Our Aussie Adventures

We trekked 10Km or so out of Charters Towers this morning, to take in the sights that awaited us at Leahton Park. Thankfully, we have tripped across another caravan park which allows pets to remain behind, so long as they are secured in the van and we are contactable by phone in any case of emergency or nuisance. Therefore, Alvin and Bethany remained behind, as we went trouping off on our tour. It was Leahton Park that I was on the phone to yesterday, trying my hardest to get us booked onto one of the traditional covered wagon tours.

‘The Beast’ beneath the gates.

The property is home to the largest herd of purebred Texas Longhorn Cattle in Australia. Amongst the beasts here is ‘J.R.’, the Guinness World Record holder for the steer with the longest horns, measured tip to tip, in the world.

The mornings events started with an introduction to the owners, Mike and Lynda. They run the multi-award winning Texas Longhorn Wagon Tours & Safaris. I think Mike was as much enamored with ‘The Beast’ as we were with the cattle, which soon saw him bringing out the object of his own automotive love affair, a lovely looking 1956 Ford truck, for us to have a look at. I don’t think that was part of the normal tour, but was a nice touch.

Welcomed to the property by Penny the joey.

As we waited for the remainder of the guests to arrive, we had a chance to look through the small gift shop, which was full of all manner of cool western inspired décor, trinkets, and a great range of leather goods and saddles. The leather work and saddles are made here by Mike and Lynda, although I don’t see where they find the time, between running the stud farm, which provides prime specimens to properties Australia wide, and looking after guests on the tour as well as staying in onsite accommodation, both of which would be full time jobs in their own right.

Billy tea was served from the ‘Chuck’ wagon.

With all of the guests having arrived, we sat around the outdoor dining area in readiness for an authentic Aussie bush tucker morning ‘smoko’ served from a fantastic old west ‘chuck wagon’. As we marveled at the kangaroo joey, deer and dog that joined the party, no doubt all waiting for a stray crumb or two to be dropped, the amenable Mike gave us a run down on the history of the Longhorn Breed, and his involvement with them here in Australia. The billy tea was hot and strong and the fresh damper soft and light, as Mike elicited more than a couple of laughs from the assembly with his typical Australian larrikin humour.

Our carriage awaits.

Morning Tea filling our bellies, it was time to meet the horses that were hitched up to the wild west styled covered wagon that would be taking us out amongst the fields to see the cattle. Always having been a fan of the ‘R.M. Williams’ brand, which uses a longhorn bull head as a logo, I had yearned for the chance to see these beasts for real. I was amazed at how beautiful the animals were, and how placid they seemed, not that I wanted to test their resolve by getting any closer to them than the inside of the wagon. Getting to see the world record holder made it all that more exciting. With horns that stretch to almost 3 meters, J.R. is definitely the star of the show, looking altogether unwieldy with his lengthy bony out riggers. Mike kept up his easy banter, and displayed an obvious love for his bovine charges as we rattled and bounced slowly among the clustered herd.

‘J.R.’ The star of the show.

One of the more diminutively horned beasts.

Several hours after we had arrived, it was time to say goodbye, at which time I declared to Bec that this had been my favourite attraction we’ve been to so far for the trip, and I’m not just saying that because I’m going to e-mail Mike and Lynda a copy of this. They’re just genuine, down to earth folks who invite the public into their lives to share their love of the cattle and the life.

Back in town, we did some grocery shopping, to get us through the next few days. We are due to leave here tomorrow, to head further inland, and as we do so, the towns will be getting smaller, the distances greater and the services will be minimal. In fact, as we move away from the population centres of the east coast, even mobile phone coverage will quickly become almost non-existent. Being that I rely on the phone coverage for Internet access, that means my blog won’t be able to go to print each and every day.

Back at the van, we were nearly bowled over by two very excited pooches, the moment we opened the door. Not that we stayed for too long, before heading out again, this time in company with the dogs. We were heading up to the top of Charters Hill, a lookout that takes in the scenes surrounding the town. Also in the vicinity are more than 30 derelict World War II era storage bunkers, remnants of old mine shafts and a seismograph station, which is currently still in use.

View from the hill.

