Greg and Mandy's Travels

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Spent some of the morning walking a couple of kms down to the woolshed, taking our morning tea with us.
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The girls all love their horses – even when they get thrown off. Dad plays polocross, and has a number of horses for that.
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Took a Science lesson – the same lesson as last year. Invited for a roast dinner after the kids had gone to bed. A large, rambling house that has had many iterations, configurations, and renovations.
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Adjacent to the caravan, not far from the house. Contains the school room and the on-air room, as well as the governess’s bedroom and bathroom. Outside there is a trough and washing machine. It’s air-conditioned, and has its own NBN internet connection for school use.
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Mandy started school with the girls, while I set up the awning and the Weber, cleaned the inside and the outside of the caravan, and made some repairs. Morning tea (‘smoko’ in Qld parlance) and lunch with the family. First day seemed to go quite smoothly, given that Mandy is an old hand at it now.
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Spent a relaxed morning in Muttaburra. Well, actually, it was a morning doing repairs and it was anything but relaxed. Started a load of washing but the machine made horrible noises and stopped, so I had to pull the whole machine out and talk to it severely, then finish the washing by hand. Also fixed the front window guard which hadn’t been opened in 9 months. Ah, isn’t WD40 a life-saver? Walked down the street to the general store for a morning coffee. Seemed like the whole town was in there talking. Left for the property, which was only 30 mins away, after lunch, and took the rest of the afternoon to set the van up.…

An early morning walk for coffee, and along the linear Botanical Gardens path which was very good. Easter Sunday at Longreach Baptist. Lunch in a shady park before heading out to Muttaburra past the property we are going to tomorrow. Single lane bitumen most of the way with about 30km of good quality dirt road. Pulled in to the Muttaburra road side stop / caravan park. It’s unattended and has an honesty system of $15 p.n., but provides power, water, toilets, showers, and a flat site, so it’s perfect for us. Walked around and explored the town in the afternoon. Once a fairly substantial town with seven pubs, it now has one general store / petrol station, a primary health station, council sub-office and library, four room motel, hotel, swimming pool, post office and a lovely primary school – very well kept and appointed.…

Treeless paddocks and a head wind. Winton for morning tea, and a play on the ‘music fence’. Arrived in Longreach for a late lunch. Walked around to get to know the place, had lunch in a park, got fuel, and shopped for the coming week. Sat in a shady park late afternoon, and cooked tea on the provided BBQ. Walk around the shops after dark, then slept in the van in a suburban street in the town.
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Left the beautiful Camooweal billabong about 8:30, and drove the short distance into town to fill up. On to Mt Isa for morning tea. We have so much bad luck with Mt Isa – being a big town we generally want to stock up – but last time it was shut being a Sunday and this time it was shut being Good Friday. However, McDonalds was open and doing a roaring trade. Muffins and capuccinos all around. One campervan of four arrived, and set about charging 4 laptops, 4 phones, and 2 speaker systems. They brought their own power board. More fuel and water on board, and over the hills to Cloncurry for lunch in the usual park.…