Self isolation and social distancing enters the lexicon for 2020

I do hope that each and everyone of you are keeping well and that you all have escaped this horrible virus that is amongst us. I must admit I do feel somewhat lucky to be away from all the major towns out here in the central west of Queensland.  This is all farming country, and touch wood, so far, the virus hasn’t yet made it out this way. Keeping your distance from others and isolating yourself is very easy to do. I did a 340km trip the other day (more on that later) and I saw one other person driving in the opposite direction in just over five hours. The major drawback I have discovered is that all the Government and Council owned campsites and caravan parks have been closed. Thankfully the privately owned ones are still open and are all very grateful for any custom at all as they have lost all their winter trade. For those not in the know Queensland is the State that all the Southern dwellers head for in the winter to get some warmth and decent weather. It is quite the exodus normally but this year it has slowed to barely a trickle. Im stuck in Queensland for the foreseeable as all the State borders are closed, but its nor really a hardship as the weather is very pleasant up here on the Tropic of Capricorn.

So on leaving Dalby I headed further West to the next major town of Roma, no coliseum or Spanish Steps, but it does have the largest stock sale yards in the Southern Hemisphere, unfortunately visitors are currently banned from visiting due to the aforementioned pandemic.  I stayed at the Roma Gun Club which have some pretty good facilities, and an all are welcome bbq on Thursday night. You can also have a go at shooting while waiting for the bbq if that sort of thing floats your boat. Not for you and Mike though Diane as this was trap/skeet shooting not your long range one shot one kill thing you two do. But the club was very well supported by the locals with I would guess about 50 or so people there. Strangely enough, my two dogs are not keen on fireworks at all but the sound of shotguns going off didnt faze them one iota, we even stood watching it for a while and not a thing from them, Whisper even laid down and nodded off. Roma in many ways was very similar to Dalby, everything geared towards the farming industry

I did manage to get my truck dinged while in Roma, as per usual in a supermarket carpark, luckily I have plastic protection trim around my rear lights and one of those got broken. Must have been by another 4×4 due to the height.

From Roma I travelled onwards West to a small town called Charleville, a very pleasant small township, with a very nice RFDS museum (Royal Flying Doctor Service) which was closed, but luckily the Cosmos was still open. The Cosmos is an observatory as the night skies in the outback give excellent conditions for looking at the night sky. At the observatory they also have four smaller (but still a good size) telescopes where they give demonstrations to the public.  I manage to get myself on to one, and it was a great couple of hours. The woman was very knowledgeable and showed us all some truly amazing sights, nebulas, constellations and star clusters. Its well worth a visit to anyone who heads out that way. They even supply the mozzie spray.

From Charleville it was a right turn North passing through a few small towns mostly just a few houses and the odd shop either side of the main road until I got to Blackall. Found a small but good campsite right on the edge of the main drag under the shad of a couple of trees.  Now a few of you people may have heard of the phrase “beyond the black stump”.  Well the expression is the name of an imaginary point beyond which the country is considered remote and or uncivilised. One of these black stumps is in Blackall. The use for these stumps are varied depending on whose stories you believe, used as county boundaries, marking staging spots for the old stage coaches and even as surveyors marks for plotting the land for cartographers. But all seem to adhere to the rule that beyond this point you are entering uncharted areas.  I was thankful when I left Blackall it was on a well signposted tarmac road.

From here it was a trip still Northwards until I got to Barcladine, another small township but with four campsites and 3 motor inns, all but two of the campsites are closed, but it does signal just how busy these places get when there are lots of tourists about. I stayed a a truly lovely little campsite with only 12 pitches, all of them on grass and in amongst the trees, I was the only one there so had all the facilities to myself, which in these current times makes isolation and distancing a doddle. Barcladine is believed to be the birthplace of the Australian Labour Party, it was here that 12 sheep shearers went on strike for better pay and conditions back in the 1800’s and from there the first seeds of the Labour Party were sown. It is also the home of the “tree of knowledge”. This was a tree outside the railway station that the striking shearers sat under during their protest, this tree stood in this spot until 2006  when someone unknown  gave it a good spraying of roundup weed killer, and so killed the tree. Later the tree was cut down in one piece and sent away I believe to Brisbane where it was sent through a process to preserve it and was then returned to Barcladine and it now stands in its original spot outside the station. I was hoping to get a decent night picture of it as its usually all lit up, but due to everything closing down for the duration the lights have been turned off.

So onwards we travelled this time Northwesterly to Longreach, a quick run of only 110kms. Longreach is the home of QANTAS Australias national airline or as it was known back then Queensland and Northern Territory Air Service. Outside the QaANTAS museum  (closed) they have a 747-200, a Boeing 707, and a Super Constellation. I remember my dad telling me about flying on a Constellation, only carried about 30 people and had bunk beds sleep in.  A bit different to economy class these days. Frustrated not to get any pics of them as due to the museum being closed they were doing maintenance work on the planes and had high fencing around them all.  Longreach also has the Stockman Hall of Fame. This is a museum and they also have live displays celebrating the lives of the original Stockmen who did all the mustering etc on horseback. Basically they are the Australian equivalent of the American Cowboy or the Argentinian Gaucho. I stayed at the only open campsite in Longreach, which by the way only has two to Barcladines 4 even though its probably 3 times the size and with more well know attractions. I think the best way to describe the campsite I was at was tired. or possibly even neglected. I think the people who ran it had basically given up, which was a shame as it could be a lovely spot. It was just little things, like the toilet block which was complete tiled so could have just hosed it out on a daily basis, and none of the doors were ever shut so all the bugs got in especially at night when the lights were on, and their crowning glory were the toilets where every time you flushed them, you washed down a frog or two which was hiding up under the rim.  It certainly put you off going when you had a pair of eyes staring up at you. Thankfully I have my own toilet in the van.  While in Longreach I thought about where to next. I was getting a bit frustrated with everything sightseer being closed, and recalled that the chap who ran the Barcladine campsite mentioned the Sculpture Trail, so I decided to go back to Barcladine and do this trail as it wouldn’t be closed as its all out in the open

So back in Barcladine I am. I did the Sculpture trail a couple of days ago. It starts in a town called Aramac which is about 65kms north of where I am and its a large loop around the local roads of approximately 220kms most of it on gravel roads. Left the caravan about 6:30am drove up to Aramac and headed out on the trail. Well I did the whole loop and only so one other person, who was a local farmer Giles who was pottering along in a very battered and possibly not road legal 4×4, my sole interaction with him was a casually raised finger off the steering wheel.  The Sculptures were very impressive, made up of scrap metal, barbed wire and old bits of farm machinery and vehicles.  The other interesting thing I saw was a rather large snake on the edge of the road, probably over a metre and a half and fairly thick, incidentally the first snake I have seen since arriving in Australia. I may have seen the odd one as road kill but never stopped to look. Anyway I turned around to go back to the snake and see if I could get a photo of it.  Well I think farmer Giles had beaten me too it as about a tire width of it was completely flat, and it wasnt going anywhere, so I turned again and carried on.  I got back to the van at approx 1400, but it really was a great little trip, and being so devoid of other humans it meant I could let the dogs out frequently for a leg stretch.  The one other thing that really caught my eye was the amount of termite mounds, not one or two but quite literally thousands if not 10s of thousands. I was trying to work out as I was driving along if you average it out to about 10,000 termites per mound (probably conservative estimate) that makes for one heck of a lot of termites roaming the country.

Anyway its now the Easter weekend and all the shop staff are having a very well earned break. I am here until Tuesday when I will decide where next.

Stay safe, stay home, stay healthy.

pics following again slim pickings