Day 67 - 70 30th May – 1st June To Longreach

We all awoke on the morning of the 30th to another glorious sunrise and the prospect of a beautiful day for the drive to Longreach!
After a very quick breakfast we were on the road again by about 9.00 a.m.
By this time we were travelling parallel with the Tropic of Capricorn, about 15 km below it. The name of the highway “The Capricorn Highway” and it meets this tropical meridian at our intended destination for the next few days, Longreach.
We made very steady progress, passing through such well-known places as Jericho “on the left bank of the Jordan Creek”
Barcaldine, which is quite a cattle hub for the surrounding district. Ilfracombe, which has a caravan park with heated artesian spa!!! Very tempting. But Longreach beckons. The legendary centre of the Queensland Outback. Home of the “Stockman’s Hall of Fame” and the home of “Q.A.N.T.A.S.”
As we drove eastwards the countryside changed quite noticeably, with trees becoming more sparse and stunted and wide-open plains of golden native Mitchell grass emerging. What also became more noticeable was the amount of road kill that was present, of which we managed to contribute 1 kangaroo!! The amount of dead fauna on the edges of these country roads is quite astounding. I would say that there is some form of dead animal every 100 – 150 metres along the road. I managed to collect one as a road train was tailing me. I was travelling at about 90 k’s and this truck was right behind me getting ready to attempt an overtaking manoeuvre. I was contemplating having a chat to him on the UHF radio about the best time for to do so and so wasn’t fully attuned to the road ahead. Suddenly a good sized ‘roo takes off from behind a bit of scrub and heads diagonally for the road right into my path. The poor bugger was kind of travelling in my direction but I was still gonna hit him. I hit the brakes and belted him just on the edge of the bull bar and he bounced off the car on to the opposite side of the road. Unfortunately for the ‘roo, due to my braking the truck behind me which was carrying a load of cars had to brake and swerve to the opposite side of the road to avoid me and so ran clean over the kanga. He was deady-bones pretty well straight away!!!
Needless to say were all a little shaken by the whole episode, even though it all happened within a matter of seconds. Thankfully there was no damage to either the car or ourselves. So we continued on our journey to Longreach. You know the Millennium Pajero; she’s a pretty rugged vehicle!!!
Finally after 300 or k’s we rounded a bend in the road and there in the distance heralding the entrance to Longreach, was the tail fin of a “flying kangaroo” 747 jumbo rising above the surrounding plains that is housed at the Qantas museum at Longreach Airport!! This was quite a surprising sight to behold, as we were more than 700 km’s from the nearest international airport.
After checking the local info. Centre we headed to Gunadoo Caravan Park and once again began the set up procedure. Big set up was Gunadoo, although not too busy whilst we were there.
Longreach is the “spiritual heart” of the Qld outback and is well set up to exploit this theme. We stayed 3 nights here, as Ruby was feeling a little unwell. The C.Park also had a pool and a spa so the girls were quite fond of the place. Visited the Stockman’s Hall of Fame, which was very good. It was full of lots of interesting info. and artefacts relating to the settlement and pastoral development of Australia and the role of the Aboriginals, stockmen and women, pioneers, explorers etc in the opening up of the land and a recognition of the vital role which they played in the shaping of the present day Australia.
Visited the Qantas museum and had a look at the 747 “City of Bundaberg” and the recently acquired and restored 707 jet that are housed at the Airport. Also checked out the Longreach Hospital to see if Ruby could be fixed up. (Just a virus) Other than that we just chilled out at the Caravan Park. Saturday evening it began to rain and did so all night. Was still raining as we began to pack up, so we ended up packing a wet tent!! (an inch and a half rain). Not very comfortable but not a big prob as we were only going to travel 170 km to Winton that day and hopefully it would have stopped by the time we got there.