It didn’t take us all that long to see all that there was to see, and then it was back to the caravan park. As the temperature today had hit a balmy 30^oC, we were intending to make use of the park pool. Unfortunately, the water temperature wasn’t quite a match for the ambient temperature, and we only managed to dip our lower legs into the cold water. The shock of that was enough to stop us from diving headlong in, so a swim was out of the question.

We instead, utilised our time to pack the van up and get ready for an early morning tomorrow. We have a big day on the road planned, hoping to make it at least most of the way to Julia Creek.

Don’t forget, that as we will most likely not have access to a reliable Internet connection for the better part of a week, the next time you hear from us, we will most likely be in Mount Isa. I will be maintaining my ramblings though, so expect an influx of reports the moment we return to civilisation.

I must also apologise to anyone who has been checking out our pics on Flickr and does not like the new page designs. There was no choice in the matter, as Flickr upgraded their interface to make it almost unusable.

Until next time, stay safe, have fun and don’t forget to write.

I was not a happy chappy this morning. My distended belly had caused me no end of agony overnight, resulting in a poor nights rest, and despite not a single drop of liquor passing my lips yesterday, I awoke feeling as if I had well and truly over imbibed. Not to mention that it had barely gone 7:00AM when the alarm sounded to drag me out of my disturbed slumber. Before our day on the road can even begin, I need to take a trip into town to collect my delivery at the freight depot and refuel ‘The Beast’.

At the freight company, I was thankful that my spare wheel was brought out to ‘The Beast’ on a forklift. It meant that I could get it put straight up on top of the canopy, where I hope it will spend the next 5 months without being required. I’m not exactly sure how I will manhandle it down, or back up for that matter, if it transpires that we do need to utilise it. I certainly feel more comfortable now though, that we have a full size spare to augment the space saver spare that we’ve been running about with so far. With the wheel securely strapped down and ‘The Beast’ full of diesel to get us to our next destination, it was back to the caravan park to collect Bec, the dogs and the van, by which time it was already past 9:00AM.

Thankfully today, we don’t have a set time to be out of the park and on the road. Suffice to say, we wanted to be on our way as early as possible though. As it turned out, we were ready to leave by about 10:30AM, but thanks to an overly chatty park owner who stopped to say G’day just as we were about to drive out of the gates, it was 15 minutes later that we bid farewell to the park we have so much enjoyed for the past week.

Having been travelling, generally, in a northerly direction since leaving home, we are turning left today to head west and into the great unknown that is inland Australia. Leaving the coast behind us, it will now be more than a month before we again sight the great briny, when we arrive in Darwin.

With our rather late start, it was fortunate that our travels today were diminutive, only having to manage the 150 or so kilometres to the gold rush town of Charters Towers. Settled as a result of the discovery of gold in the early 1870s, between 1872 and 1899 the rough settlement went through a period of change to become a thriving city of 25,000 inhabitants. During the boom years, Charters Towers became known as ‘The World’ as it was said that without leaving the confines of town, any desire could be well catered for. Today, there is still a charming feeling as you walk down the wide boulevards, gold rush era buildings still resplendent throughout the town, harking back to an earlier time.

Our first stop was at the information centre, where there was a big sign advertising their willingness to assist with making tour bookings. We want to take a wagon trip tomorrow, so figured that we could get the helpful staff to call ahead for us. With the brochure in hand, I approached the lady at the desk, who was most helpful in asking if I needed some assistance. Well, yes I was after some help actually. I let her know that I was interested in taking the wagon tour. That’s a fantastic choice, she advised us, then helpfully told me that we would need to call the company to make a booking. Not quite the tour booking assistance I had envisaged. Having been left to fend for ourselves to make our own booking, I left a message for the tour operators to get back to us, before driving through town to the caravan park we will be staying at for the next couple of evenings.

Much the opposite of where we stayed in Townsville, the Charters Towers Holiday Park is a compact little park on the outskirts of town, where despite having a good sized patch of dirt to call our own, space is at a premium. The staff seem friendly and extremely helpful however, guiding us quickly into position, which made our setting up process all that much faster and simpler. Within 20 minutes of pulling in, we were pulling out again, sans the van, for a closer look around town.

The Stock Exchange Arcade.

