We stayed one and half days at Longreach and mainly visited the 2 most often visited attractions there – The Qantas Outback Founders Museum, and The Stockman’s Hall of Fame. When Michael looked it up, he thought it was Sunday that was the only day the Stockman Show was not on at 11am, so we planned to do the Qantas museum in the morning of Sunday, start on the Hall of Fame Sunday afternoon, and then do more of the Hall of Fame Monday morning, including the show.

So Sunday morning it was off to the Qantas museum. We got tickets for a museum entry and jet tour. The tour started at 9.30, so we did that first. Unfortunately there was a very cold wind that morning and we had to be outside for the jet tour (the jet was not in a hangar).  We all had our jumpers on, but we wished we’d also taken our beanies. Anyway the tour went for one and a half hours, most of which was spent learning about and looking through the Boeing 747 200 series plane. Apparently it is the only one of this type on display in the world. We also looked through a Boeing 707 and heard about the great feat that it was to bring it back to Australia from South End in England. Michael and Sam probably enjoyed the tour more than the rest of us. I found it a little interesting, but would have been happy with half the time – certainly Hannah & Beth would have preferred that too, but they did well to be patient as long as they were. I actually found the museum more interesting than I thought I would – manly the history of Qantas and the stories of the men that founded it – I find these aspects more interesting than the technical information. There were some simulators and activities for the kids to do.

We got home about 1pm to have lunch (having had our own morning tea picnic in a windbreak area outside the museum). I was feeling pretty worn out and lay down to have a rest for a while. When it came time to head off to the Hall of Fame, I asked if I could opt out for the afternoon. So Michael took the kids to put in about 2 hrs worth of looking there. I rested for a bit longer, then did some typing on my blog. We had some milk and things we needed to top up on, so I decided to ride the big bike (the one we brought for Lauren – which is actually my bike – but I don’t use it much and she’d outgrown her old one) into town, which was only a couple of blocks away. It felt good to have some exercise. Neither of the 2 grocery stores were open – I guess being a Sunday in outback QLD, they still had the closed on Sundays philosophy. We had UHT milk and there was nothing else on the list that was urgent, so it didn’t matter. I went back to the van and decided I’d get parts of dinner ready early. When Michael and the kids got back, I asked who wanted to go for a bike ride to the park I’d found on my way back from town. Sam and Hannah said yes – Bethy wasn’t able to come as she was worn out and emotional. The 3 of us went and had a nice ride around on the bike for about 20mins. Then Sam went back to the caravan park and Hannah and I went riding a bit further along the road to where there was a nature walk. We walked along for about 10mins, but it was getting late, so we went back to our bikes and headed back to the caravan. We had a beautiful view of the sunset along the road, as there were no houses around us. Back at the van, Michael had put together the last of the dinner, so we were able to sit down and eat. We had live country music in the background as there was a guy playing his guitar and singing in the communal section of the park. He was quite good and quite a few of the ‘grey nomads’ were out listening to him. After dinner, it was the usual night time routine – showers, stories and bed. Just before leaving Canberra, we had found ‘The Betrayal’ book Sam and I had been reading a couple of months ago before it suddenly went missing. It’s quite a long book  – an historical fiction about John Calvin. So I’ve started reading that again with Sam at night.  I’m usually ready to go to sleep after I’ve read that with him.

The next morning we had to pack up the caravan as we were leaving that caravan park.  Once packed up, we headed towards the Stockman’s Hall of Fame. We had found out that Michael had misread the website information and the only day the Stockman Show was not on, was Monday – today. It was bit disappointing, but one of the ladies at the caravan park the previous night had said the outback show at the Gold Coast was just as good – so maybe we’ll have to go to that sometime when visiting the Normans in Brisbane. Anyway, we filled in another 2 hrs at the Hall of Fame – I could have stayed longer, but the kids had seen enough between yesterday’s visit and today. I really enjoyed the early explorer gallery and pioneer Australians gallery. Sam and Lauren really enjoyed the stockman gallery right at the end, and also the RFDS gallery. Hannah and Beth enjoyed bits and pieces of all the galleries – the interactive parts mainly, like listening in to the types of conversations people had on the party line of the early telephone service, and the ‘talking head’ as they called it – an animatronic about the life of a stockman. We had some morning tea on the grounds outside the building and then hopped back in the car for the drive back east.

