Now that I have caught up on all the blogs I am ready to blog myself. I am sitting here on mum and Keith’s balcony sipping a glass of wine and eating some nibbles. The sun is setting over the 800 million year mountain range and it, like the whitegums, is glowing and the birds are making their last calls before retreating for the evening. It is all quite exquisite. I just wish all my friends were here as I missing you all heaps.

It’s been quite a busy time since arriving here on Wednesday night (I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to blog) lots to organise I tell you but before I get to that I want to blog the rest of our holiday after my last post in Caloundra.

Next stop after Caloundra was Gayndah with a stop off at Maroochydore for my last beach swim. It was a beautiful day on a beautiful beach and it was very hard for me to leave and begin the 3000km journey away from the coast. Thankfully, it wasn’t that hard for Martin who is really much more of an inland man so he pushed me on. My uncle Richard lives in Gaynadah and we were keen to visit him and check out his town. It was a great town and Richard was a marvelous host taking us around to see the sights. He works on an orchard so he gave us a bit of a tour and explained how the fruit gets from the trees to our shops. It was all very interesting really especially for Martin the agronomist.

From Gayndah we drove to a place called Carnarvon Gorge. I hadn’t heard of Carnarvon before mum recommended it to us but it was a bit of a highlight for me. Great camping and we did a walk in the Gorge the following day which was spectacular. We saw the biggest, clearest aboriginal rock paintings I had ever seen. The walk itself was great, crossing the river numerous time under the red gorges. After Carnarvon we were back on the road to Barcaldine. The town where the Labor Party started apparently. There we stayed at the oldest pub in town. Built in the 1880’s as far as I recall.

The next day was the much anticipated visit to Longreach and Winton. We loved the QANTAS museum at Longreach and the tour of the plane although we were unable to do the wing walk tour which was disappointing as they were full that day. It didn’t quite cure Martin’s fear of flying but it was certainly an interesting beginning, I juts have to try and actually remember it. We loved Winton too. It was so cute. And a very funny place for us. We had a milkshake in town but they were very big milkshakes and we were having trouble finishing them so I said to Martin let’s have a competition to see who can finish first. We started drinking them fast. I burped as I was feeling so sick which made us both laugh especially Martin who then vomited up half of his milkshake. This amused us even more but not the poor man sitting two table down from us who had come to enjoy a quiet coffee and brownie but instead had to put up with our disgustingness. Thankfully we were outside so were able to just throw water over it but it was quite embarrassing asking for it. We did do some touristy stuff there too. We visited the dinosaur museum. Apparently about 100km’s out of Winton there are some dinosaur footprints that represent the only recorded dinosaur stampede. It is these footprints that apparently Steven Spielberg used as inspiration for the stampede in Jurassic Park. We would have loved to have gone but we couldn’t due to time. The museum though was interesting enough. Made me realise how much of what I know about dinosaurs is based on the American dinosaurs rather than the Australian dinosaurs. That night we slept in Kynuna. Population 10 but more stars than you ever did see. Also the home of the Billabong where apparently Waltzing Matilda is set and that we visited the next day. Interesting but not exactly stunning. From the Billabong we drove to Cammoweal on the border of Queensland and the NT where we camped on a waterhole and enjoyed a beautiful sunset and even more stars. We drove through Mt Isa but I have written about that.

Finally, we entered in the NT the next day. It was exciting to be getting nearer to what will now be our home, not to mention we were tiring of being on the road, so we decided to just drive the 900km left to Alice. We did manage to stop off at Tennant Creek for lunch though and Devil’s Marble’s for a bit of a walk. Devil’s Marbles was extraordinary. Massive, round, red rocks formed by millions of years of slow erosion. I was struck as I had been many times along this trip of all that exists out there that I hadn’t heard of before.

So the sun has now gone and it is dark. A fire has been lit and Keith has just told me that this must be longest post in history so I think I will leave the Alice stuff for my next post.