Back in town, we strolled along the main street, searching predominantly for somewhere seemingly decent for a quick bite for lunch, but also checking out the few shops that lined the street. I was especially surprised to find Bec eager to check out the small western clothing store, until I found her searching desirously through the boots on display, hoping to find a pair such as those she passed up in Townsville.

Now That’s A Boot.

As well as food and shops, we also took the time to admire the old architecture. The post office for instance was one of the first buildings erected in Charters Towers and has stood the test of time for nearly 115 years so far and still looks brand new. They don’t make them like that anymore.

The main street and the old post office.

Thankfully, the town centre wasn’t overly large, because after my early start, I was soon ready to head back to the van for a rest. As it happened, as I put the finishing touches on our camp, re-strapped the tyre to the roof of ‘The Beast’, and chatted to our new neighbours, Bec disappeared into the van with the dogs and promptly fell asleep, until she awoke to the pain of a mosquito trying to draw its fill of blood from her lip. As for me, my relaxation took a back seat as I dawdled about with looking busy, but not particularly achieving much. I did manage to make contact with the tour company and confirmed our activities for tomorrow morning though. Must call back into the information centre if I get a chance and thank them for their assistance.

Until next time, stay safe, have fun and don’t forget to write.

Today marks a week that we’ve spent in Townsville, and we’ve enjoyed the break it has given us. The chance to do a bit of sight seeing, as well as having a few days relaxing, and doing not much at all, has reinvigorated us to the point that we are getting itchy feet and are eager to move onwards. We are kind of stuck here for at least another night however, as we are still anticipating the delivery of some spare parts for ‘The Beast’ which I had dispatched from Sydney at the start of the week. I had hoped that we would be on the road again today, but it was not to be the case.

My enquiries have revealed that the parts are sitting somewhere in Townsville, waiting to be delivered to their final address, hopefully during the day today, so rather than stress, we marked today down as another day of rest.

I started the day off by sitting beneath our annex reading, giving Bec a chance to have a decent sleep in. I didn’t see her until after 11:00AM, when she poked her head groggily out of the door to ask if I knew what time it was? And why did I let her sleep so long? I don’t think that there was a correct answer to either question.

Judging by the bellowing grey clouds forming in the sky, there was a feeling of more rain in the air again today, so our first job was to deconstruct the annex. Being made out of canvas, storing it away whilst damp encourages the onset of mould, so we wanted it all stowed before it got wet again. Considering that we are fully expecting to be on our way again tomorrow, it was a job that had to be completed today in any case. I certainly didn’t want to be messing around with it first thing in the morning before we leave.

As I wrestled with the great sheets of heavy canvas, Bec got stuck into her chores. Namely the washing. I have promised that I won’t make her out to be neurotic about the laundry, by reporting upon every load of washing, but when she takes one big load over to the caravan park laundry, so she can syphon smaller loads through our own machine, I think it’s worthy of a mention.

With our outdoor room now nothing more than a memory and a yellow square of dying grass, and the van pretty well packed for travel tomorrow, we herded the dogs into ‘The Beast’ for a trip up to a nearby lookout. We had seen a photo online last night of what appeared to be a marvelous view of the coast line. Shazza had the point plotted as being only a matter of a few kilometres up the road, so who would we be to disbelieve her? As we got closer, Shazzas final word of instruction to us went along the lines of: “In 800 metres, navigate off road”. She then promptly went to sleep I think, as we couldn’t get another word out of her.

As it turned out, all we could see 800m down the road was a thick scrubby brush of gum trees, with no indication that anything more scenic might be observed by ‘navigating off road’. So we continued along the road we were on, heading away from Townsville, but at least ascending the flank of a small range of hillocks. We figured at the top would be as good a location as any for a lookout, and a much better site than in the middle of a dense forest.

Towards the top of the ranges, we did indeed come across a small parking area, which wasn’t signposted as the vantage point we were seeking, but provided a decent view across the lower forest area to Townsville. The view was assuredly not what we had expected, given the online advert we seen. As such, we continued on our way, to see if there was another lookout, but 20km later, as we started to descend the opposite side of the mountains, we eventually came to the conclusion that what we had seen was about all we were going to see. Goes to show, you can’t believe everything you see on the Internet. Who would have guessed it?

The advertised view from Pipers Lookout.

The actual view from Pipers Lookout. Not quite the same.

