Gone West

(Photo - camping Fraser Island - you can't get away from doing the dishes)
From Hervey Bay we travelled up to Gladstone taking a detour to visit the rum factory at Bundaberg. We went on a tour and were taken past the molasses wells, into the processing area where the process of extracting the alcohol from the molasses was explained then onto the bond store. Here the spirit sits for 24 months, in huge American white oak vats, and develops it’s colour and characteristic flavour. We viewed the bottling plant before getting to the best part of the tour, the bar. The price of a tour includes 2 free drinks. Jill, not being a spirits drinker, wasn’t expecting to like any of what she sampled but was pleasantly surprised to find the liqueur OK. After trying it again for the second free drink and Al also finding it very palatable there was no option but to buy a bottle, as it’s only available at the factory. We continued on to Gladstone and had a very enjoyable evening with friends who also gave us a quick tour of the city. From two high vantage points we had views of the lights of the city.

We decided to go to Townsville the long way after another camper told us about her trip through inland Queensland. Just south of Rockhampton we started heading west and are now travelling the Capricorn highway. It's definitely warmer now we are further north and going inland. The days are around 25C, which is very nice. First we went as far as Blackwater, which is in a coal mining area. Along the way we passed several coal trains, most of them were loaded with coal but were stationary so we were able to measure them on the odometer and they clocked in at 1.5 kilometres long! They had two locomotives at the front and another two in the middle. Near Blackwater, at Bedford Weir, was a free camp 30km down a side road so we hoped it was worth the effort of driving there. When we got there we found a nice grassy area surrounded by large trees and half a dozen other vans. The water behind the weir is not much more than a muddy puddle but it is a great camp area - toilets and hot showers. There was a campfire going and a sign saying happy hour was at 4:30pm. At 4:30 we took our camp chairs and mugs over to the fire and were treated to billy tea and damper.

Our next stop was at the town of Sapphire and here we stayed at another free camp. This one was on a dusty reserve, only toilets (no showers) there but as it was free we had no complaints. In this area there used to be several commercial gemstone mines but now days it’s mainly small scale mining and several areas have been set aside for fossicking. We took a tour through an old underground mine and saw where the gemstone bearing gravel sits in the layers of rock. This gravel is extracted from the ground and goes through a washing and sieving process to extract the gems. We chose the easy option of buying a bucket of gravel and set about using the water and sieves that were provided to extract our gems. Naturally we were hoping for a big find but had to settle for a few small pieces of sapphire and zircon. (Photo - Jill looking for gems amongst the washed rocks)

Our journey west continued to Barcaldine. We arrived at Barcaldine just on sunset so were on high alert for kangaroos. The road was littered with dead kangaroos but fortunately we didn’t have any close encounters and only spotted about half a dozen live ones near the roadside. Barcaldine is a small rural town, supposedly a cattle farming centre but from the highway the paddocks appeared brown and empty of livestock. After leaving Barcaldine heading for Longreach in a one kilometre stretch of highway we had about 50 kangaroo cross in front of us, some in groups of about 10, some two or three at a time and the occasional single kangaroo. None of them stopped to look, they just hopped out of the bushes or grass, across the highway and were gone. Again from the carcasses along the road many hadn’t been successful in the past.