The Savannah Way

It's been a while since our last post. We spent the next few days exploring Lawn Hill Gorge, and then decided to change our route and head north to the Savannah Way, an really interesting (it was!) sounding outback route to the north of us. Lots of billabongs and creek crossings. Spectacular! The photos are at the end of this post.

I'll add another link to our map as we have added a few "tracks" (google's android "My Tracks" app!) You can zoom in to see where we were: Our google map

Max and I heading up the ridge beside middle gorge. This photo is to let grandparents know we are taking good care that our kids can cope with risk!

Some of the millions of termite mounds we have seen.

The beginning of Upper Gorge

Paddling up Upper Gorge

At the head of the Gorges

Laura behind a set of falls. 

Max and Julia

The bird life was phenomenal. This is a bower bird,

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and his bower. He collects colours (white in this case) to let potential girlfriends know he awesome.

Our first creek crossing, about ten minutes after we left the safety of big roads.

Driving across cattle stations.

Laura on gate duty.

The road passed many fantastic billabongs.

Every half an hour or so we would pass other travelers. We camped beside the road with some boaties from "Rocky", who had "done" an axle on their trailer. They politely warned us not camp too close as they were running generators all night to recharge their batteries. They were connecting them up in series to do a bit of welding (as you do!).  They  had done on side, and were preparing do the other. We asked them if they wanted us to send help. "Nah, she'll be right!"

We are about 100km off the coast, and the salties come along way inland. As there is no monitoring of these rivers we very conservative.

Yet another photo of an awesome river crossing.

Lawn Hill National Park and Riversleigh Fossil site

We traveled from Mt Isa to Lawn Hill national park and for the first time tested our off road capability.  Everything held up well except the handle on the jack wheel at the front of the trailer which was bent, but still functional.  

Preparing lunch from the back of the trailer

Bonus show.  Mustering with a helicopter and horses around our car!

Julia forging a river on the way to Lawn Hill National Park

Views from Riversleigh fossil site.  The Riversleigh fossil site is a more recent fossil site that the dinosaurs we saw at Winton.  This site contains marsupial remains, including a large and carniverous kangaroo.  We saw the interpretive centre for Riversleigh at Mt Isa and then were able to visit the fossil site on the way to Lawn Hill.

Riversleigh fossils in the rock.

Lawn Hill National Park - green and luxurious after the surrounding country.

Kayaking at Lawn Hill - the amazing green colour is entirely accurate -incredible!

Glad we brought our own Kayaks - hire of the kayaks for the time we used them would have amounted to hundreds of dollars.

There is no fishing at Lawn Hill - anyone who claims recreational fishing doesn't reduce fish stocks should come and visit!

We took an intrepid night walk up to the top of a hill looking over the gorge.  The kids spent most of their time talking about the fact that "their parents" made them do things that "other parents" didn't.  Yay to us!

Our camp site at Lawn Hill

We have spent most of the last day wondering whether we could just stay here for the next three months. I don't know whether everything else is going to be disappointing after seeing this site.  Hardly any people, even when the camp ground is completely full and isolated because of the dirt roads to get here.  It is very different from the busy caravan parks we have been staying in so far and much more the kind of trip we were planning!

Beyond the Black Stump

Whew. We finally got away, one hour late, but away nevertheless. It's going to be tricky to blog from many of the places where we are going (beyond the bytes), so we will have to do data dumps when we are in range.. The blog is also a diary for us, so hopefully won't be too tedious. 

We are running north to get to the hard places to get to from Queensland, but it has been difficult not to stop in the history-rich towns of outback Queensland on the way.

We have already blown fuses, and spent 2 hours fixing a bent pole in the camper trailer with a good bloke called Gary Brown on the edge of Longreach (about one block from the centre of Longreach). Gary didn't even want money for getting back on the road. Of course we insisted!

We are now in Mt Isa, 2000km into our journey, about to head out to the bush "Lawn Hall Gorge" for kayaking and walking so will be offline for about five days.

Map of the places we have visited.

We will attempt to update this map when we hit wi fi spots! If you zoom in you will see tracks of our route made using "My Tracks" for Android, Not very exciting yet, but hope to improve this.

