Back out on the road again

In accordance with popular belief that old Returds don’t die, they just keep cruising the highway, so it is with us. After a hiatus of nearly six months, and what a six months that was, Maurs and I are back on the road armed with a loose plan and a tight budget (that seems to be the lot of the Grey Nomad). We have been travelling for just over a week now – wrenching ourselves away from our daughters, their partners and worse still, our new grandson Harvey, whom I might say is a bit cute and totally addictive. More on that later.

Harvey - 2 months old

We drove out from Melbourne roughly in the direction of Adelaide and stopped at Halls Gap in the Grampians purely on a whim. It is great rugged country with a lot of walking tracks through there as we found out – funnily enough the clincher in the decision-making process was that there was a zoo there and they had Meerkats! We did enjoy the zoo. We had committed to get to Adelaide by the Friday and so we took off on the Thursday into the teeth of a developing weather system – gusty headwinds and equal helpings of blowing dust and sheeting rain to give the vehicle a muddy tone – to see how far we could get. We decided the little town of Tailem Bend on the Murray River was going to be our funkhole for the night (about 100 km from Adelaide). The Caravan Park had seen better days, possibly in 1965. In keeping with the environmental movement there were stickers plastered all over the shower recesses urging people to “Save Water”. Sadly upon entering the shower cubicles all the shower heads were leaking vigorously – without the taps on at all! Tailem Bend was the proverbial Curate’s Egg – good in parts – and the meal served at the local pub was terrific (and within a poor pensioner’s budget too!)

                                                         Meerkating in the Grampians

                         New-born baby marmoset clinging to Dad's neck - pretty rare

Onwards to Adelaide the next day. The weather had eased down some and it was an easy drive to South Australia’s fair capital city. The van park there was superbly appointed and lawns manicured (plumbing worked too!). Our mission was to catch up with friends; the Wehrs, the Harris’s, the Watsons, and Jamila – really good to see them all. South Australia might be the driest State in the driest continent (yes I know about Antarctica – but it’s a popular saying, alright?) but try telling a guy that as he packs up in patchy rain and drives 160 km to the next destination in steady rain. We booked into a place called Burra, only because it was one of the few places with a vacancy as the Easter holiday looms up and everyone leaves home for the four day break. We are rendezvousing with my brother Thomas and sis-in-law Margaret there – they are coming from Brisbane via Broken Hill. We had so much fun together last year through central Queensland that we thought we’d try it again. Unfortunately my sister Mal and bro-in-law Roy (the self contained entertainment system) couldn’t make this one but plans may be afoot for next year.

                                                     Ah the life of a Grey Nomad!!!

So that’s where we’re at, cats. After this we’re heading north in a valiant attempt to stave off yet another winter. We’ll keep you informed. Meanwhile, if you’re interested in our last six months “off-road” so to speak...read on.

We ended our last road-trip in Melbourne last September by spending some time with family and friends before flying back to Perth where Maurs had to do the rounds of the doctors regarding the aftermath of her breast cancer diagnosis. She got the all clear health-wise plus a spot of reconstructive surgery and hopefully, eternal vigilance aside, that will be that. We also caught up with friends (those that hadn’t got sick of us never being around) before heading back to Melbourne via Singapore. We heard the Singaporeans did Christmas rather well and we were not disappointed by the street decorations, the general vibe, or anything else in Singapore for that matter – it is a great city. We met our friends Elly and Mike there and we sampled as many different cuisines as we could in the time available. The time available turned out to be a little more than planned. For the first time in my flying career we completely missed our flight to Melbourne – misread the flight schedule – realised our mistake at about final check-in time – dashed out to the airport – threw ourselves upon the mercy of Jetstar who were very obliging and simply booked us onto the next night’s flight – rushed downstairs at Changi Airport to find some accommodation for the night – got a room at the same hotel we had just left, same floor and about four doors down from Mike and Elly’s room – caught a taxi back to the hotel and resumed partying. Unfortunately it meant that we had yet again missed being with Renee for her birthday, so there were consequences when we did get into Melbourne.

