Blogs from Mount Isa, Queensland, Australia, Oceania

Happy First day of Spring....or for those reading this in the NH Happy first day of Fall. The sun is over the equator and is heading toward the Tropic of Capricorn so both those in the Northern Hemisphere (NH) and Southern Hemisphere are getting the same amount of daylight (depending on their distance from the equator). Headed out around 7:30 - I wanted to find someplace to have a regular breakfast. I had filled up with gas when I first hit Hughenden so I was good until I found a breakfast stop. I hit Richmond around 9:00 and found a little gas station that also made breakfast- just what I was looking for and was able to top off with gas to boot. The terrain started out with wide open cattle grazing land - in fact, ... read more

We are finally off on our 10 week adventure!! Leaving Bundaberg and heading for Perth via the top end. I wasn't going to bother doing a blog this trip but I have had quite a few people ask about it that I've decided to do one again. If you are interested in hearing about what we are doing then feel free to subscribe and you will receive an email each time I post a new post. We will be heading to remote parts of Australia so these posts may be very irregular. We started on Sunday morning and were planning to leave early and head out to Flemings place and leave all together. Except our lights on the caravan didn't work! Poor Nathan spent a bit of time trying to work it out, it seemed we ... read more

Between Barkly Homestead (a large roadhouse in the middle of nowhere) and Mount Isa is Camooweal. The big thing about Camooweal is that it has the Georgina River (sometimes) flowing by. Rumour has it that (many years ago) two young women were camped in the dry bed of the Georgina River (under the bridge) when a busload of tourists stopped to check out the river. I think the girls had clothes on.... Mostly, things have changed now. Georgina mostly camps inside the bus in a caravan park. There is a big new bridge spanning the Georgina River. But the river was still dry! There wasn't much happening at Camooweal so we pushed on to Mount Isa. We checked in to a local caravan park and walked across the road to the motel for dinner. This was ... read more

Well hope it was a good Anzac day for all. We had rushed to Mt Isa yesterday to be sure we had somewhere to go to a dawn service. Little did we know how good it was going to be though!. The park managers had offered to take us to the dawn service and picked us up at 5.30am. Rod and daughter Emma. It was a mild morning, very different to Inverloch dawn service temperatures we are used to! It was an amazingly beautiful service. Many many people, and the service was very emotional, tears fell readily (well for me anyway...) Scottish pipers, last posts, the Fureys singing 'No Mans Land', beautiful stories, 'Abide with me' and words of peace and unity read. Very glad we came to Mt Isa to spend this special day. And ... read more

Heaps of highlights in the last week. Lawn Hill NP out woop woop way west . Travelled still on the Savannah way towards Burketown. Tiny little comunity, not even a Pub that says it all and joined their community festival which was an insight to how things are done out here. A dirt road corrugated dusty speckled with roadtrains and then there we were. magnificant Lawn Hill Gorge opens up with tourquise blue green water just waiting to be dived into. So dive we did and paddle we did under the nearly full moon. The freshwater crocs where looking on and seemed at peace with us, the fish where zig zagging around us. In the heat of the day the water was the best place to be. The hikes early in the morning and late afternoon ... read more