Day 3 was, for the most part, less eventful than the previous 2 days. We had a bit slower start to the morning but still got away about 9.30. We drove to Bourke, and learned that it was named after the governor of NSW in 1835, Richard Bourke. The surveyor and explorer, Thomas Mitchell, had founded it at this time and originally set up a fort (Fort Bourke) to guard against the tensions that had developed with the local aboriginals. We also learnt that it is located on the Darling River, which Hannah excitedly announced she was learning about at school (the major Aust river systems). Despite an interesting history, there wasn’t a lot to see in a quick visit, so we mainly filled up with petrol and continued north. After about another hour of and a bit of driving, we entered Queensland, stopping to get a photo of the sign (which was in the middle of nowhere – halfway between Bourke and Cunamulla). Then it was continuing north towards Cunamulla. It was certainly long, straight road territory, surrounded by semi-arid mulga landscape. We didn’t see much live wildlife, but there was certainly more dead wildlife on the road than we would normally see. And therefore a lot more vultures and other birds of prey. On average, we only passed another car coming in the opposite direction every 20 mins or so.

These kinds of long drives were a good opportunity to do schoolwork with the kids. I would sit in the back of the car amongst 3 of the children and Lauren and Sam would take turns in sitting in the passenger seat. Lauren and Sam were able to do their work mostly by themselves. So I would help Hannah and Beth. I would read their spelling words to them and check their markings etc. and I would set them their maths sheets and help if they needed help. Hannah would sometimes write a page in her journal about something that stood out from that day or the previous day and do a drawing. I would get Bethany to narrate some sentences about what she wanted to say about the trip (usually prompting with some ideas). The only problem with doing schoolwork in the car was that it led to bad handwriting, with all the bumps – but I had to overlook this if we wanted to get some done.

We reached Cunnamulla about 2.30pm and stopped there for some afternoon tea and a play at the playground. The park was right next door to the Shire Hall, which had in the front of it the statue of the ‘Cunnamulla fella’ – the subject of the song by the same name, made famous by Slim Dusty. The song was a tribute to outback stockmen. Because this was probably the first ‘tourist attraction’ that we visited, it was also the first place were we noticed at least 4-5 other caravans parked in the same spot. We were about to join the tourist throng, rather than feeling like we were on our own like we had at Molong and Byrock.

After about a 45min stop at Cunnamulla, we got back in the car for another nearly 2 hr driving stretch to Charleville. We reached Charleville at around 5pm and stayed at the Cobb and Co. Caravan park. The owners were a lovely couple and the husband showed us to our site by driving Hannah and I (who had gone into the office) on his golf buggy, with Dad and the others following in the car. Once we pulled up, he said he’d better give the other kids a ride also, so they piled on with him and he took them for a ‘spin’. We had another one of the frozen meals I’d made back home, and then Michael and the 3 older children went off to a night time session at the Cosmos Centre – an observatory which has very high-powered telescopes. There had been some doubt over whether it would go ahead or not that night, as there had been some cloud build up during the afternoon. We had rung ahead to check. But the cloud lifted and they rang us back at 7pm to say it was going ahead. I stayed back at the van with Bethany, as she was usually worn out and asleep by 7.30. I told her she would have a special walk with Mum and ice-cream the next day. Michael and the kids got back around 9.30pm and reported that they had all enjoyed it, especially when they got to see Saturn and its moons through the telescope – they took a photo through the telescope lens in which you can see the planet with rings around it. They had also got to see other stars and constellations – a good science lesson for them.

