before heading out to Big Red. We also purchased some of the merchandise on offer at the same time.

First thing on Sunday morning we were hooked up and ready to rock n roll just before 7:30 am.  We joined the queue of 4WD's, caravans and camper trailers on the slow dusty trip out to Big Red. At times speeds were down below 40 km/h, at that time of the morning, there was very little wind.

While we have been out to Big Red before, we have never been in a convoy with so many other people. 
Totally surprised that the trip out only took one hour and fifteen minutes.

Amazing organisation has gone into moving this many people in such an orderly fashion, but I think this is the 5th year so they have had time to perfect it.

The headline act at this years "Bash" is John Farnham who will be supported by the likes of the Hoodoo Gurus, The Angels, Daryl Braithwaite, John Stevens, Kate Ceberano, Adam Brand, Russell Morris, The Black Sorrows, The Wolfe Brothers and Amber Lawrence.

 It was wonderful to meet Mal Leyland. Later during the day we wandered up and purchased a signed copy of his 2015 book "Still Travelling"

Each day we enjoyed wandering around the camping area checking out others setups. There were road vans, so-called off-road vans, real off-road vans and god knows how many different makes of camper-trailers. There were also many intents and swags as we used to camp in when we were younger. Thank god that's over with!!

Our early daily ritual was to climb Big Red to take photos and marvel at the number of campsites spread out below.

There were many food vendors selling everything from wood-fired pizzas through to Mexican, coffee vendors, seafood, hamburgers and steak sandwiches and even a  Wendy's outlet.

The "drag" race is surely a sight to behold. Apart from being entertaining, more importantly, it raises money for the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS). 
This year there were hundreds of men dressed in drag and running across and down Big Red.

A representative from the Guinness world record people was also on hand to adjudicate the world record attempt of the Tina Turner song "nut bush city limit" dance. The previous record was 522 people who must dance continually for five minutes. This attempt was smashed at the "Bash" with just over 1700 participants. 

The drag race and the nut bush dance combined raised just over $50,000 for the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS)

Ros was shouted an early birthday present with a helicopter flight over Bashville and Big Red which she thoroughly enjoyed.

Of all the artists who performed over the three days and nights, we thought that Russell Morris:

Cate Ceberano:

John Farnham:

 and Joe Camilleri and the Black Sorrows were the standout performers. 

Would we attend in future? Hmmm that would have to depend on the lineup of artists otherwise we thoroughly enjoyed our time at the 2018 "Bash"

Birdsville

We arrived in Birdsville two days earlier than we had planned. This was brought about because the Cordillo Downs and Arrabury roads heading north from Innamincka were still closed from last weeks rain.

These road closures forced us north towards Windorah via the bitumen. We then joined the Birdsville Development Road 118 west of Windorah where the single lane bitumen ended. The remaining 261 km of dirt into Birdsville was not affected by the previous week's rain.

Our hot water heater stopped working four days ago. In the meantime, we have been boiling water on the stove and washing by having a sponge bath in the shower cubicle. 
I used a pin that I inserted into the small hole where the gas enters the flue, but this didn't clear the blockage. As a last resort, I had a needle attachment in my bag of tricks that are used to blow up footballs/basketballs. This fitted neatly into my compressor hose and I was able to clear what must have been dust stuck in the gas line. End result happy wife is a happy life.

We are currently camped on the town common about 1.5 km south of town. Water taps are dotted throughout this area and there is a dump point nearby. There are probably about forty vans currently camped here with people arriving each day. 
The caravan park still has vacant spots but I'm sure this will fill in the coming days.

So our days here have been spent reading, relaxing, walking into town each day and watching the new arrivals enter from the south.