Bonus sleep in this morning, as the museum didn’t open until 9am. We headed into Winton and Matt was in his happy place checking out old trucks. We almost got in as seniors again, but insisted on paying the full price. The museum had old, restored trucks of various brands, and sizes. Some including Mack, Atkinson, Commer, Dodge, International, Ford, Diamond T, Dennis, White, Leyland and more. Most were all beautifully restored. But Matt being Matt did find out the back in the yard, all the yet to be loved vehicles. Matt can see the potential in everything, and if we had a big block, I can see these trucks finding there way to our place. So probably a good thing we live on a suburban block! (Italics don’t work on emojis 😔)
Around the corner from the museum, was a music wall that had been created out of junk to make sounds like a drum kit and a swing set with various odd shapes you could bang on, to make music of sorts. We had a play but couldn’t quite make a decent sound. Cause it was all junk, good sounds come from good instruments. Next we headed to a Boulder opal shop to see how they used Boulder opal in jewellery, very interesting the difference between Boulder opal and the normal black and white opal.
After fuelling up, we headed to Longreach. On the way a fire truck with lights on, drove past and about 50km down the road, a purple old Mazda T3500 mini bus converted into a camper had rolled. I was surprised to see a t3500 bus still running, as I drove one when I was 20 and driving trucks, and I have nothing good to say about those basket case vehicles. It Coped ok with the rollover though I must say, roof was at a sideways tilt a bit but not caved in, and from what we heard on the CB people walked away from it, Not sure what happened to cause it. We had also seen an ambulance come away from the scene, so not sure if anyone was injured badly. We eventually arrived in Longreach, took a leisurely stroll around the main street and checked out a few shops and Matt got himself a new shirt, we then returned to Bridget. We noticed the guy in his flashy new caravan, parked in front of us, seemed to be in a bother, so Matt went and offered him some help. Even though Matt couldn’t help the guy with the power issues he was having, he was able to give him advice on using solar and how much ability the caravan had to power, or not in this case, all the electrical equipment it was fitted out with. The guy had been driving solidly for 2 days and the batteries were not very charged, this was a brand new van with all the bells and whistles, powered by 240v which means he has a massive inverter to convert his 12v to 240v. Which he leaves on. Tiny house batteries, and the solar was pumping in about half the power his fridge was using. The caravan didn’t even have dust in it yet. They were given no wiring diagrams or user manuals on the electrical equipment so I couldn’t really help him without knowing how it was wired, but it was pretty easy to see that the gear running off the batteries had the capacity to kill them within 10 hours.
We headed back out of town and found a camp site in an Apex park by the Thomson River, and stopped here for the night. We enjoyed a leisurely stroll and explore down by the river, where a man had brought his pet cockatoo and it was talking to those that walked past them. There was someone else playing a recorder amongst one of the camp areas, and they were playing for a good hour or more. Pity the people around them, glad we were parked in a different location. We will do more tourist stuff tomorrow in Longreach.
