Clermont - Charters Towers

Ella the horse whisperer

Tuesday 5/7
Our visitors early this morning in the Clermont Van Park included 2 kangaroos, a flock of lorikeets and a chestnut horse, which left after happily munching through a couple of day's worth of porridge oats!

Marcus feeding the lorikeets

We broke camp and left to find the local library to print out our satellite phone paperwork, where the kids discovered the coolest music installation. A windmill sculpture played a pentatonic scale and was situated inside a corrugated iron "tank" which provided fantastic amplification. We all had a great time improvising some tunes on it. I would have taken some video but I haven't got that far in the new camera manual yet. Should have just asked the kids, but they wouldn't leave the windmill!

Pentatonic Windmill in Clermont

We decided to leave the Blair Athol mine visit for a later trip, grabbed a few (very expensive) groceries and headed out of town for a long drive to Charters Towers. The road cut through flat and fairly featureless brigalow plains, and at one point Ella was absolutely convinced that we were just driving over the same piece of road in an endless loop! "Mum, we've been on this bit before! I recognise it."

After 2 hours of driving we reached Belyando Crossing, a tiny blink-and-you'll-miss-it petrol station. In fact, we did miss it and had to turn around to refuel. This was our most expensive refuel (thus far) at $1.75 per litre! Pay up, or perish in the desert! We had lunch there and the kids fed the lonely rainbow lorikeet. Lonely, but fat! Jackson had a great time counting road-train wheels - his previous record was 58 until he saw a Perkins Haulage Road Train with 62.



Jackson was excited to break the wheel count record.





I started texting my brother Dave as we left Clermont, lost reception and we had to drive 400kms to Charters Towers until we were back in range. I will be pleased to pick up the satellite phone in Cairns in case of emergency!

We reached the outskirts of Charters Towers late in the afternoon. The closest free camp was at the Mobil truckstop, so we decided to stay for the night. While the boys had their showers, Ella and I watched the endless parade of trucks as the light faded and darkness fell. Ella was really enjoying the trucks and said "Some things are just glorious! I've never seen a truck so well decorated with lights!"

What a night!! The huge roadtrains rolled in and out all night, most coming within a metre of the side of the caravan. At one point, a 50m long cattle truck parked next to us. Most of them were empty, but this one had a full load. The cows all started mooing as soon as the engine stopped. Ella said excitedly "Oooh! I can hear them trotting!"

The kids had their noses pressed to the windows in fascination until they fell asleep from sheer exhaustion.

Looks like a nice, quiet place to camp!

Stay tuned ...