                                                            Elephant suits become him

We spent Christmas in Melbourne, followed by the main event, the birth of Harvey on 14 January. He arrived nearly a week late and it was a difficult birth but he is a little gift to Renee and Justin (and to us as well). We spent a lot of our time assisting the new parents around the house, helping them to adjust to their little arrival. The guest room was renamed the Servants Quarters and I reckon Justin would have been howling the most of all of us when the time came for us to leave, with the possible exception of Dexter the dog who was clearly on easy street with his G/Ma and G/Pa tending to his every need. But Returds need to be on the road – that’s the way of things.

                                                          "Please come back...pleeeeasse!"

It’s getting very near the end

We had to stop over at Charleville as it was the only place along the way where I could book a service for the vehicle – and I had to book that weeks in advance as well. As it happened, it proved to be an entertaining layover. The Van Park that we chose had signs up everywhere about a “Stowaway Cat”, apparently an over-friendly feline who had the habit of being inadvertently packed up in vans only to be unpacked hundreds of kilometres down the road, behoving the disgruntled drivers to return said feline back to the Van Park. Sure enough the cat found us and made itself right at home. Very friendly cat and I guess secure within itself and around strangers. However, on the day of our departure I kept one very suspicious eye on that cat as it hovered around our camper. Three days in Charleville was enough – we were not coming back!

                         Charleville's stowaway cat, "Puddy" livin' it up in the camper

Mind you Charleville did hold some interest – they have a Cosmos Centre for stargazers, a Bilby Conservation Centre looking after an endangered species of cute little chocolate-covered marsupials, and a special treat for us in reuniting with my brother-in-law Grothy and my nephew Steve as they made their way out to the Birdsville Races. The races are an annual event but for Grothy it’s more a pilgrimage. Our rendezvous point was the Cattle Camp Hotel at 10am – coincidentally opening time for the pub – and sure enough, not withstanding a flat tyre to hold them up momentarily, the bus rocked up, spilling the prospective punters into the pub and up for the first drink of the day. We politely declined their kind offer to join them in an early tipple – and our gift of two fresh cream-buns for Grothy did look a trifle insipid, lined up against a wall of beers – however we had a great time catching up and eventually they all got back on the bus hoping to make Windorah in time for the Yabby Races, a warm up for the Birdsville Cup.

                                                            Find us in the mural...

After Charleville, we knew we had to head south but we were attracted to divert just a little bit to a town called Eulo (population 50) where there is a date farm making a date wine, plus it is within striking distance of the Yowah opal fields – home of the famous (that’s how it’s advertised) Yowah “nut”, a type of rock that, when sawn in half sometimes yields opals and/or other interesting effects that has earned them the title of picture rocks. On this leg of the highway we learned two things: one sip of date wine explains fully why grapes are the preferred medium for the wine-making process; and, finding a good opal in a public fossicking area like we did in Quilpie was a complete fluke, making prospecting in general an activity for the tourist that should be more for fun than for profit (dammit!).

                                                             Now that's a Bilby!

After Eulo we did head south, crossing the border into New South Wales on our way to Bourke. Henry Lawson wrote, “If you know Bourke, you know Australia” and I tend to think he was right. An old riverboat port on the Darling River miles from the sea – there’s just something about it, and just being at the “Back’a Bourke” makes it feel special.

                       Yowah "Picture Rock" - mighta picked up a couple of samples...

By the time we got to Cobar the wind was really picking up as a trough raced through inland NSW. For us it was a tailwind that actually assisted our fuel consumption (that bane of the Grey Nomad’s existence) but made it equally unpleasant when you had to stop driving and get out in it. So we kept on moving until we arrived in Hay and spent the night there. From there Victoria beckoned so we crossed the mighty Murray River at Echuca and stopped for the night at Castlemaine. It’s weird when you realise that you are spending your last night of an adventure that you started 7 months ago, and the next day you will be back in a city – in a suburb – in a house – doing everyday things again.

                                     Back to Melbourne and civilisation??? Local graffiti

We’ve gone from off-road to off the road, as we will be flying back to Perth at the end of the month and then flying back to Melbourne in December. There’s a grandchild due in January but maybe – if we can escape – we’ll resume on the returd highway again next year sometime. Maybe you’d like to join us...

