Newstead creek to about 10km north of Charleville

We had decided to snuggle up in the evening and watch a movie - we watched Reservoir Dogs.

We were on the road fairly early and headed in the general direction of Charleville. We had run out of gas overnight and had had to use our emergency stove to make coffee in the morning. So we stopped at the first town Barcaldine to fill the gas bottles. We stopped at a caravan park that did refills and the guy came out to assist. He was lovely. He ran out of gas halfway through filling the first bottle and then wouldn't charge us at all! The town looked really pretty to. It seems that all the country towns out here are looked after. It shows some sort of pride for the town by the locals. We kept driving and stopped in the next biggish town Blackall where we bought pies from the bakery. Again a very pretty town, neat, tidy and looked after.

Then we stopped in Tambo for lunch around 1pm. We stopped at this town on our trip in 2011. A lovely RV friendly rest area with a man made lake. Gaz and Sam played on the grass while I made a coffee and sandwiches.

We hit the road again and headed in the direction of Charleville. We kept seeing Dare ice coffee bottles along the side of the road. It was freshly mown so we were trying to decide if the lawn mower man loved dare ice coffees and was a litter bug of if a truck carrying dare ice coffee might have been losing its load bit by bit.

As we got closer to Charleville we started looking for a place to camp and spotted a dirt track off to the left about 10km north of Charleville. We drove along the track and found it led to a river there were no good spots right near the river but some good flat spots just up on the grassy area do we picked a spot and set up. Again a perfect spot, great sunset!

The weather forecast was for frosts in the morning and although it wasn't as cold as the night before we again decided to snuggle up and watch a movie. Dusk til dawn.

We woke to a frost and decided to take the time to have a bacon and egg breakfast before hitting the road.

Destination NSW!

The Broadwater to Longreach to Newstead Creek Rest area

Had a beautiful day to wake up to. The sun was shining and nice and warm. We had poached eggs on toast for breakfast and a couple of cups of coffee. Sam had been a pain during the night and had crawled into our bed early on then decided around 1:30am that he was awake and wanted to watch a movie. It is draining having him waking so early and being in our bed as it doesn't leave much room to spread out. We definitely need to change his bed to a full adult size stretcher so if it gets really annoying at least one of us can go and stretch out and actually get some sleep.

We only had 120km to drive to Longreach. Gaz wanted to take Sam to the Qantas museum. We arrived in town around 11:30am to find most of the shops shut as it was Sunday. Even the IGA was closed and I was really needing to buy some fresh veges and fruit. Luckily we found another supermarket and I stocked up. I even bought a cooked chook so we could make chicken salad sandwiches.

It is a very pretty town and as you drive into town a water tower stood in the middle of a park with big trees around it and the trees were full of white cockatoos. I thought they were white flowers at first!

We drove through town and out to the airport where the Qantas museum is located. Sam was so excited! The big Qantas 747 was his goal. He wanted to go to the kangaroo airplane, he kept saying this over and over. (got quite trying this repeating thing he's got going at the moment)

I ended up following him around the museum whilst he ran from one airplane to the other just looking up in awe and repeating in an excited voice "look an airplane!" Gaz got to wander around a bit more actually reading but it was fun to see the excitement in Sam. All he really kept going on about though was the "kangaroo airplane" so we ended up purchasing the tickets for the guided your of the 747 and 707.

This turned into a bit of a nightmare. The whole tour was supposed to take 1.5 hours and Sam hadn't had any sleep. He was hyped up on some coke drink that he'd had with lunch and all he wanted to do was get on that "kangaroo airplane" this was said over and over at the top of his voice so the rest of the tour group could hear. I had to try to keep him off to the side of the tour group whilst the guide spoke about parts of the plane so I didn't get to hear much. Gaz was getting stressed out with him as well as he was worried about the rest of the tour group also.

Finally we managed to get onto the Kangaroo airplane! By this stage Sam was quite tired and he wanted to explore where he wanted on the plane but of course we had to stay with the group and move through the sections bit by bit. It was easier in the end to have Sam at a window in the plane behind the rest of the group.

We finished the 747 tour and Sam was just getting too much to handle sober finished the tour early and didn't do the 707 restoration tour.

Gaz had reached the end of his tether it was just all too much. It was around 4pm and we just needs to go and set up camp. I keyed in the Longreach waterhole only to find they had stopped camping there so we had to find another spot. Gaz just said anything that is closer to home! So I keyed in Newstead creek rest area 32 km east of Longreach 74km west of Barcaldine. 23 30 08s 144 33 06e.

This turned out to be quite a lovely spot. It looks like the council have made efforts to make lots of camping spots in the rest area by clearing some of the grass and placing a rubbish bin nearby. Some of them had table and chairs and fireplaces already established. The camp 6 book had this rest area listed as being close to the roadway but you could move quite a long way from the road if you needed to. I would recommend this camping spot. I found it quite relaxing and the sunsets were awesome.

We had taken a rump steak out of the freezer and it had defrosted by the time we were set up so all I needed to do was make potatoes and veges and Gaz got a fire going to get the coals burning for the grill. The steak was really tender just not quite seared enough on the outside as we didn't quite get enough of a bed of coals going but we've learnt for next time.

I don't think we are going to get across the border into NSW tomorrow. But we should definitely be there by Tuesday. Tomorrow's destination somewhere near Charleville.

Blackbraes to The Broadwater

We packed up fairly early in the morning and hit the road. We arrived in Hughenden for brunch lunch and found streets closed off due to the dinasaur festival - how cool! So Sam got to see dinasaurs everywhere and we wandered around saw some of the local aboriginal boys doing a dance and then went to the Holden cafe where we ordered fish burgers and a scoop of chips. The burgers were huge and tasted pretty good.

Then we started heading south towards Muttaburra. The road was long and straight and not much in the way of views. Just grass dirt and more grass and dirt.

We got into Muttaburra just after 3pm after stopping for a baby kangaroos we saw standing by its mother who had been killed on the side of the road. Then we turned towards The Broadwater a bush campsite about 9km outside of Muttaburra along the Thompson river.

We found a lovely site after searching along the river banks and past an old couple that looked like they had been set up for quite some time near the boat ramp. They even had a fenced off vege garden happening!

We were set up in no time, campfire going, water warming in the keg. Then we went exploring along the river banks looking out at the pelicans swooping on to float along with the current. The river was very muddy cloudy looking which is a huge contrast to the clear streams in the cape we had become accustomed to.

I cooked up a spaghetti sauce and we had it over "dinasaur necks" I'm loving using this phrase as it gets Sam munching away no problems. It was cold again but not as cold as the night before. Sam fell asleep early on and Gaz and I listened to a reading of "Catch 22" on the radio while we sat around the campfire with a couple of drinks. The story was quite good so we decided to take the radio inside and listen to it as we fell asleep. I don't even remember past my head hitting the pillow. Gaz said the radio just ran out of battery. It was a lovely way to fall asleep.