The view just got two times better!!!

Driving back towards the caravan park, we stopped to take the dogs for a walk along the banks of the Black River. Actually, considering the meager volume of water trickling between the wide spread levees, we were able to walk the dogs in the river. It was such a shame that the weather wasn’t quite so warm as to make paddling in the cool waters enjoyable. Despite the thermometer topping out at nearly 30^oC each day, it has felt much cooler.

The raging Black River.

Back at the caravan park, we gave the dogs a further run about the grounds, in an effort to shed them of the sand that had collected in their fur, before admitting them entry into the van.

It was just past 4:00PM by this stage, so I made some calls about my delivery, to check on where it might be. By 4:30PM, I found out that it was apparently still sitting at the local courier depot, but could be picked up in person rather than being delivered to our nominated address. The only snag was that the depot was due to close at 5:00PM and it was at least a 30 minute drive to get there. I didn’t want to risk arriving late and missing them tonight, so I arranged to collect it first thing in the morning. I can get that, then be back at the van with plenty of time to hitch up and hit the road still.

After a bit of an afternoon nap, we secured the dogs in the confines of the van, to head into town for dinner. We had discovered a $30.00 a head, all you can eat buffet at the casino and were excited to try it out.

We arrived a little bit too early to head straight for the restaurant, so Bec signed up to the casino membership scheme. As a welcoming bonus, she received a coupon for a free meal at the café. Pity it wasn’t for the venue we were booked in to dine at. As I watched the first few disappointing minutes of the Melbourne Storm rugby game, Bec prodded a few bills into the pokies. As we headed for dinner, Bec was as much a loser as the Storm seemed to be.

At the restaurant, we hadn’t even taken to our seats, before we turned and rushed back through the dining room to where the salad bar sat tantalisingly. With our first round plates piled high with prawns, and cold salads, the feasting began in earnest. As plate after plate of food was devoured, the bare crockery cast aside, the waitress struggled to maintain an equal pace in keeping our table tidy.

By the time we’d worked our way to the dessert bar, I was beginning to feel physically ill. I was doing so well, and then all of a sudden it went downhill. I described it to Bec like turning a corner from Madison Avenue into the Bronx. I’d gone straight from a good, happy neighbourhood to a real bad place. I could feel the beads of perspiration forming on my brow, a sheen of sweat dripping down my face, as I fought for control of my gag reflex to maintain power over my innards. What can be better than a culinary splurge to invoke a self induced bout of nauseous dry wretching. And that was the signal that dinner was done. Yep, that’s my kind of dinner!

Returning to the gaming floor, Bec lost us a few more dollars, as I watched the Storm make a gallant attempt to finalise their game in a draw. They finished much like we did. Dollar wise we were down, but I reckon we took them to the cleaners at dinner. If only we had the fortitude to allow us to gorge that one little bit more, we could have utilized our free dinner coupon and come out true winners, but it had to go begging unfortunately. So yep, like the rugby, we’ll call it a 10 all draw.

What happens when two dogs want one couch.

Until next time, stay safe, have fun and don’t forget to write.

We must be suckers for punishment, but we were awoken by the alarm at an hour that for us is considered early and headed into town to visit another market. Much to the dogs disgust, they were harnessed in, and are coming along for the ride today.

With no prior knowledge of what to expect, and given our recent fortunes in relation to the magnitude or lack thereof of the markets we’ve attended, we were excited to see that this one was of generous dimensions. It took up a good sized chunk of car park at one of the shopping malls, and featured a little bit of everything that you would expect of a market, all set up in orderly lines of canopy covered stalls. It was worth the early morning wake up call after all.

Traipsing up and down the aisles, we stopped to purchase a range of fresh produce. There’s nothing quite like buying fruit and vegetables direct from the farmer, with sweet smelling pineapples, huge hands of bananas, bright ruby red capsicums, giant watermelons among the huge range of produce available.

As the fruit and vegetable stalls made way for stalls full of bric-a-brac, and in turn cheap toys and then clothing, Bec found a stall selling some gorgeous tops. There was no fitting room at the stall however, and in an incredible display of what could be considered either good old fashioned country trustworthiness, or just plain stupidity, Bec was told to take as many tops as she wanted into the shopping centre bathrooms to try them on.

