Theresa Dam and Bedford Weir

We seem to have had our first stow-away


They tell me it is a grasshopper (a bit different and bigger than the ones we are used to in NZ). It gave me a little fright when I closed the fly door. Somehow it had squeezed in between the two doors.

Spent two nights at Theresa Dam, a beautiful, peaceful spot


A bit surprised to see what we call pukeko (and they call water foul) walking by


I have been told I was brave to step out wearing the bright rainbow shirt given to me (to match the slippers and leg Warner's I had bought after a visit to Rainbow Beach.


I wore the top all day and even received compliments about it.

Next drove to Emerald. Arrived a bit late so stayed the night in a free camp there. Before moving on went to a store called Jaycar and bought an MP3 FM modulator. (we plug a flash drive full of mp3 tracks into this device, which in turn plugs in to the cigarette lighter, then tune the car radio and the modulator to the same fm frequency) We are impressed! Last night we had it playing through the radio of the van and told the neighbours the frequency it was on. They tuned in too. Then Jim decided to see how far the signal went. He walked away about 60 or 70 meters with his transistor radio and still got the signal. We were impressed. (did I already mention that?) Also, the neighbours who tuned in had the volume turned up louder than we did!

Whilst sitting outside at night we thought we had seen a rabbit on a couple of occasions. Then one night we got a close up view of the animal


A "cheeky" Bandicoot. And it was after the contents of a rubbish bag


Amazingly it was not deterred by Jim trying to turn it away with an empty bottle


We were camped at a place called Bedford Weir


The weir was downstream from the camping area





The scoured out banks show how high the waters have been in the wet season.

Julia Creek to Charters Towers

Before moving on we went in to the information centre at Julia Creek. Learned about the Great Artesian Basin and how it's discovery saved the pastoral industry of the area. To find out how vast is this underground water just google great artesian basin. I was surprised how big an area of Australia it covers.
The information centre has been developed to encourage the likes of us to pop in and take a look.





We spent just over half an hour in the auditorium watching videos about their water supply and the rare and endangered Dunnart, a small marsupial about the size of a mouse.

But time to move on. And so to Richmond, a town that is part of the dinosaur trail.


We needed to register for the free camp in the town and registration was at Kronosaurus Korner. I was taken by the rubbish bins


We didn't pay to go through this fossil museum but did take a look through Cambridge Downs store replica.


"The stone walls could not be easily breached and the windows had iron bars to facilitate defense against Aboriginal attacks"


Inside were exhibits from history. One room housed a restored two man shearing plant


The cabinets alongside showed various shearing hand pieces and combs


Out the back was a shed exhibiting the Cob n Co wagons






And so, on to Charters Towers. Straight to the post office and collected the part for the oven.
Tuesday afternoon, Brandt removed the old bent part of the door.





Wedesday took a few hours putting everything back together again





Other Grey Nomad friends arrived and we moved to a quieter free camp 22km East of Charters Towers by Burdekin River (Brandt caught a Sooty Grunter there)
The site we were on had a slope. This caused a slight problem with entry in to our Off Road Caravan. But there was a solution:






Charters Towers is known for its old buildings

Mt Isa

Well what a week this has been! We originally booked in to the caravan park for two nights and ended up staying nine nights.
I thought I had turned the fridge to electricity. Found out, when I went to get some meat to thaw out, that I had turned the dial to "off" and not to "AC".
Wondered why the tv turned off every time I turned the range hood light on until one night when I walked back from the ablution block and wondered which direction everyone had their aerials pointing, discovered that our aerial was still lying flat on the roof. Once I had put the aerial up we got lots of channels and the range hood light no longer affected reception (funny that).

Upon our arrival at Mt Isa rang the oven manufacturer in Melbourne and they agreed to "see us right" making a new bracket for the oven door glass and we are to install it. Decided not to wait in Mt Isa for the oven part but asked that it be sent to Charters Towers.

Sunday went to church. As we walked up the steps recognized the guy standing at the top. Bishop Bill Ray again. He was there for baptisms, confirmation, reaffirmation and presenting lay ministers with their licenses. He recognized us too and said, "am I following you, or are you following me?" (he and his wife had left home at 3:30am to get to Mareeba by 8:30. This time he had a 10 hour drive back home and said he expected to get home at about 1am Monday morning.)

Brandt is always doing something under the vehicle and on Wednesday discovered that the exhaust tail pipe bracket needed to be welded back in position. That done he then noticed an oil leak. Discovered it was from the diff lock. Now while at Mareeba we had the air bags and diff locks done. The short story is that one of the air bags kept leaking. Finally got that sorted at Normanton. The leak from the diff lock was due to the bolts being cross threaded. Thankfully the Mareeba garage took ownership of the problems. It would have cost him a lot of money for these other two garages to fix the problems. While they had the axles out they called us and said that the wheel bearings needed repacking so got that done while it was all open. Full marks to Mareeba for paying for it all with no quibbles. RACQ has come to the party and will reimburse our caravan park fees Wednesday to Saturday.

So we finally got to drive to the Mt Isa lookout and see the city.









The mine dominates the city, driving down the CBD one is always aware of the presence of the mine


And so, we are now heading East, tonight in a free camp at Julia Creek