An easy start to the day, checking out the wetlands before we headed back down the dirt road and back onto the bitumen.
We drove through Barcaldine, and stopped at Longreach for a photo op of the 3 Clipper buses at the Qantas Founder's museum and a sneaky photo in front of the last of the Qantas 747. After morning tea, and sharing around of my home-baked choc-chip cookies, we drove on to Winton for lunch. For Matt and I, having being in these areas just shy of 12 months ago, we were happy to just take a quick stroll around the main streets.
From Winton, we headed towards Cloncurry, but took a turn off and headed to Julia Creek. As we drove along, we were surrounded by golden grasses, that were looking long and the evidence of puddles remaining from some recent rain, were I'm sure, encouraging signs for the coming months for the farmers. Whilst on this narrow and lonely road, we did have a police car follow us and then overtake each bus separately, as we had all spread out over a couple of kilometres between us down this stretch. We heard Ian warn David over the radio that the police car had its light flashing as they approached behind David and Brenda's 'Discovery' bus, but it was just to overtake and not to pull him over fortunately.
We opted to park up at the local caravan park for the night and wandered around the main streets of Julia Creek as the afternoon was slipping away, sadly noting that a few of the stores and businesses were up for sale. Whilst on our walk today, I started to hear familiar bird calls, bird calls that became entrenched in my memories, of last year's adventure and that bring back fond recollections of the trip and the awesome and diverse bird life and images of the amazing and beautiful landscapes that we experienced, that will stay with me forever.
Pre-dinner drinks together, as the sun began to set and a little later, dinner under the stars. Another long day driving but it is so good to be out here in the outback and switching off from the busyness of life that we have tried to leave behind. The weather is warming up too, the further northwest we travel, and we both pulled out shorts and t-shirts to wear today. Today's casualty was the fan belt for the air conditioner, that fell off somewhere.(See amendment #2- A/C belt replacement due to previous belt taking a permanent holiday, and amendment #1 revision 2 - fix a wire tie on the fan that has tried to escape again)