Day 1: Drove to Blackall. Left Brisbane at 7am and arrived at 8pm, after dinner at the Tambo Pub. About 1000km.

Day 2: Drove to Longreach, Qantas Musuem, Paddle in the Thompson River.

Day 3: Longreach (and repairs) to Winton via the Age of Dinosaurs Museum.

Day 4: Drove to Mt Isa through some spectacular landscape.

Hot creek at Blackall, the water here must touch hot rocks in the earth's crust.

It is very nippy in the mornings here. Max in his dawn regalia at Blackall.

Apparently the idiom on the sign post is actually not! It was a literal expression for a surveyors mark in Blackall. We had to explain to the kids it was before satellites and google earth, and was very important.

Barcaldine: The tree of knowledge, site of a meeting for a shearers strike, and where the Australian Labor party was founded in the 1890's. It was poisoned by vandals a few years back, and it is pleasing that such an elegant monument now stands over it.

An emu strolls around Barcaldine (eating fallen Burdekin plums which seemed fair enough to us!)

At the QANTAS museum in Longreach, where the Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Service was founded.

Laura and Tony had their first kayak on the Thompson River at Longreach.

Marshmallows at the free camp north of Longreach.

"Banjo", the meat eating dinosaur discovered near Winton. The Age of Dinosaurs museum was great (better value than the QANTAS museum for the record!)

The rig with a bit of dust. More to come!

Some un-edited pieces of the the large (25m) Sauropod from 95 million years ago discovered near Winton.

Matilda's thigh bone next to a bull's thigh bone.

Awesome road train in Winton.

A mini jump-up north of Winton

Into the red country - en route to Mt Isa.

Some Preparation

Tony has been adding a few modifications to the Prado and camper trailer. They seem to be minor additions, but after spending 10 hours on Sunday fitting a battery box; a dc-dc charger and undoing and redoing last weekends new water pump fit-out (note to self: check you don't put fittings in the way of bolts you need to access to put down the stabilizer legs), I have an appreciation of the quotes I got.

The 12 volt  water pump is tiny, but pumps 11 litres per minute. I still have to fit an electrical switch (another few hours work no doubt).  There are hand pumps (which still work!), but they are tedious to use, especially for the kids. I'm hoping they will be able to help with the dishes now (go on, push the button - it's the closest thing out here to Minecraft!).

The internet has been awesome. I (youtube) learned to solder off New Jersey survivalists with cartoon machine gunned titles.

Tony with his awesome 8 tonne cable lug crimpers.

The dc-dc charger. This is for getting optimal performance from our solar panels (160W) when camping, and allows us to charge the trailer batteries to 100% using the car's alternator/battery.

The new pump's location! It really is only about 3cm in diameter.

A bunch of new tools for the dc wiring

Running big fat copper cables through the Prado. Yep, I was scared witless about getting it all back together. I would not have dared start the job without the Prado 120 series forum post "How to run wires to your trailer". He said it was a 50 minute job - but it took about 4 hours after all the problem solving (involving coat hangers, string and duct tape).

Wires poked through the grommet in the firewall (what? Just what?).

Some awesomely crimped battery lugs. Did I say my crimpers were 8 tonne?

Practise camping at Malaney

Two weekends ago we did a quick camping trip with the Upton's to Malaney, in the Sunshine Coast hinterland. We wanted to try a one nighter in the camper trailer to see how the the setup/take down went if we skipped putting up the camper trailer awning. When we are travelling across the desert we won't be stopping for more than a night in a few places, and we will want to get off early so we can cover 600+km of dirt/desert highway roads. The setup seemed pretty quick, but the pack up was a little tiresome (is that the temporal equivalent to cumbersome?). This is also a practice blog from the laptop. We are trying to test all the gear in situ;  laptop charged from trailer batteries, camera download straight to laptop. I want to check it all works so we don't cart a few expensive bricks around the country. 

Malaney showgrounds were great. 1km rainforest walk along Obi-Obi Creek to town. Ben and Tony headed for Baroon Pocket Dam to recce it for a paddle sometime in the future. Not great. The rock cliff behind me was the only part of shore line which was not weed covered exposed embankments. Drunk lots of Lucy's homebrew after dinner. Nice.