Quilpie

FRIDAY, 3 JUNE 2016

Paroo River and weir

Water over the road!

Emus over the road

Emus disappearing

Artesian spas

Town sheep

The blue skies disappeared overnight, the rain started about 5.30 am, with the lightning and thunder shortly thereafter.  The red dirt quickly turned to red mud – thank goodness for the black gravel!  We packed up in torrential rain, sorry that we couldn’t stay longer; if we had known what a lovely caravan park this was, we wouldn’t have spent so long in Bourke.  Cunnamulla received 20 mls of rain between 6.00 am and 9.00 am.  We drove to the Visitors’ Centre to undertake the final check of our caravan, just so we had bitumen to stand on and Himself disappeared to change his wet clothes and boots.  (The caravan floor was in urgent need of a wash after this!)

We headed east towards Eulo, with the rain easing slightly.  However, driving conditions didn’t improve any as we were constantly swerving around roadkill.  The local wildlife seemed to enjoy the rain and as well as dead kangaroos we had to be vigilant in spotting severely depressed kangaroos with pronounced suicidal tendencies.  Thank goodness the emus seemed to be much happier!  It was certainly a day for wildlife – apart from thousands of kangaroos and many emus, we were lucky enough to see three eagles.  We also came across a horrible, large, grey and black pig enjoying lunch with some crows on the edge of the road.

Shortly after leaving Eulo, we turned off towards Quilpie and threw Doris TomTom into a frenzy as there was no road according to her data, only a rough dirt track.  This was unlike the good double lane road from Cunnamulla to Eulo, just a single lane but with good shoulders which were still solid.  Traffic was very light, we only passed five vehicles in 127 kms.  Unfortunately, the heavy rain returned and we were frequently having to drive through water over the road, as well as keep an eye out for kangaroos and emus.  Once back on the main Thargomindah/Quilpie road, conditions did improve a bit with the road alternating between two lanes and single lanes.  Showers continued on and off until we were 5 kms from Quilpie, then it bucketed down again.

We are at the Channel Country Caravan Park, which is a small caravan park (thank goodness we had booked) with reverse in sites, good amenities and artesian spas.  We decided to give the spas a miss today, as we would have been wet through by the time we plunged into the water.  Not have reversed parked for many months, we did have a couple of attempts before lining up beside the slab – thank goodness for a slab in this weather with red mud!  After refuelling this afternoon, we did a quick tour of this outback town.