12th July Barcaldine to Winton

Long straight 2 lane roads, mostly open flat grasslands and light scrub, small trees are the view along the way. Because of the good rains earlier this year farmers are happy with the grass cover. Native animals are reproducing, the cattle and sheep are happy. It is sad to see the amount of road kill of kangaroos (mostly) beside or on the road. Cattle trucks at night probably make that worse.

We had a short stop in Longreach to check out the Optus reception, which by some miracle was working. We decided to check this before we left the van parked in town, and wrote up the last blog. Roger had been worried that we may have to live without Optus Wireless internet. Maybe we will only get it in Mt Isa now, so will probably have to visit local libraries. We walked to the info centre, and the young woman there assured us that they had no Optus coverage in Longreach!! It was nice to enjoy a coffee, bread rolls at the bakery at the corner, and to buy 2 cream buns (Treene) and some rolls for the next day.

Another 180 kms then followed to Winton, with a stop at an open rest area for a cuppa, and a chat to 2 other couples. Most of the traffic on the road is car/4wd and caravan traffic, some individual vehicles and of course road trains. We joined the queue and managed to get a space in the very crowded van park, the largest of 3 in Winton. It seems we’ll have to get up earlier and earlier (good practice for the work in Kununurra) so that we can arrive early at our destination in time to get a space for the night. We had a walk in ‘downtown’ Winton, looked in a couple of shops, bought a tea cosy (!!!) in one curious shop and a nice piece of boulder opal in a pendant, some fruit, and returned to the park. Had the dinner on offer, and then enjoyed very much the entertainment of 2 women bush poets, who were very funny. Since we’ve seen most of the museum, exhibition places here before, we are moving on to Cloncurry tomorrow. There will be quiz to remember the 2 C’s and 1 K later. I get them mixed up.

Things with this blog don’t go well. We’ve discovered we probably missed out transferring some of it this morning. Still havn’t learnt to stop the pictures going where we don’t want them.