Heading North for Boulia Camel Races

This trip will be our first in our new Paramount Duet Expander caravan.  We purchased it a few weeks ago from Canterbury Caravans in Bayswater, Victoria, and we're really happy with it so far.

The plan is to travel up to Birdsville with Carole and John, where we'll meet up with Lorraine and Bill, then on to the Boulia Camel Races where Lai and Garry will join us.  From there, we are heading to Karumba, on the Gulf of Carpentaria, then on to Townsville and back home.  

We left on 1 July and spent our first night in Lake Cargelligo.  We stayed at the caravan park for only $20 per night for a powered site.  They had a good fire going at the camp kitchen area, and we certainly needed the heat.  I'm sure that Lake Cargelligo would be a nice place to stay in good weather, but while we were walking around the town it started to rain, and it felt like needles of ice piercing my face.... bitterly cold.
  
Next morning, we were off to Louth, where Trev has previously spent many hours with his fishing buddies not catching fish.  We had been there before with Bill and Lorraine, and stayed at a free camp on the banks of the Darling River.  We set up camp in the same spot, then went up to Shindy's Inn, the local pub, for a drink and a bit of local knowledge in regards to the road conditions etc.   Apparently all the roads we are planning to travel on are in pretty good condition at the moment, so things are looking good.  It was still very cold in Louth, and my little hot water bottle came in very handy.  Trev threw in his yabby net, and managed to catch a grand total of 3 yabbies - we felt sorry for them, so released them to live another day.

From Louth we travelled up to Hungerford, which is just over the border into Queensland.  On the way, John had a bit of an altercation with a large emu - didn't do any damage to the car, but the emu definitely came off second best.   He had badly broken one of his legs and was unable to get up on his feet - poor John had to put him out of his misery, which wasn't pleasant.

We refuelled in Hungerford, then onto the Currawinya National Park on the Paroo River.  It was a beautiful spot, we found a camp right on the river and decided to stay for 2 nights.  There was plentiful birdlife around the waterhole, and it was very pleasant sitting on the riverbank with a drink, a good meal, and watching the sunset and moonrise.  There are some shearers' quarters and a huge shearing shed (with some machinery) in very good condition, as well as ruins of a couple of homesteads in the park, so there's plenty to look at.  


On the second day we travelled up to the two large lakes in the park, Lake Numalla (freshwater) and Lake Wyara (saltwater).  Both lakes were quite different - Numalla was almost yellow, and Wyara was blue, with a huge pelican colony on banks in the middle of the lake.  Wyara is the breeding ground for the pelicans and other waterbirds, and there must have been thousands of adults and chicks on these banks.  It was a wonderful sight.  In the late afternoon we drove from the lakes to a rocky outcrop called 'The Granites' - gorgeous red rocks which we climbed up for a great view over the national park.   It really is a lovely park, and hasn't been 'over-sanitised' which is what seems to happen to a lot of national parks in New South Wales - they have too many rules and regulations which are really designed to keep travellers out, rather than welcome them in.

From Currawinya we travelled north and stopped at a tiny town called Toompine (population 3) - it's tagline is 'The Pub with no Town'.  It literally is just the pub, but offers free camping to travellers, obviously on the premise that if you are staying there you will probably have a meal or a drink at the pub.  This is something that a lot of little outback pubs are doing to stay alive and works very well.  While having lunch there we were chatting with the publican and another couple mentioned that they were going on to Quilpie - she said that if we wanted to stay at the caravan park we should book ahead as it was filling up fast.  I said we were planning on staying there too, so she phoned the park and booked four sites for us all - pretty good service, but nothing out of the ordinary for country people.  They all work with each other out here, which is a great thing to see.

We arrived at Quilpie caravan park, set up, then booked in for a cooked meal around the camp kitchen - $15 for silverside, veggies, white sauce and damper, together with a singalong around the campfire.  Great fun, and a good way to meet other travellers and have a chat and a drink.

So far on our travels we've learned the following things:

• make sure you close and test all cupboard doors and fridge door before setting off (had a couple of drawers pop open and spill contents onto the floor, but nothing too drastic)
• red dust will find it's way inside, no matter how airtight you think your van is
• watch out for emus - we've decided that the collective noun for emus is:  'a stupidity of emus' - because they have a body the size of motorbike and a brain the size of a gnat, and if they see a car they will actually aim for it instead of running the opposite direction
• double-check all your instruments - especially the one that tells you whether your watertank is full or empty (we ran out of water even though Trev was positive he'd totally filled the tank).  But the meter showed we were out of water and it was correct!

Tomorrow we're heading for just past Windorah then onto Birdsville to meet Lorraine and Bill.