Blogs from Charleville, Queensland, Australia, Oceania

THE LAST LEG – 3-5 December – Quilpie, Charleville, Toowoomba...and home Quilpie was the next town of interest. Quilpie is on the banks of the Bullo River in the outback's famous Channel Country. The town was established as a rail centre for the area's large sheep and cattle properties. Today it is better known as an opal town and, in particular, for the 'Boulder Opal'. The world's largest concentration of this opal is found in the area surrounding Quilpie. The town takes its name from the Aboriginal word 'quilpeta', meaning 'stone curlew'. We visited the St Finbarr's Catholic Church which has a unique altar, font and lectern made from opal-bearing rock. We visited the literal “End of the Railway Line”, the old Powerhouse Museum and the Mini Museum at the airport, dedicated to the old woolscour ... read more

Driving into Charleville we can't but help notice how dry the country side is, there has been no substantial rain here for quite a while.Our destination is our friends new house just on the outskirts of the town set on 10 acres which provides plenty of space for their 2 dogs, 1 cat, 2 horses and cluster of hens.We are heading for country hospitality and the company of good friends. Chareville has a rich past,the first Cobb and Co. carriage was built here and there are several still to be seen in the Historic house and museum,Qantas first took to the air from here.Cattle and sheep past through here on their way to Brisbane and could take as long as six months, longer in the wet season.The town has seen it's fortunes come and go experiencing ... read more

Quilpie was a much larger town than we’ve been in recently with a population of 650. Quilpie comes from an aboriginal word for Curlew. We were excited to find a supermarket but unfortunately the limited fresh produce still tastes like cardboard. I’m not sure how they’ve perfected cardboard flavoured meat, vegetables and water but they have done it well in the Channel Country. Although this place has lovely moments, generally I’m fed up with dust up my nose, in my ears and grit on everything. I never really feel clean and I’m annoyed with the heat and insects. We had a spot of rain to settle the dust and being worried about being stuck in the mud out on the lake tracks we decided to head off to Charleville to a caravan park. It was delightful ... read more

Thursday 29th September - our hopes for some calm weather were dashed - there was lightening, thunder and very heavy rain for very long periods throughout the night. Anyone under canvass would have had a tough time but we were quite cosy in the caravan apart from the noise of the rain beating down on the caravan roof. We were both a bit restless but, as we had nothing planned for the day-time, we were able to have a “lie-in”. Graham is usually up with the lark but even he was still in bed at 9:30am!!! He usually tells me how many caravans have moved on and what time the earliest one left. This morning, all the movers had gone before he got up!! The weather was very much better – just a bit of a ... read more

This year along with Brianna’s best fiend Grace and our new caravan “Winnie”, we decided to take an extended Easter break and see some of Central Western Queensland. The first day saw us leaving home at 5am to do the longest leg of the trip, from home to Charleville a total of 620km. We had planned on getting to Charleville to visit the Cosmos centre to go star gazing, but because of the rain, that was cancelled. The next morning we woke to a cold and showery morning. As we couldn’t go star gazing the night before we visited the Cosmos Centre this morning. The centre is well worth a visit with interactive displays and an informative movie and talk about our solar system, Sophie loved that she got to hold several different types of ... read more