Charters Towers to Emerald

Wednesday, 23 October 2024

With over 5,000 kilometres recorded on the trip metre since we left home, we were on the road again today planning to add another 477 kilometres to that total as we head for Emerald via Clermont.

But before we left Bernie re-packed our pillows in the duffle bag we’ve been packing them in. What I forgot to mention though is that when I unpacked them on Monday night, I took Bernie’s pillow out and then on top of my pillow was sitting a cockroach. Ugh, is that the same one that I thought I saw in my suitcase a couple of weeks ago? Did I flick into the duffle, and it’s been there ever since? Hopefully it has not been in our pillow bag for two weeks. Needless to say, I changed the pillowcases.

When we were at Woolies yesterday, I managed to purchase a box of Weeties to up my breakfast game. With Nutrigrain at 9.6 grams of sugar per serve and Weeties at just 0.1 grams of sugar per serve it’s a much better option. I just don’t really like cereal much anymore but it’s the easiest option on the road. The Weeties were OK, I really didn’t miss having the sugar.

After breakfast the washing up. The Hillview Motel has excelled with washing up amenities. First it is a room that has a kitchenette, so we’ve had a basin the bathroom and a sink in the kitchenette which is always better than washing up in the basin. When we arrived on Monday on the sink, we had a new Chux and a tea towel sealed in a plastic bag. Nice, you feel like you’re actually washing up with a clean cloth and towel. This should be a mandatory minimum requirement if you’re going to supply a cloth and towel, but I have to say that some cloths have been questionable and a couple we’ve chosen not use, we’ve used our own. And one cloth and towel would have been fine for a two-night stay, but they replaced them with fresh ones yesterday! How good is that?

Anyhow, after breakfast, washing up and re-packing we were off just before 8.00am. Siri directed us on a circuitous route out of Charters Towers that too us via the sale yards and then onto the Great Inland Way/Gregory Developmental Road heading towards Emeral. Just as Bernie was accelerating up to 100/kph two small kangaroos jumped across the road. Fortunately, they were far enough ahead of us to make it comfortably. Still a bit disconcerting though to see wildlife still about at 8.00am in the morning.

A little further out of town we saw some sheep in a paddock on the left, which was noteworthy only because we haven’t seen sheep for 1000s of Ks. Right across the gulf country there has only been cattle. We also noted that the landscape to the south of Charters Towers is hillier than what we observed driving in from the north on Monday.

We overtook a van heading south but there was little traffic about. We’d been on the road for about an hour when we spied our first Rest Area. Fortunately, one with the lot: parking, picnic shelter and toilets because we all wanted to go even though we were only an hour out of Charters Towers! Today there were no frogs in the bowls BUT Cathy encountered a couple who had made their home in the lever of the water pump for the eco toilet.

I took over driving the truck for a spell and boy do I know how to pick the sections where I volunteer to drive! We encountered a long, long stretch of roadworks – I reckon nearly 10 kilometres? – that I had to negotiate. Blimey, 100, 80, 60 stop at the red light, proceed at 40, 60, 80 then do it all again! In one section the tip trucks were tipping gravel onto the the works side of the road, but they were spilling alarmingly close (I thought) to the area between the works and the bollards on the side of the road where I was supposed to be driving through. I was relieved to make it through without incident.

Despite passing several yellow stock signs this morning we didn’t encounter many cows on the road. Only one live one that we saw and very sadly a calf that had some to grief. Considering the number of cows there have been in the long paddock it’s surprising that the roadkill is predominantly wildlife and not cattle. We also spotted yet another caravan heading north.

We arrived at Belyando Crossing and pulled in for another leg stretch, toilet stop and snack. Cathy and I had to hike out the back to the loos discovering that the Ladies toilets have been painted an alarming shade of purple. The toilet paper supply was a bit hit and miss with Cathy choosing the cubicle without and me getting lucky to be in the cubicle with paper still on the holder. Bernie was frustrated that there was no Coke No Sugar in the fridge, so he purchased a couple of dim sims instead.

With Bernie back at the wheel, we crossed the Belyando River and found signs on the other side telling us that we had arrived in the Central Highlands/Mackay Region of Queensland. So far on this trip we have been pleasantly surprised at how clean the roads are but today we noticed that there were a lot of dumped tyres on the side of the road.

This section of the Gregory Developmental Road was incredibly BUMPY!! I joked to Bernie that the only thing developmental about the road is the development of lumps and bumps and undulations that had us bouncing around. Some sections had ‘Rough Surface 80’ but we couldn’t really notice that these sections were any rougher than the rest of it, ha, ha.

