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.