Stonehenge

While in Longreach we were talking to a lady who is a photographer and saw some of her photos of these incredible red sand dunes, turns out they were only 320kms away. Of course 320km is not much to us now so we decided to take a little side trip and to go and see these sand dunes! On the way we camped the night at a little town called Stonehenge.  We had a great chat to the lady who owns the pub there (not much else in the town). We learnt a lot about the area, the local school has only 5 kids in the whole primary school, the school captain will be captain for a few years as he is the oldest and is only in 4^th class. She was also telling us that the dingo fence isn’t much help to them there, they have quite a big dingo problem there, mauling cattle and killing sheep. She also said that, unlike a lot of the rest of Queensland, cane toads have just arrived out there in the last couple of years.

Sunset at Stonehenge

Sunrise at Stonehenge

Barcaldine, Ilfracombe & Longreach

We headed towards Longreach along the Capricorn Hwy, where we saw a lot of very long straight sections of road, where you could see for miles in all directions as the ground was very flat and not much vegetation.

Example of what the Capricorn Hwy is like all the way along it!

We stopped at Barcaldine on the way and checked out the Tree of Knowledge, which was an amazing monument, built in recognition of the spot on which the Australian Labour Party was created following the National Shearers Strike.

Tree of Knowledge (this is the original tree which the monument is built above etc)

We had another break at Ilfracombe for a dip in the artesian spa, our muscles were feeling very relaxed after that! We arrived in Longreach where we set up camp on the Thomson River for a night.

Ilfracombe Artisian Spa

The next day we did a tour of the QANTAS museum, because Longreach was where QANTAS began. We got to check out a 747 close up, learn some very interesting facts (eg how they managed to land the 747 at Longreach when the airstrip there is too short for a 747) and see some of the first QANTAS planes and the original QANTAS hanger.

Inside the 747 engine

Aidan and Cody about to go inside the 747

Look out Captain Kelso's are flying this plane

Inside the orginal QANTAS hanger at Longreach

Rubyvale

It ended up taking us an hour to leave Theresa Creek Dam once we had packed up – just saying good bye to the great friends we had made there. But from there we headed down to the town of Rubyvale which is one of the towns in that area known for sapphires. We did an underground tour of a sapphire mine then bought a bucket of dirt to have a go at fossicking. Well Jaime and Shell didn’t think we would find anything, but they were mistaken, Aidan and Cody ended up finding about 20 pieces of sapphire. We went and got them assessed by a gem expert and they said, that most people find sapphire which is either too cloudy or simply too small to cut into a gemstone which was the case with most of the boy’s findings. But as she was going through their find she pulled one piece out and said that it was a very nice gem indeed and we would be able to get it cut into a gemstone at least 5mm in diameter. So Shell is going to buy the stone from the boys and get it cut and put into a ring as a memento of our trip.

Aidan and Cody down the sapphire mine with a pretend miner

In one of the tunnels of the mine

Loading up the seive and getting out the big rocks and soil

Shaking the seives in water

Cody checking for sapphires

From Rubyvale we headed towards Longreach camping the night at a place called Bogantungan. Not much there, a railway station and 2 houses.

Theresa Creek Dam (Clermont)

From leaving Mackay we drove out through part of the Bowen Basin, which is the coal mine belt of Qld. It was incredible the number of coal mines we passed and we even passed villages which were built just to house miners. These villages were all transportable homes which could house over 1800 people!

Our first stop was Theresa Creek Dam just outside of Clermont. What a spot! We had planned to only camp 2 nights there, but ended up staying for 5, with people trying to get us to stay longer and if it wasn’t for the fact we had a long way still to go around Australia we would have stayed! We had a beautiful camp spot right on the edge of the dam, where not only did we have blue sky, we were catching 50+ big red claw yabbies every day – which were beautiful to eat! We had great people camped around us and ended up getting invited to watch the footy (Rabbits v Tigers – our family rivalry match!) up in the lounge room of the caretakers house, who then invited us to go waterskiing with them the next day and also lent us a kayak . So we caught and ate red claw, watched the footy, water-skied, kayaked, fed the lorikeets which visited us every day, flew a kite with our camping neighbour’s granddaughter Shaye, swam, relaxed and sat around the camp fire and got to know the fabulous people camping around us. Aidan and Cody also enjoyed beating our neighbour Sparrow in games! By the way Sparrow Aidan and Cody just wanted to say "GO THE TIGERS!"