We could have just walked away with them, but as it turned out, Bec didn’t like one of the tops, so we had to go back to return that one anyway. We therefore figured we’d better pay for the one that she did like.

On our way again, there was another market that we had circled in the guidebook, but we never made it. Instead, passing a small park, we saw another series of market gazebos set up. We hadn’t read about any special events, so decided to stop for a gander and came across the Townsville Heritage Day. Spread out across a few sites, all within walking distance of each other, there was a park full of displays detailing the history of Townsville, with all of the local museums and historical clubs featuring their own stands. We arrived in just enough time to partake in a fascinating guided tour of the nearby cemetery. We learned about the custom for using red wax on the tomb stones to colour the lettering, the controversy that surrounded the mass burial of orphan (and therefore most likely bastard) children in the Christian section of the graveyard, not to mention seeing the resting place that belongs to one of the ringleaders of the great Townsville jetty conflict. Riveting. No really, it actually was quite interesting.

Tour of the graveyard.

In another park area, a short walk away, the National Trust Heritage precinct was holding an open day, whereby we got complementary entry into the two examples of early local homes they have on display. One would have been a veritable mansion in its day, and even now would make a comfortable, albeit compact family home. The other started life as a one room miners cottage, and has been extended over the years to feature 3 rooms, in which to house a family of four. Even when the family who lived here was eventually able to afford a wood burning stove to replace an open fire for cooking over, the stove had to remain outdoors, to lessen the fire risk inside the wooden structure.

Also in the grounds of the heritage centre was several stalls trading antiques and old wares, whilst down the street in the grounds of the church was a small fete. By the time we had browsed through all of the fun, it was too late for the second market that we had originally been heading for. Instead, we took a drive down the Strand, which is a waterfront area, looking across to Magnetic Island, and lined with cafes, restaurants and holiday apartments. As we drove along, it was the case that we nearly broke our necks as we cruised past a hitherto unknown about gelateria. Gelato is our newly acquired love, and we will be sure to return to try the delights that await us here. We wanted to take the dogs for a bit of a walk first though.

Promenading with the babies.

Being overcast today, the whole area probably wasn’t at its prettiest, but it was still nice to take a promenade along the foreshore with the dogs. They weren’t allowed on the beach, and due to the occurrence of stingers in the area, we wouldn’t have entered the chilly looking water anyway. There was a nice wide expanse of grass between the beach and the road for them to have a comfortable wander along instead.

With them exercised, it was time for us to return to the previously located gelateria to indulge ourselves in our new found passion. Treats of icy goodness, in the form of fresh made gelato. Produced here, on site every day, it was indelibly and unanimously declared to be the best we’ve had the pleasure of trying thus far.

New found passion. This is the life.

Enjoying our cups of gelato as we lounged by the foreshore, watching as passers by ambled their own paths, we considered that this is how life really ought to be. No need to rush. No need to complain. Just a serene series of interesting and ever changing vignettes of fun, day after day.

Back at the van, our relaxation continued, as we perused the weekend tabloids and caught up on the news of the wider world. In my relaxed, reflective state, I didn’t even allow myself to get frustrated at the fickle, unreliable Internet signal which caused all manner of technical issues as we tried to make a couple of Skype video calls to the folks back home. Although by that stage, a liberal dose of rum may have been partly responsible for helping me keep my cool.

Just a reminder too, if you want to see more photos of me, Bec, the dogs or just the places we’ve been, head on over to Flikr and check us out. Click here, or on the photo that appears at the bottom of our home page.

Until next time, stay safe, have fun and don’t forget to write.

The gremlins were bountiful last night. Having clicked the ‘publish’ button, and sent yesterdays entry off into the blogosphere, we jumped into bed to watch a film. Before starting the movie, Bec implored that I read our days activities to her. As I started to read, I noticed that it sounded like it had been proof read by a monkey. I was unimpressed with my efforts and began to sulk about how I need to make sure I read over it properly in future. The updated (and hopefully literate) version can be read here: Day 32: Finding Nemo.