Day 4 was another day of lots of driving. We got away from Charleville a bit later than we should have – but I let Michael sleep in a bit, knowing he was getting tired from the driving. We had some DVDs on iPads for the 2 younger girls to watch if they woke up early – and had earphones for them so they didn’t disturb anyone else. Bethany and I got up around 7am, but the others (including Hannah) slept longer, which I think they needed. I did a bit of grocery shopping in the main street of Charleville while Michael took the kids to a park. It was nice experience the relaxed shopping in the main street of an outback country town – I visited the IGA, the bakery and the butcher – and there wasn’t a shopping mall in sight. The others picked me up from the side of the main road, I loaded the groceries in the caravan fairly quickly, and then we were off, heading towards Blackall. It was the usual drill with schoolwork again once we were on the road. Lauren and Sam weren’t too happy about how much schoolwork I was asking them to do, but Michael and I both reminded them, it was best to get it done while we were just sitting in the car for long periods as we wouldn’t be doing as much once we were out and about sight-seeing. And they weren’t able to do much more than about an hour’s worth anyway, as we couldn’t acces their maths on the CD ROMS yet.

At Blackall we stopped at the monument to the “Black Stump” – early surveyors in the region used the stump to sit their equipment on to read the stars etc. The colloquial saying “beyond the black stump” seems to be traced back to the stump here at Blackall – everything west of Blackall was “beyond the black stump”. We also briefly stopped for a photo of the monument to Jackie Howe – the shearer who set the world record for hand sheep-shearing. In ? he sheared 325 sheep in 8 hrs ? mins.

Next stop was at a little village called Tambo which is an the Barcoo River and it has a lovely rest area and picnic spot near the river. We had lunch there and the kids rode their bikes and had a play.

Then it was back in the car for another hour’s drive to Barcaldine. I drove this stretch (the first time I drove during this trip – Michael wasn’t as confident of my driving with the caravan in tow – but since it was mainly such straight roads, and he relished the rest, he passed it over to me. I think it was about half an hour before he started to relax though – still, I’d rather he was on the cautious side than being too overly relaxed about the care needed when driving with a caravan.

At Barcaldine, we got out for about 20 mins to see the site of the first artesian bore which successfully drew water in western Qld. And just outside the train station is a memorial to the ‘Tree of Knowledge’ – a tree which marked the site of an historic gathering of discontented stockmen and pastoralists in ? – they were unhappy with wages and conditions – this gathering was the beginning of what became the union movement and ultimately the Labour Party. It was a very unique kind of memorial – the stump of the original tree was still in place, but surrounded by glass pavers in a way that you could see the roots underneath. Hanging over the tree, making a type of roof canopy, a whole lot of timber reeds, forming an interesting pattern.

Once again, back in the car, and this time headed west for the hour’s drive to Longreach. It was going to make it a late setup, but we really wanted to get there, so we could set up and stay there for 2 nights. We arrived about 6.15pm, Michael, Lauren and Sam set up while I drove the couple of blocks to get some pizza for dinner. This was dutifully demolished and then Hannah and Beth had quick showers and off to bed, followed not too long after by the rest of us.

Well, having written my first post for this blog 1 week before we were planning to leave, I haven’t got back to do any more blogging or learning about the site until now. I’ve been just too busy working on all the final details of getting away. Lauren and Sam have been enjoying putting up posts during that time, and I think they’ll end up posting more often than me – that sounds like a good arrangement – you’ll get more regular updates on our travels than if I was the only one posting – and I’ll probably write every now and then a summary of the week or so from my perspective.

The packing up process was an exercise in patience and perseverance (maybe preparing us for the trip!). We had planned to leave 2 weeks after Michael started his long service leave. The first week of Michael’s leave, we found a rat had eaten a hole in the inlet to our Landcruiser’s fuel tank (we’ve since heard there is a rodent plague in much of Australia this year) – this meant it had to be in at the Toyota service centre for over a week – we were blessed that it was only a week as they were able to find a replacement fuel tank in Australia and not have to order one from overseas. However this meant that many of the jobs Michael was planning for that week (like getting the cars serviced, getting a roof rack fitted and rigging up a bike rack) had to be delayed. He used the time to get some building jobs around home finished off (which he’d been wanting to do). But we knew we would have to adjust our proposed departure date because of the delays. We figured 2 or 3 days wouldn’t make a big difference. The only thing we had booked for our trip (and that only happened in Michael’s first week of leave) was booking the dates to do a bare-boat yacht charter at the Whitsunday Islands. We decided we shouldn’t need to change this – we would just have reduced time in central southern Queensland and have to see those places a bit quicker.