Retreat South West

From all weather reports the weather on the northern coast of Qld was not going to be getting any drier for us for at least a week, so we decided to retreat. We packed up and headed south west, decided to take the kids out to Longreach and Winton and then head to Cairns via inland and stay where we could blue sky and sun!

Airlie Beach

From Mackay we headed up to Airlie Beach, but the weather was still terrible (they had 26inches of rain in the week before we had got there and it didn’t look like it was going to ease any time soon). So rather than camp we booked into a resort and decided to just spend a couple of days on our own in the dry. We used to time to relax, watch some DVD’s and Shell was able to get a lot of work done. You could tell that it would be a great place to be in nice weather. The one good thing was that there was pool at our resort which was straight outside our balcony so the boys burnt some energy playing in the pool in the rain!



Cody playing in the resort pool in the rain at Airlie Beach,



Mackay & Sarina

Ok, we are back online for a moment so I will update what we have been upto. As I said before there wasn’t much to do at Mackay, seeing as it kept raining the whole time we were there.


But we had an interesting afternoon at the Sarina Sugar Refinery. We learnt all about how sugar cane has been planted, grown and harvested using different technology over time. They then took us through the only mini operational sugar mill in Australia, showing us how to turn sugar cane into sugar. Aidan and Cody got to eat fairy floss at the end while Jaime and Shell got to taste the spirits and liquors that they also make in the distillery section of the mill.

In the Sugar Mill watching the cane being crushed to get the water and sugar out

The Uninvited Hitch Hikers Story:


Two nights before we arrived in Mackay, Jaime had opened the bonnet of the car to check the battery and saw something thin disappear under the wheel arch. We wasn’t sure what it was, but was hoping it wasn’t a small snake because there was a fellow camper back at Monduran Dam who had a green tree snake decide to set up camp inside his car! So he waited a couple of hours and checked under the bonnet again to find a rat sitting up on the engine. The rat disappeared before he could do anything but said we didn’t have to worry about it as it can’t get through into the car.

Well, when we were arriving in Mackay Jaime asked to have a mint which we had in the glove box. When Shell went to get him one she discovered that the package had been chewed up and there were teeth marks in some of the mints!! Obviously Jaime’s assumption that they couldn’t get into the front of the car was incorrect!!

So we headed straight to Bunnings and picked up some rat traps. We ran out of the shop through the car park (in the pouring rain) to jump in the car, Jaime had jumped in first and just as Shell was getting in passenger seat, Jaime opened the glove box and here was a huge rat inside!!! Well Jaime yelled, the boys yelled and Shell screamed as she tried to get of the car as quick as possible. Meanwhile Jaime grabbed the tail of the rat as it tried to run back inside the dash and flung it out of the passenger door (towards Shell!), luckily it died on impact with the ground, but Shell was still doing a dance around the car park in the pouring rain!!

Shell got back in the car, and we all calmed down and were laughing about what had just happened, but as we were laughing and talking through what had just happened Shell opened the glove box again to find another rat staring back at her! Well she slammed it shut again and was out of the car into the pouring rain screaming and dancing around all over again and the boys were up on top of their seats!

We don’t know what happened to our second rat in the end, we think (we hope!) that it left the vehicle in search for its partner. It hasn’t appear in the glove box again(thankfully) and Jaime couldn’t find it in the engine etc anywhere – although it did stick its tail out of the speaker in front of Shell straight after leaving Bunning car park, which had Shell and the kids sitting with their feet up on their seats for a while!!