Meant to get up early, but only managed to get on the road about 10ish dueto epic faffage by both barbara and myself. (Despite turning to back to collect food we left at the campsite fridge, we still managed to leave the showergel behind). Drove 157km to Carnavorn Gorge, the last 30 of which was pretty epic gravelly unsealed road which was fun in a 2wd van which is very heavy in the front...
The gorge was amazing though, totally worth it. We walked about 14km altogether, back and forth across the creek on stepping stones and looking at the sights. Moss Garden was beautiful, the huge cliffs made of sandstone soak up loads of water and it leaks through the rock until it hits a layer of shale, where it then just squshes out the side and falls out of the wall. It ends up with an area full of really green moss and a little water fall.
The Amphitheatre was just a massive space that echoed a lot, it was so huge. Wards Canyon contained these massive king ferns that were apparently around when dinosuars roamed the earth. The Art Gallery was where loads of Aboriginal paintings were - there were loads of stencilled handprints and outlines of tools and boomerangs, carvings of emu and kangaroo tracks, paintings of grids (that meant a burial site was nearby) and a whole load of carvings of human vulvas. Like a huge amount. Maybe the local tribes were mega feminists or something. There were vaginas *everywhere*.
Aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrgh!!!
Tuesday 30th
Drove up to a nice little town called Emerald, and used the Library's free wifi to look for harvest jobs nearby, but we are are still not all that successful. Spent the night in a very badly chosen free campsite spot, the freight train morning wake up was not appreciated at 5.30am.
Wednesday 31st
After a vaguely successful attempt to make pancakes on a camping stove, we headed an hour east to see the gem fields at Rubyvale and Sapphire. Literally every hous has their own mine in the backyard. They did have a very nice pub though. We spend the night at another free roadside campspot, and someone gave us some leftover chips from the local chippy which was really welcomed as we were cooking instant noodles to have with our leftover slightly dodgy stirfry. Thats the second time we've been fed by our elderly fellow travellers - probably the best aspect of sharing the road with so many 'Grey Nomads'.
Thursday 1st
Im currently writing this in a little cafe in the town of Capella, which contains not a whole lot by the looks of it. We're heading up to Charters Towers today - we will definitely without question be staying at a campsite tonight, as we have now gone for an uncomfortably long period of time since our last shower. (We have been washing in cold water btw, we're not completely abandoning our personal hygene.)
The caravan parks here are generally really good - unpowered sites are between $10 and $25 per night, the kitchens have everything you need and they also usually have free wi fi. The showers have all been really nice too. Despite all that though, I do really like just pulling up somewhere with a toilet and camping for free. While we've been here on the edge of the outback theres no light pollution nearby so at night you can see so many stars, including the milky way, which is super pretty.
Update; Its now 4.25 and we made it to Charters Towers, after driving 573.2km on one tank of fuel. The last 30kms the petrol light was on and in my panic to get to a petrol station I took a corner fast enough for everything in the back to fall over. We made it to a caravan park though - cant wait to get a shower...
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