All went as planned yesterday and we stayed at a caravan park in Charleville. Sam, Hannah, Dad and I went to an astronomy show at the Charleville Cosmo Centre. There we viewed Saturn and a star cluster called “the Jewel Box”, among several other things, through a telescope. We were also shown how to find south using the southern cross and the pointers.

This morning we got away at about 11:00. Mum had to do some shopping and while we waited for her, Dad took us down to a park where there was an explanation on the Vortex guns. These were large steel cannons that a man called Something Frugge invented. At the time there was a huge drought in Queensland and this guy thought that if he fired air into the atmosphere, they would be able to trigger rain. Of course, this didn’t work but the guns themselves were quite amazing and although most of them were turned into scrap metal, two of them survived and are on display in the park today.

We plan to stay a few nights in Longreach, our next destination, before we continue. I personally am looking forward to the break. Driving all day is both long and boring and Mum and Dad are taking advantage of all the driving to make us do a good load of school work! I would much rather be looking at the scenery, which has introduced some new, interesting “flora and fauna”.

Today already, instead of having to slow down for a kangaroo, we had an emu cross the road in front of us. We also saw a few other emus running through bush, which is currently lacking in fences. Due to this fact, we passed a few horses on the side of the road yesterday. The only real change in landscape is the addition of the cacti, some small enough to squash, some as large as trees. There are also a variety of palm trees and fat Boab trees.