Bedourie to Boulia

Bright and early next morning we headed for Bedourie - about 190km of dirt and bitumen.  The road was pretty good, with no major problems.  We arrived by lunchtime, had lunch opposite the tourist info office, and found out that, to my dismay, the hot artesian springs were closed for cleaning, so no swimming on that day.  We tried finding a camping spot at the nearby creek, but it was too difficult for most of us to get into, so we followed Trev's Ozi Explorer map which showed a waterhole a few kilometres out of town - we couldn't find the waterhole but found the racecourse instead.  And it had a good-sized shed with electricity, two hot water showers, three sinks and two toilets.  So we set up camp around the shed, had a roaring fire, a good meal and hot showers -brilliant!


From Bedourie to Boulia was another couple of hundred kms, on mostly sealed, but some dirt roads.  We got all the info we needed at the tourism office, then headed out to the racecourse to set up camp for the next few days.  So far there were six of us, but Lai and Garry would be joining us the next day, so we needed to get an area that would support all of us.  Boulia had had a bit of rain over the previous few days, so there were some very slushy bits of ground.  Anyway, we managed to get a good camp set up, and we're hoping that the rain will hold off, through the forecast is not good.


Garry and Lai arrived next day after 3 months of travelling around QLD and NT, and it's really good to catch up with them.  We booked into the local pub for dinner that evening, and I'm happy to say it was a much better experience than at Birdsville.  They actually took bookings, and the meals were good country pub meals. We bought some tickets in the meat trays, and Garry won one of the prizes - a good serve of frozen fish, so we'll be having that for dinner tomorrow.  It started to rain that evening, and the ground is looking very soggy - so bad that the Camel Races may not even take place ... still waiting to find out.