The couple we were talking to last night had a look on the internet and warned us that it going to reach about 39° today - so we decided we wanted to try and get as much driving done as we could before the sun was too high at about 2pm. We had our breakfast and then set off...
Surprisingly, the landscape is still quite green at the moment - it's not quite as lush a colour as it is in 'tropical' Queensland, but there are still lots of trees everywhere. After a couple of hours driving, we stopped in a place called Cloncurry - to stretch our legs and put some diesel in the van. We bought some bottled water from a small supermarket and then Nikki took over the driving. She drove for over 100km to our next stop (we're trying to stop every 1-2 hours or so), which was called Mount Isa. We knew when we were getting close because the land suddenly went from really flat to really red and rocky.
Mount Isa was quite a big town and we stopped in McDonalds for some lunch before hitting the road again. When we were about 20km outside of the town the landscape suddenly changed back from the red rocks to the long grass and small bushes - only this time the grass was almost white - if you looked out towards the horizon, it looked like a huge shag carpet.
The next place we came to was called Camooweal, which is the last town in Queensland before you cross over into the Northern Territory. Nikki stopped to use the toilet and told me to walk around for a bit to stretch my legs - but it was nearly impossible. The wind was blowing really strong and the heat was unbearable - it was like standing in front of a huge hairdryer - so instead I sat in the passenger side and did my stretches from there.
We had almost done our 500km for the day and so we weren't sure how much further we were going to drive today - and the couple from last night told us about a 'campsite' they'd stayed at in a place called Avon Downs - so we thought we'd check that out. About 15 minutes after leaving Camooweal we crossed over the border into the Northern Territory and into a new time zone - we had to put our clocks back by half-an-hour - and I felt younger straight away! We reached the site at Avon Downs after about 45 minutes and were surprised to see that all it was, was a large picnic site with a toilet - and a police station on the other side of the road (I don't know who they're protecting or serving - they're in the middle of nowhere!). We stopped to have a cup of free coffee that you find every now and again, which is to encourage drivers to stop, but then decided we didn't want to stay here and moved on.
After a couple more hours (so much for stopping before the sun was too high), we finally found a place to stop. It was called Barkly Homestead and it's a million miles from anywhere - and this was reflected in the petrol prices - we had to pay $135 to fill up our tank! We set up the van and then had showers before having some fried eggs and bread for our tea. Later on we went into the onsite pub for a couple of drinks and to watch the TV - we tried to stay in there as long as we could because it was air-conditioned and outside was really sticky. We came to bed at about 10pm and jumped into 'the furnace' - or campervan to everyone else, and did our best to fall asleep in the sweltering heat.
We've seen hundreds of kangaroos on this road trip - unfortunately, they've all been dead at the side of the road - we've not seen 1 live one yet... d'oh!
Distance travelled today: 696km Distance travelled in total: 1677km
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