A Flurry in Cloncurry

Caravan Parks are usually pretty quiet and staid affairs once the sun goes down but we were awoken from our slumbers around 4am by a rather loud (dare I say maniacal) dialogue from a woman in a tent just 20 metres from us. She was in her early 40s I guess from what we saw earlier in the day and the gist of the conversation was her questioning the conjugal rights of her partner, complaining that she badly needed a rest and wasn’t three times a week enough (to paraphrase and omit expletives)? After a short silence there was a chorus from the surrounding male grey nomads (with a hint of envy even) agreeing that she did have a fair point there, and there followed a chorus from the female grey nomads “Amen to that, dear!” The guy kept a low response at all times so we couldn’t hear him but whatever he said arced her up even more, and so it went on for about 20 minutes until either or both fell back to sleep, and the caravan park residents followed suit.

On the way to the ‘Curry we were obliged by a road train driver throwing up a rock our way, giving a rather displeasing large chip mark on our windscreen. As we drove through Cloncurry we happened upon a windscreen repair business and asked if he could fix it tomorrow – he said no he’d be away tomorrow but “drive it through, I’ll fix it now!” As I got out of the vehicle I happened to notice a tangle of bare wires hanging out of the trailer where it should have been connected to the car. Somehow (and we suspect it happened outside of Lawn Hill) we had obliterated the connecting plug which was nowhere to be seen.  The windscreen guy said to try the bloke across the road, which I did and he obligingly wandered across and reconnected the electricals while the windscreen was being patched. Country towns are cool! Nothing seems to be any bother to these people.

                                              Maurs runs with Banjo the Dinosaur

From Cloncurry we drove back down to Winton, checked out another Dinosaur Centre but one where you see actual dinosaur bones rather than replicas (a rarity anywhere in the world), and through Longreach but then got off the beaten track a little by checking out the smaller towns of Stonehenge (the van park was full there – had two vans in it) and Jundah, where we camped for the night. We took a “tourist drive” along the Thomson River in the late afternoon (plenty of water still in these rivers) to check out the bird and animal life. That evening while we were having our showers we could hear a band playing at the local pub – a quality band! So off we set for a couple of drinks and enjoyed a two-piece group with a big sound called Mick Lindsay (Mick had a guitarist called Grant with him). As a muso he was arrogant in a friendly way – “any requests?” he asked casually – he could pretty well play anything but he specialised in Southern US country rock, and they gave their all for less than 20 people in the audience (so the whole of Jundah was there). Very enjoyable and unexpected night. He was on his way to play at the Birdsville Races. You can look him up at www.micklindsay.com – worth a look and a listen if you have a spare moment. Maurs had the added thrill of being hit on by the village idiot – he was fat, drunk, and cavorted in front of everyone like a barefoot John Belushi – but, as Maurs rightly pointed out, he was a lot younger than her and it was a male, unlike other occasions when she has been hit upon in pubs.

                                                   Real dinosaurs - real bones!

From Jundah it was on to Windorah – a metropolis by Jundah standards, where we had a morning coffee and moved on quickly to Quilpie.

                   Things move kinda slow at Windorah - of course, it was Sunday morning.
It’s about 200 km of single lane bitumen with high shoulders onto gravel so if you happen to meet someone coming the other way you have to gingerly get one set of wheels off the road and hope the other guy doesn’t cough up yet more gravel onto your windscreen. The road carnage along this stretch was appalling with loads of dead roos, emus, cattle, feral pigs, feral cats, and slow birds. Maurs had to stop outright for a wedge-tailed eagle who just eyed us off until he lumbered a few metres off to the side of the road to let us past. This was luckier than one hapless traveller whom we met in Quilpie – a wedge-tail had flown into his windscreen making a rather large mess of it and ruining his chances of making the Birdsville race meeting (I’m not sure that he was so willing to stop for it though).

                                                Don't mess with the wedge-tail....

Outside of Quilpie is a public fossicking area where people can have a dig and give rocks a whack with a hammer. Are you catching on to a theme here? Of course we went out for a fossick. The target this time? Opals. In an inspired piece of team cluelessness, Maurs asked me to bring a cloth over on which to rest our findings. I placed this cloth on the ground and picked up a random rock to keep the cloth from blowing away. She picked up the rock and saw a tiny glint of opal on one side of it. She whacked it to make it into a smaller rock to keep but when she did, it broke open to reveal more opal inside – to the extent that she got the opal guy in town to cut out a not-too-shabby piece of pure opal for jewellery plus he polished up the remainder of the rock for a nice conversation piece (yes we do intend to bore you about this when we see you again!) I fear our fossicking days are not ended yet either.