Then, with the intention of laying down to watch a movie foremost in our minds, our media player decided to call it quits. It didn’t matter what we did, it just wouldn’t read any of the files off of our main hard drive. In an effort to rectify it, I quickly copied our chosen movie onto a USB drive, only for the file to remain resolutely unplayable. By now, in a mood that was worsening by the minute, I plugged in our second hard drive. Mercifully, the films on that seemed to load and play without an issue. By this point in time I was beginning to think that maybe the problem was with the hard drive rather than the media player, so I copied our wanton movie to the working hard drive. My temper escalated exponentially when that hard drive then failed to boot up as well.

I was at my wits end, and anyone within a stones throw of our van, which would pretty much encompass the entire park, probably would have been well aware of it, such was my unhelpful bellowing. In a last ditch attempt to get the movies to play, after listening to some advice from Bec, courtesy of an Internet chat room, I deleted the one file that we were trying to watch. Surprise, surprise, an hour and a half after we sat down, the media player and all of the attached hard drives booted up and worked without a drama. It would seem that we had one corrupt file, which just happened to be the movie we wanted to watch. Trying to play it crashed the whole system. I’m blaming the whole fiasco on Bec, since it was her turn to choose a movie.

As late as it was by this stage, I was too hyped up to sleep, so we put a movie (a different one than originally planned) on anyway. It was well after 2:00AM by the time we finally switched the lights off, and drifted off to sleep. So much for an easy, relaxing evening.

Come morning, all I can say is, thankfully we had an easy day planned for today. Another day of remaining at the caravan park, getting some of the housework done. While Bec tidied up inside, I headed outside to have a look at the fridge wiring. I won’t get into the specifics of the latest issue that I came across, but in short, the wiring from the front of the van to the fridge is woefully inadequate to handle the current expected of it. Suffice to say, the result is a voltage at the fridge that is too low to activate my fancy new automatic switch. Thankfully I discovered this before going to the effort of wiring it in, but short of rewiring the van (which is not a job I am confident in doing whilst we’re on the road), I’m right back at square one.

So in theory, our fridge ought to work on mains power and gas, but when plugged into ‘The Beast’, it will be erratic at best. The result of this is that when we travel, it will warm up somewhat, and then need extra time to cool down when we change over the power source. Hence the reason we have been seeing elevated temperatures when pulling up after a day of driving. Secondly, with no cutoff switch between the fridge and the battery, we have to be sure not to flatten the battery. Whilst it runs off an auxiliary battery, so there is no chance of not being able to turn the ignition of ‘The Beast’ over, it can prove fatal to the battery if it is repeatedly drained of power. Not something I relish the thought of, given a new battery is in the vicinity of $500.

So with our fridge issues no closer to being solved, I turned my attention to giving ‘The Beast’ a good going over with the vacuum. There is no end to the places a dog hair can manage to weasel itself, so it’s a big job trying to hoover as much up as possible.

With our chores done, the dogs let us know that they thought it was well and truly time for them to get a bit of our attention. So we hooked them up, and went for a walk. We were going to head out through the back of the park towards the river, via a gate we’d found the other day. As we went to unlatch it, the woman sitting primly beneath the awning of the van adjacent took time out of her phone call to inform us that it was in fact a private gate. In the interest of continuing harmony within the park, I decided not to tell her what I thought about her notion that this particular gate was her very own private property. Instead, we politely apologised to have so inconvenienced her, and then used the other gate at the opposite end of the park.

Back from our stroll, and with the heavens about to open in an incessant drizzle that would ensure that it was just damp enough outside to make it miserable, we braved the fickleness of the media player, to enjoy another movie. Thankfully, the issues with the movie box seem to have been relegated to history, as it fired up first time for us.

Following the movie, I prepared a hearty dinner for us, carefully setting the table and serving up a delightful meal. As we sat down to eat, I retrieved the couple of bottles of ginger beer I had put in the freezer before the movie, in an effort to quickly chill them. It would appear that there is nothing wrong with the freezing function of the fridge, as both bottles were well and truly cold. So much so, the contents had already begun to solidify into icicles within the bottles, something I wasn’t aware of until I opened the second one with a resounding pop. The pop was quickly followed by a fizzle and a whoosh, as ginger beer spurted upward. I didn’t want to look, but I knew it was bad when a cold, sticky drizzle of ginger beer rain started to drip back down from the ceiling.

Until next time, stay safe, have fun and don’t forget to write.