Rockhampton - Mount Isa

Mon 23 July – Rockhampton is on both sides of the Fitzroy River

and was the first major port in this part of Central Queensland. We biked across the river on one of the three bridges into the CBD.
We walked the town which has many lovely old colonial buildings and then biked along the river bank.

Tues 24 July – Today we explored the other side of Fitzroy River

cycling to a huge mall where we bought some extra clothes before we head into the outback. We also bought a large fresh water jerry can, (you can never have enough water in the interior) a handheld CB radio, (trucks like to warn you as they pass) and Shoo Roos. (whistles that attach to your bumper bar to scare away the kangaroos supposedly!) All now set for the next part of our trip. After lunch we cycled into Kershaw Botanical Gardens where there was a great waterfall.

Wed 25 July – We headed off on the Capricorn Highway west to eventually meet up with the Stuart Highway (Darwin to Adelaide road through the centre). We will take about 2 ½ weeks for this trip a distance of 2000kms! Today’s trip was into the coal fields. Our lunch stop was at Bluff where they assemble the huge coal trains (2kms long) heading east. After 200kms we stopped at Blackwater and stayed at the Show Grounds.

Thurs 26 July – Another very pleasant drive on basically flat roads to our first stop at Emerald. There is a river here and the land is green thus the name. There was the largest painting on an easel in the world here. (Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers).  Amazing what small towns do to attract visitors! We continued to Sapphire. The town was named after the sapphires that were extracted here up until the 1980s. The town now relies on the tourists visiting the many gem shops and offering gem fossicking.

Fri 27 July – We sat outside for breakfast and were joined by Rainbow Lorikeets. Val was not too keen to share her cereal! 

The road climbed slowly up to the Great Divide and then became very flat with long straights. There are road signs with trivial pursuit questions to stop you going

to sleep. We stopped at a small town call Jericho on the banks of the Jordan River. All very biblical! There was even a statue of Joshua blowing his trumpet.

Sat 28 July – Just a short drive today to the town of Barcaldine where around the 1900s the Shearers went on strike leading to the formation of the Australian Labour Party. We are camped in yet another free camping area and biked into the town to see the history. These free camps are great. Generally, they are in a rest area where travellers have a pit stop but out the back are trees and shade and lots of space for overnighting.

Sun 29 July – It rained briefly last night. The first rain for 30 days.

Back on the long flat straights on the road to Longreach. 109kms with only one small town but hundreds of dead kangaroos. Because of the drought the kangaroos feed on the edge of the road and get cleaned up by the trucks. Quite an obstacle course to dodge around. We planned to shop in Longreach but the IGA was closed for the weekend, so we went to large dusty crowded rest area, just out of town, for the night. There was an emu and a family of brolgas, an Australian crane, wandering around the camp.

Mon 30 July – Back into Longreach to shop and then a short drive to a much better rest area with nice shade and fewer campers. The twilight is beautiful with great light, a multitude of wildlife and birds. Last night it was grey and pink galahs flying around in squawking packs, tonight it was strange grey sooty birds doing the same thing.

Tues 31 July – The country has become more barren with only low shrubs and yellow grass. Our plan was to stop before the town of Winton but the rest area was only small and not great. We continued on to Winton and found a great campsite down a dusty road on the shores of a small dam or billabong. We even camped under a small coolabah tree. “Andy” felt very at home! Slowly the camp filled up but was still beautiful. Great reflections on the billabong.

Wed 1 Aug – Back into Winton to dump, pick up water, fuel and LPG. We had a 165kms drive to a Road House at Kynuna (the only thing there apart from the pub). We are now about half way from Rockhampton to the east and the Stuart Highway to the west (1000kms away). The temperatures during the day are around 29C but still cool as soon as the sun sets. This was a hard case place with a tough old biddy running everything, cookhouse, camp ground and petrol station. Val did a load of laundry and it was great sitting in the shade watching the sunset.

Thurs 2 Aug – We have become aware of fuel so we topped up before heading on to Cloncurry -186kms. The landscape changes all the time and today we changed from barren grasslands back to red soil, bush, termite hills and cattle. Cloncurry is a real outback town based on cattle and some mining with a wide main street, a few pubs and very little else. We camped in a small camp just out of town and rode our bikes to the main attraction of the town, the Flying Doctor Museum. This was the birth place of the RFDS. It was very well done and interesting. I enjoyed the early pedal powered radios installed in the remote homesteads.

Fri 3 Aug – We have discovered that it is Cloncurry’s Rodeo Weekend with free admission to the rodeo today and a parade

tonight so we have decided to stay another day. We drove “Andy” to the rodeo as it was about 6kms out of town and arrived there about 12:30pm. It was a great

afternoon with calf roping, steer wrestling, Bronco riding and bull riding events. This is the highest paid rodeo in Australia (so they claim). It all ran very smoothly with one event straight after the other. They even had a big screen. Best rodeo we have ever been to. (only the Omarama rodeo to compere it to however). We drove back into town for the parade. A very typical small town event but well done.

Sat 4 Aug – Back on the road and into completely different country. The road to Mt Isa was thru hilly red rock terrain. Very much like lots of the USA we had driven thru.  Just before Mt Isa we stopped and climbed the Telstra hill for a great overview of the town and the mines. At the town we had a big shop up as from now on supplies will be limited. We were amazed that the town is totally dominated by the huge Mt Isa mine, casting its shadows from the chimneys into the main street. Obviously, the town just sprang up around the mine. This mine produces copper, lead and zinc. Our camp for the night is basically a worker’s camp with some caravan sites.