Day 8 - Barcaldine to Winton

Day 8 - Barcaldine to Winton

Left the Camping at Barcaldine with regret, this place is really nice, if you're ever in this area, come to camp here; and try to arrive before 4PM, there is a show at this time where they make dampers with music and storytelling.




The camping at Barcaldine

Nice road, better than I expected. The things I noticed the most was the amount of roadkill and how the vegetation is becaming increasingly sparse and arid.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, respects the speed limit of 110kmh, it's eerie, it's like it's expected and tolerated.

The Road Trains are also becoming  bigger, up unitl now they had 3 trailers, apparetnly from here they will have 4, and exceed the 50 metres.



This is how you know you are behind a Road Train. It's not easy to overtake them. it takes for ever.



All creatures, big and small. This is a 3-trailer one, maybe later I'll catch a photo of a 4-trailer. This is however, scary enough for me. I am not looking forward to face the bigger ones.

On the way to Winton I made a stop in Longreach, there is a museum there dedicated to the founders of Qantas. Apparently Qantas was first formed in this area.




Entry to Longreach



This is the first 747 delivered to Qantas, it is now a museum piece



Did I say something about big and small creatures?

Getting closer to Winton, the heat also starts to show. Look at how they keep the chocolates here in the shops.

Chocolates kept in fridges

On the way here, I noticed how the farmers control the sheep. They don't use horses any more, but motorbikes, look at this.

XXI Century horse

Finally arrived in Winton, somewhat earler than expected, but this is the result of indecent speeds. In any case, I cannot continue, because if I did so, I wouldn't reach the next town before dusk. After dusk is when all the animals come out, and at that time, only the Road Trains can brave the road, they are the ones making all the roadkill.

In the area surrounding Winton, they have found a lot of fossils and dinosaur bones, there is a craze here about dinosaurs, just look at the Council rubbish bins

Before the end of the day, I had a little time to visit some of the museums and attractions of Winton, here is the tracks from dinosaurs, called the 'stampede', the tracks became fossilised in the clay and they covered with sand. This is what they look like




Dinosaur tracks on the fossilised mud

I also had a cold beer at the local pub, which incredibly has a lot of history, in fact, it was compleely destroyed and re-built 3 times.



The 'famous' North Gregory Hotel

For the night, I booked into the Matilda Tourist Park, nice neat place (and very cheap)


I booked into the Matilda Country Tourist Park and tonight they had a show with 2 poetry-comedians



One of the comedians brought her father to the stage, you can see where she got it from. Very funny.

Their names are Mel and Susie.

I found that I had to add some spare fuel, just in case. With 27 litres now, at 5 l/100km, I now have a range of about 600km, which is reassuring.

Another interesting bit of trivia about Winton is that the water here smells like rotten eggs, I found that this is because the water here is artesian and comes mixed with sulphur, which is a gas that gives this smell. The water is drinkable though, but the smell turns you off.

Day 7 - Emerald to Barcaldine

Today I found a bit hard to get up. Controlling a motorbike, and a big and heavy one like that, is quite exhausting. I feel as if I had been going to a gym every day for several hours. Every muscle in my body aches. I keep telling myself that this is good for me.

Anyway, I finally pulled up the tent, made myself a chai tea and left to visit the huge dam that is near Emerald.

Getting ready to start the day

I am sorry, I cannot remember the name of this dam



Another view of the dam itself, the lake is huge and beautiful



A really nice stretch of road to get to the dam

The 'honest system' works. People just grab what they want and leave the money in the box. This helps me believe that human nature is ultimately good.



Amazingly, this sign is on the EXIT of Emerald

 On the way west, there is a nice little town called Rubyvale, it's a miner's town, people claim small sections of land or buy a lease to an existing claim. Then they spend their lives digging around their claim, hoping to find sapphires, rubys, diamonds and other precious or semi-precious stones.

Visiting one of the mines

Apparently a volcano erupted here a few millions of years ago and then a river formed, where a lot of precious stones gathered around iron rocks that had been thrown by the volcano. Then the river bed was covered by mud, sand, etc. What the miners have to do is dig until they get to the clay river bed and then follow that, looking for the iron rocks and when they find one, then look around it and that's how they find them. The catch is that the ancient river bed can be about 7 metres below the surface.

A very nice hotel in Rubyvale, It comes with chickens included, look above.



This is what people like to do in the 38degC heat in Australia. Do you want to come fossicking with me?

No kidding, this is considered hot where I come from.

On the road to Barcaldine I had an incident.

I was driving behind one of those 'road trains', with the sun in my eyes, at about 4PM. Since I left Rockhampton I have been driving west, so I have the full sun in my face after midday.

The sun here is incredibly bright, I have been wearing my dark helmet visor and the polarised sunnies inside the helmet, and even then , even with the little awning that I installed on top of the visor, it still hurts of how bright it is.

Anyway, back to the road train. I was behind it and I was about to overtake it. I had a look and there were no cars coming in the opposite direction, so I commenced to overtake. However, just before I passed the truck, something told me to stop and that I am not really in a hurry, so I pulled back behind the truck again.

At that instant, a black car that was coming in the opposite direction went pass me. I had a chill, as I had not seen this car and if I had overtaken the truck I would have surely planted myself right in front of an oncoming vehicle coming a high speed.

The reason I did not see this vehicle is because it was black, the road is black, I had the low sun in my eyes and I was wearing 2 sunglasses.

Do you believe in angels? The movie 'City of Angels' (Nicholas Cage and Meg Ryan) comes to my mind, I remember a scene where the angels stop people from suffering accidents by putting their hands on their shoulders and making they change their actions. I can only guess that this is what happened to me today. I cannot fathom another explanation to why I didn't continue overtaking that truck.

In any case, now the risk manager in me comes into operation. I stopped using the 2 sunnies together, and from now on, if I decide to overtake a truck, I take it off and I look first with my naked eye to make sure I can see all the colours. Since I do this, it's been fine.




Maybe this angel helped me...

Arrived in Barcaldine and shared a meal with 4 very nice people from Victoria. From left to right, Lindsay, Trevor (his brother) Helen and Sandy.