I wasn’t sure how the kids would respond to having to leave later, but they were great – the older 2 seemed to understand why and pitched in to help more where they could, and the younger 2 (who are much more short-term focussed about everything still) saw it as school holidays come early – so play more at home! Well it wasn’t all play. I saw it as an opportunity to adjust them to the schoolwork they were going to do with me. (Lauren has been homeschooling since the beginning of this year and Sam finished up at school a week earlier than Hannah and Bethany – so I already had sorted their homeschool materials – which they kept working on in between doing jobs to help us). So I was able to start using the curriculum the teachers had given us for maths and spelling with H & B. this proved very useful, as I ended up photocopying some things and remembering to take some things that I otherwise would have forgotten. The extra 2&half days that Michael needed to do all his bits, gave me a bit of extra time to finalise curriculum and resources and also to organise some areas of the house that would have otherwise been – well, less organised:). It also gave me time to type out a more detailed information sheet for our house-sitters (which I knew I would have appreciated had I been in their shoes). Having said all this, I was still up until midnight the last couple of nights, and it still felt like a rush right at the end. It had got to about 2.30pm on the Wed afternoon (the day we thought we should definitely be able to leave) and Michael had attached the bikes and was fairly happy with how the things were secured on the roof rack. I had almost everything in the caravan, after what seemed like a hundred trips in and out in the last couple of days – but there was still a couple of piles I had been hoping to sort better before taking them out to the van. It was either “we leave now and be able to put in 4-5 hrs driving, or we might as well stay at home again tonight” – so those couple of piles (mainly books and notes for family time stuff) got whisked into the van (“I’ll sort them in the next couple of days and post things back if we don’t need them”).

And then we were “away at last”

Andrea

Well it is now Friday morning and I’m sitting at the dining table in our caravan in peace and quiet looking out the window at the landscape around our campsite. There is red dirt amongst the semi-arid scrub. I wasn’t expecting to see red dirt this early in our trip – but I guess the ‘red centre’ includes inland areas of NSW and QLD also.

After leaving Canberra at about 4pm on Wednesday afternoon, we drove straight through to Cowra, arriving there at 7pm and had dinner at McDonalds (not something we plan to do too often, but necessary on this occasion). It was cold getting from the car to the building and back again. We actually ate in the car as we wanted to keep going. We had decided to drive through to Molong and had rung ahead that afternoon to book into a powered site. The website had indicated there was a payment per person which added up to about $50 for our family, but when I rang up, I was told it was just a standard fee of $19 for a powered site – we were happy with that. We arrived about 9pm and were set up within 10mins (what we loved about this caravan) and then had Bethany in bed and asleep within 1 min. However, as the heater in the van does not work below 4 degrees C, we couldn’t use it – so Michael came up with the idea of turning on all the gas burners on the stove for a while. We warmed ourselves there while heating up the kids’ sleepy bears in the microwave. Then we pretty much all went to bed. Hannah came to our bed in the middle of the night saying she was cold, and then Bethany came a few minutes later. This was one night when Michael and I didn’t mind having them in bed with us, as 4 bodies squashed together produced good body heat – both Michael and I slept better after they came into our bed. We awoke around 7am and put on the makeshift gas burner “heater” for a while. I made porridge for everyone and then we packed up as quickly as we could so we could get into our warm car which had a heat that worked. The frost on the ground outside was quite thick – it was probably about -4 degrees overnight.

After about 20mins in the car we were able to start taking off beanies and feeling our toes again. Dubbo was about an hour away and we stopped there to do some errands, then continued north along the Mitchell Hwy. About 15 mins out of Dubbo, we heard a thud and Michael saw in the rear view mirror that the keyboard which had been on the roof rack had slid off. We stopped and found that it had landed on the caravan crossbar and hadn’t been damaged – good news – but the bad news was that we then realised the guitar in its case was not there anymore. The netting strap had broken and we weren’t sure how long ago. We decided to drive back to Dubbo to get a new net from Bunnings and to see if we could spot the guitar on the side of the road. We achieved the first, but not the second. Someone, somewhere in this area will find (or may have already found) a guitar which will almost literally have “fallen off the back of a truck”. We will probably end up buying another inexpensive guitar as Michael, Lauren and Sam all play and we had wanted to use it around campfires.