                                     Our opal find, all polished up! Not a bad morning's work.

I should mention bore water for those unfamiliar with it. Water in this part of the world is artesian and has varying concentrations of Hydrogen Sulphide. It’s good water – so soft you can hardly wash the soap off yourself, but it does carry the distinctive odour of rotten eggs that tempers any notions of long showers – particularly after one has had an egg for breakfast (particularly galling!) As everyone out here says, you get used to the smell – but crikey, I reckon it takes a while!

Mostly Lawn Hill

We travelled down from Karumba to the Burke and Wills Roadhouse and stayed the night before heading on to Lawn Hill. The roadhouse is a pretty lonely spot on the highway – there’s nothing for a hundred kilometres in any direction. I’m pretty sure Burke and Wills never stayed there on their journey, which is a pity as they would have got a hot shower and a cold beer before continuing on to their own personal oblivion. When we were there, there was a scattering of other caravaners including Merv and Brenda who inhabited a great big old motor home with, not surprisingly, “Merv and Brenda” emblazoned on the front. They may have been there a while as periodically big Merv would try to turn over the big diesel motor - to no avail. Still, hot showers, cold beer...no worries eh Merv.

Lawn Hill is another special place. You have to eat about 90 kilometres of dust to finally get there and you have to share the track with huge three-bogie mining road-trains that cause localised blinding sandstorms as they drive past, but it is definitely worth the effort. We booked in for four nights. The owners do what they call a” Harry’s Hill Tour” at sunset. Basically they cart whoever wants to go on their little bus up this small hill to watch the sunset, hear a few Lawn Hill stories and have some wine and snacks. Wine and Snacks? There’s a species of Grey Nomad where that means “get as much as you can while it’s on offer” and we witnessed one fat boy with wine glass in one hand and a mitt full of cheese, pickled onions, olives, and cabana sausage in the other, slurping his way through the afternoon. No wine returned from Harry’s Hill that day I can tell you...it was a massacre. The sunset was nice though.

                                                        Camping in Adel's Grove

We booked our campsite at Lawn Hill via email and we received a confirmatory reply which included, “We assume that you do not have a generator or a dog and have allocated you a space in the Grove.” We wrote back, “You are correct. Our dog ran away with our generator and we haven’t seen either for months.” It seems like that if you have a dog or a generator you are relegated to a noisier and presumably smellier part of the camp. Imagine our surprise when we noticed the couple camped next to us in the Grove had...cats! People travelling the countryside with two fluffy pussycats defy our perception of well...fun. There’s a certain sense of dedication that goes into handling cats. They were probably aged in their late sixties. They had a special pen for the cats to lounge about in outside and they walked them on leashes. I asked was it difficult travelling with cats and they both said without hesitation, “It’s easier than travelling with children.” Well you can’t argue with that!

                                                   Crimson Finch strikes a pose

And I’d like to make a statement about Speedos while they are on my mind! I saw three gents of reasonably advanced years strutting back from the swimming hole in their Speedos. Now I reckon that you don’t look particularly great in Speedos in your prime and those things don’t improve with age. Not only that – guys tend to hold on to their Speedos for years and years and lycra does have a habit of decomposing with time – just add water and there is incredible sagging that only underlines the incredible sagging of the male form. To murder an old C&W song (and there’s been plenty of that happening out at Lawn Hills, believe me), “Mothers don’t let your babies grow up to wear Speedos”.

