Oct 30 - Nov 1 (Day 273-275) - Birdsville

 

Friday October 30

Wow what a windy day! We had to get up about 11pm last night to pull the awning right in as the wind had picked up, and it kept up all night and all day today! At times the van shook back and forth with the buffeting from the wind! Every time you opened the van door the wind would whine and shriek until you let the door slam shut again. During the day I worked on getting the blog up to date and did a bit of business work, while the kids did some school work.

In the evening we went to the Birdsville Hotel for tea. Between us we had a Chicken Parmigiana, Flathead and chips, and Spaghetti Bolognese.

On the way back to camp we stopped at the local billabong and got these night photos.

The Birdsville Billabong

The Birdsville Billabong

 

Saturday October 31

After some business and school work we drove into town for a bit of a look around. We'd hoped to get some lunch from the Birdsville Bakery but it was closed for some long-term renovations so we went to the roadhouse instead. The couple there were very helpful explaining things to do around town

Hot water on tap - at 98 degrees C!

We went back out to the thermal bore we'd seen on the way in for a closer look. Like at Bedourie, the town water is all from the Great Artesian Basin and sits in cooling ponds before being pumped to the houses. The excess / overflow from the cooling ponds goes in a drain which does a big lap around the outskirts of town to cool off before draining into the local billabong we'd been to last night, which is used for swimming and fishing. We followed it around for a while but even after a few hundred metres where it crossed under the main road, the water was still so hot you could only touch it for a second or so.

Can you believe the water comes out of this bore at close to 100 degrees C? Evidently it's a deeper water source than the one we swam in at Bedourie, which was only 40 degrees.

We also went to the Cemetery which they'd recommended but it wasn't particularly interesting. Some might say it was a dead bore but I wouldn't.

Something else they recommended at the Roadhouse was 'Big Red'. We'd seen this on some signs but had no idea what it was. It's a few giant red sandhills about 35km west of town which is a great place to watch the sunset. See what you reckon! We left Birdsville about 6pm and got there about 15 minutes before sunset.

 First up was 'Little Red' which is a sandhill maybe 20m high.

...and then around to 'Big Red' which is the same idea but perhaps double the height.

We were blessed to have a full moon rising on the east as the sun set in the west!

Outback Queensland, not Africa!

TR5 - The Roaming 5!

Woo hoo!

Sunday November 1

Had a quiet day today. I woke with quite a headache so had a sleep for an hour or so after breakfast. We then had our meeting - we tuned into the replay of Brighton's meeting. Had a quiet afternoon, I had another rest before bed. My headaches are getting a bit irritating, Aspirin doesn't seem as effective at knocking them out as it used to.

-- Greg

P.S. Today being November 2, our plan is to head briefly into Birdsville to empty the toilet, refill the water tanks, top up on diesel and food, and then head south out of Birdsville and start the Birdsville track. This will probably take us 2-3 days so we'll be out in the sticks for the next night or two without signal, and probably Wednesday or Thursday we should arrive at Marree where we should have signal again.