Having had our patience and perseverance tested again, we continued along the Mitchell Hwy through Nyngan and decided we should be able to get to Bourke by 5pm and stay there overnight. About 20km south of Bourke we came upon the town (although it is more like a village) of Byrock. Our Camps Australia guide told us there was a powered site campground there, which was run by the owners of the hotel – the main building in town. We checked it out and found it was only $20 for the night and was in a quiet but ruggedly picturesque setting, so decided to stay there. There was the typical friendly kelpie outside the pub, which Bethany made friends with. Since there was still an hour until sundown, the kids were able to have a bike ride around the flat red dirt, even riding off along a dirt trail for a bit. It was nice to be in warmer climes and we didn’t need to run the heater at all (even though it would have worked this time). We got to bed earlier than the previous night and had a good night’s sleep.

Then I sat at the dining table the next morning while others were still snoozing and looked out the window at the red dirt, enjoying the peaceful location….

Here is a summary of our proposed itinerary:

Leave Canberra on the 18th June. Travel up through the inland region of NSW to Dubbo and then along the Mitchell Highway up to inland Queensland. We plan to see outback towns such as Cunnamulla, Charleville, Blackall, Barcaldine, Longreach and Emerald. These towns all have some interesting pioneer history and tell the story of the formation of the sheep and cattle industries in Australia. We also hope to spend a day or 2 at Canarvon Gorge National Park. From Emerald, we head to Clermont, and then out to the coast at Mackay.

On 30th June, we have booked to do a 5 day bare-boat charter on a yacht on the Whitsundays. Michael and Andrea did this over 20 years ago with a group of friends. We are looking forward to teaching the kids about sailing and experiencing life on a boat for a few days.

From the Whitsundays, we continue north along the Queensland coast for a further 2 weeks, hoping to get as far as Cooktown by mid-July. (But if we decide to go slower, we may only get to Cairns.)

We then return to Cairns and turn inland to head southwest down to the Flinders Highway at Hughenden, once again delving into outback Queensland. We travel west along the Flinders Highway to Mt Isa and then continue along the Barkly highway across into the Northern Territory. The Barkly Hwy meets the Stuart Hwy at the Three Ways Roadhouse, and then we turn south to head down to Alice Springs. All this should take about 2 weeks, which brings us into August.

We plan to spend 2 weeks in the Red Centre (Alice Springs, West McDonnell Ranges, Uluru, Kings Canyon and surrounds).

We will then travel back up the Stuart Highway to Katherine, where Andrea’s sister, Liz, now lives. We will spend a few days with her, before we head west towards the Western Australia border. We anticipate spending 3 weeks in NT altogether. (We spent 3 weeks in Darwin, Kakadu NP and Litchfield NP 2 years ago when Liz was living in Darwin, so we won’t visit this part of the NT this time).

We hope to spend the last week of August and first week of September in the Kimberley region of northern WA.

Then probably a week in the Pilbara region and coral coast of WA.

Then 2 weeks travelling down the central coast of WA, down to Perth. This will take us through to the end of September.

We hope to have 2 weeks in the southern part of WA.

Then we will spend 2 weeks travelling back across SA and Victoria and home to Canberra. We will decide the route and how many stops along this leg at the time, depending on how we are feeling.

At this stage, our plan is to be back to Canberra by the beginning of November, which gives us 1 month at home with Michael still on leave (he goes back to work beginning of December). However, we’ve made the first 2 weeks of November a “grace” period, in case we take longer to get back home.

Below is a google map with our proposed travel path marked on it. You can zoom out to see the whole of Australia. However, to complete the travel map, we had to use 2 pages, so to see the last few legs of our trip (which aren’t marked on the initial map), bring up the larger image (click on link below the map) and scroll down on the left-hand column to the bottom of the text section and click on “page 2”.

View Around Australia Trip 2012 in a larger map