                                                   Indarri Falls at Lawn Hill National Park

Everybody does the canoe trip up Lawn Hill Gorge. A lot treat it as a race and paddle like fury to the first barrier, portage over the falls and speed up and back the next bit as well – then go and book into the local masseuse at the camp because they had used muscles they hadn’t used since 1982. We were more intent on spotting the wildlife so we took it rather slow. We came across a big fallen log with several cormorants and we snapped quite a few photos from different angles. We then continued our plod up the creek to the falls and when coming back we saw a couple taking photos at the same log. “There’s a crocodile over there,” they said. “That’s incredible” we said, “We were there earlier and it wasn’t around!” So over we went and took a few shots of this croc on the bank. As we paddled off Maurs said, “You don’t think it was there when we took the first lot of shots do you?” “Of course not,” I said. Oh yes it was! When we downloaded the photos later, there it was – the damn croc sitting happily in the background of EVERY shot! We had blithely missed the gorilla in the room! We seriously considered handing in our Naturalist badges but as we only got them off the back of a Weeties packet we didn’t bother.

                                                Never mind the croc - look at the birds!!!

So, the walks in the National Park were excellent, canoeing was grand, wildlife abundant, swimming in the spring-fed Lawn Hill Creek was so refreshing and there was a bar and restaurant on hand for us to relax at night (although we did have to listen to some fractured country music played by an old cowboy on a guitar while our drinks were going down). A small price to pay.

                                                                 Lawn Hill Creek

We were floating around in the big deep swimming hole on our last afternoon in Lawn Hill (I was in board shorts, not Speedos) and I said to Maurs, “Could we spend the rest of our lives like this?” It was a rhetorical question and the next morning we were back in the dust and corrugated ruts, bouncing our way back to Cloncurry.

North to Karumba

                           Gus having a beer with all his mates in the Cobbold Gorge bar

I should say something about the weather. Now being deep winter you might think that you’re cold and you’re probably right. We get cold too. Early morning the temperature dips down to around 5-10C but it’s Tee Shirt time by 9.30am and we’ve been picking up 28C most afternoons. No clouds, just blue sky and wafting little breezes. Dat’s de weather report (not quite in official Bureau language)! The northern Australian winter climate is just superb.

                                                          Cobbold Gorge swimming area

Equally, Cobbold Gorge where we have just spent five days is superb. A resort built on a cattle station out in the middle of nowhere and done really well. We’ve toured the Gorge, walked the walks, swum the pool, canoed the dam, read the books and had sunset drinks at the bar. Very relaxing lifestyle.

Maurs is becoming very keen on fossicking and we went to a place called Agate Creek looking for...agates. It was the first time on the trip that I actually had to use 4WD as we bounced around searching for a prized agate. I don’t really know what a prized agate looks like so I looked for “rocks with character” – some of them may be agates, I don’t know. As the bloke who showed us around O’Brien’s Creek gem field told me, there are malachites, azurites, pyrites and leverites. The important one to recognise is the Leverite.  “Leverite where you found it, it’s a rock!”

                                                      Maurs - happy in a dry creek bed

Now heavily weighed down with Maureen’s gem findings we limped in to Croydon and spent a day and a night there.  Croydon is an old gold town, now almost defunct. However the locals have a great sense of history and have retained a lot of the old mining precinct as a really interesting display, including a lot about the Chinese community who stuck it out in quite harsh conditions, both physically and socially. And there are still traces of them within today’s community.

We went on through Normanton to Karumba on the Gulf of Carpentaria. Normanton didn’t ring any of our chimes at all. We circled the joint three times but couldn’t even convince ourselves to buy a coffee there. In fairness it was a Sunday and so some places were not open, but what was open wasn’t flash. Karumba however had everything we needed and we stayed four nights, mostly relaxing, stalking the local wildlife and going for long walks. We did watch the sunset a few times at the local pub on the point, which is almost de rigor I believe.

                                                  Something wrong here? Not a thing!!
The place is full of Mexicans who every year throw their Toorak tractors into top gear and haul their massive caravans up here for months at a time. It’s tough to get a space at a van park because of all these aged itinerants. They were all forlorn when we got there as the winds were wrong, the tides were wrong and it was too cold so the fish weren’t on the bite at all. All they could do was clean their equipment and wait for “happy hour” every night. There were whingers and there were white trash trailer park snobs, but we met some really nice people too. I think I’ve got enough material for a lengthy discourse on people who inhabit caravan parks, but that will have to wait for the end of the journey. There are some cool stories.

                                              Home-made prawn rolls - now that's a lunch
We’re done in Karumba. Having said the fishing was crook, there was no shortage of prawns, crabs, barramundi and other fish for sale and Maurs and I took advantage and supped on seafood for the entire time. Now, we’re turning south west and heading for Lawn Hill where we will continue to be out of mobile range and possibly out of Internet range too, but we hear it is a spectacular place to see.

What to do around Mt Surprise

We took a drive out to Copperfield Gorge on Sunday. Off the highway it’s about 45 km of rough old country road with a few water hazards along the way. We also had to dodge around copious cattle (they big in North Queensland) and a couple of roos but it was well worthwhile – very pretty gorge with clear as crystal water. Just opposite stands the Einasleigh Pub, the most prominent building in Einasleigh, and an absolute oasis for the locals who work in this remote area.

                                                               Copperfield Gorge

Today we drove out to a fossicking site about 40 km north of Mt Surprise. We dug and sieved and ate dust all morning and for our trouble found about six pieces of Topaz and a bit of coloured quartz. It’s quite satisfying, finding your own bits of jewellery, but I just can’t imagine the life of the old miners who trawled through these areas on foot in search of their fortune, because here I am, back in camp, parked by a swimming pool under a cool shade, showered clean, nursing a cold soft drink, and typing on the Internet (not that this is a bad thing!)

                                 Retirement shouldn't involve going back to the salt mines!!

                                                     No Topaz escaped Maurs' scrutiny!

Tomorrow we leave for Cobbold Gorge, about 200 km away. We hear it is pretty nice there. We’ll let you know.

Getting back on the Highway

At the moment we are sitting in North Queensland in a little town called Mount Surprise and the biggest surprise is that there’s no mountain called Mount Surprise to support the town’s good name – just a small hillock that would make Nepalese tourists hysterical with laughter, if we ever had any Nepalese actually touring around here. The town is small – about 70 people – but a steady stream of tourists bulks up the numbers through the winter period. We came here to see the Undara Lava Tubes, which are a remarkable piece of natural engineering that I had heard about years ago but never got to. They are quite spectacular and it’s hard to do them justice but here are a couple of images that Maurs took on our tour.

                                                       Cave dwellers at Undara

                                             The Lava Tubes are quite spectacular

That’s a long way from Da Nang where I last blogged and no, I won’t try to link in the tunnel tours that you can do in Vietnam with the Lava Tubes – Undara is way more spacious – you could drive a tank down one of these babies. We came here via Melbourne where we didn’t do much at all except hang out with the family and catch up with the McBrides for a lunch at the Windsor Hotel on a bitterly cold Melbourne day.

                           John and Trish trying to look warm at the old Windsor Hotel

We then flew to Townsville where we didn’t do much at all except catch up with friends, walk along the Ross River and get our camping gear back together for the resumption of our next adventure. However I should thank Jetstar for hosting possibly the most annoying child on our flight back there. This kid cried and whinged for the entire flight with a constancy you rarely encounter. I well know that if continual whingeing was an Olympic event that the Poms would wrap up the gold but gee, this kid would have certainly made the Aussie team.

          Cousin Laurie and Gary being kind to the turtles by giving them bread

We’ve been trying to get a new spare tyre after we discovered our spare was a “get you home” only variety that limits you to 80 km/h and disintegrates if exposed to prolonged sunlight. We finally got one last Friday but it necessitated at 450 km trip from Mount Surprise back to Townsville and then back again the next day. Just for variety we travelled a bit north into the Atherton Tableland and then down the coast from about Innisfail to Townsville. Heading that way we saw the effects of what Cyclone Yasi had on the vegetation, even 18 months or so after the event. It was a good one!

We spent the night with my cousin Laurie. He must live in the most sociable street in the world. The neighbours regularly stoke up a bonfire in one of their front yards and sit around for drinks and a chat of an evening. We went down to such a gathering and it was all going wonderfully until the guy’s sprinkler system engaged and doused us all in jets of cold water. There were wet people running everywhere for a while there, including people in dressing gowns and fathers trying to shield their pram-bound babies from the deluge. He said “I activated it today but I wasn’t sure what time it was set for.” Well let me tell you Len, it’s set for 7.13 pm! That’s when my watch stopped working.

                                   Neighbourhood lawn gathering - does your street do this?

We're going back to Mt Surprise where the neighbours ain't quite so "sociable"....