We saw a second and then a third van heading north. There haven’t been as many passing us this morning as we saw between Undara and Charters Towers, but they are certainly about, and they are travelling towards FNQ. We were still about 100 Ks out of Clermont when we found ourselves driving along a burnt section. Once again, we wondered if it was a controlled burn to reduce fuel on the roadside or an accidental burn. Whichever it was it was still smoldering, and it smelled smoky. Again, this morning we were seeing cotton bolls littering the roadside especially around Golden Gully and a fourth van off to the north and one heading south with us. Obviously, it’s not uncommon for them to be about even as the wet season approaches so I probably should stop counting them!

We stopped for another leg stretch when we were still about 90 Ks out of Clermont. Just a quick stop, just enough to earn a stand hour, ha, ha. As we travelled closer to Clermont there were more fields showing evidence of agriculture. Most of the fields appeared to have been harvested. Some looked like wheat stubble but others looked different from that. Maybe cotton had been harvested from those? With all the cotton bolls on the roadside there must be cotton being grown somewhere not too far away? Near Mazeppa NP we spotted a Daddy emu with his brood of five chicks on the roadside and thankfully that is where they stayed.

We could see what looked like a bushfire in the distance, maybe in the Blair Athol State Forest? I snoozed, I chewed some gum to try to stay awake. We encountered some more roadwork about 35 Ks before Clermont. We passed a depot filled with concrete culverts waiting to be installed. We’ve still been seeing floodways signs, so we supposed installing culverts under the road surface helps with water dispersal when the weather gets wetter?

About 20 kilometres from Clermont, we spied a conveyor belt beside the road, and it seemed to run to the Clermont open cut coal mine that is only about 13 Kilometeres out of Clermont. That had us wondering if the ‘smoke’ we thought we saw is steam from the cooling tower of a coal fired power station? If I wanted to know badly enough I could Google that I suppose.

We drove into Clermont for lunch, buying sandwiches at the Bluemac Bakehouse and eating them in Rose Harris Park. After lunch we hunted down the ‘Piano up a Tree’ a replica of a piano that was deposited 32 feet high in a tree in the 1916 floods.

With our quirky photos taken we headed back to the Great Inland Way. Just out of town we literally saw grass growing. Well, I saw a crop growing, but Bernie spotted the sign that said it was Indian Wells Hay that was growing. That sounds like some mighty fancy hay that some cows will be eating??

As we drove, we could see the jagged peaks of the Peak Range National Park to the east but there just wasn’t anywhere to pull over to take a photo. Finally, when were only about 50 Kilometres out of Emerald there was a Scenic Lookout sign. We pulled over beside a paddock filled with the dead, straggly remains of some sort of crop. Hmmn, it’s a bit hard to see the mountains over the top of whatever is in the paddock. I stood on the conveniently located picnic seat to gain some height, and the others stood on the directional marker. On the whole we were bemused about the location of the lookout.

We arrived in Emerald where we are once again south of the Tropic of Capricorn and officially no longer in the tropics?? It’s still hot and humid though! We made out way to the Emerald Park Motel and checked in. The rooms are clean and well appointed with a bed, table with two chairs, a desk and chair, a kitchenette and bathroom. And that would have been a perfect amount of furniture but at some stage someone has decided that the room needs a big arse sofa as well. A recliner sofa at that. Seriously it’s at right angles to the TV anyway so how does that even enhance the room? Our room has a bed head fixed to the wall and the symmetry must have been just right when it was installed. To accommodate said big arse sofa the bed now sits off centre with the bed head. That’s weird. In Cathy and Steve’s room the bed and sofa are so close together that if they flick out the leg rest it touches the side of the bed. Anyway, furniture oversupply aside the room is very nice.

No pool at this motel so we headed over to the Visitor Information Centre where we photographed the Big Easel featuring a huge rendering of (one of) Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ paintings. We popped inside where Barry helped us with a guide to Carnarvon Gorge and some information about Emerald’s 42-hectare Botanic Garden located on the banks of the Nagoa River.

Since we couldn’t swim, we drove out to the gardens via the BP where we topped off the tank with Premium Diesel. That’s the first Premium Diesel the truck has had for a while! We parked at the windmill then walked the path that took us past the Federation Pillars. There are ten pillars each representing a decade of Emerald’s history between 1901 and 2001.

We continued past the sculpture of some emus running the pants off a kangaroo inspired by the lyrics of John Williamson’s ‘Old Man Emu’ song. The artwork’s title is ‘We Can’t Fly! But … We’re Telling You’ was created by local artist Derek Hedgcock and installed in the gardens in 2021. There was no shortage of real birds either with a couple of cheeky kookaburras laughing at us from a nearby tree.

We walked around the lake where we spotted a spoonbill. Initially it looked just like another one of the bin chickens (ibis) but then it turned side on, and we could see it’s crazy spoon-shaped bill. Cool. Wandering past the ‘Marbles in the Park’ we entered the Rainforest section of the gardens. On the plus side, the rainforest was a couple of degrees cooler. On the negative side, it is inhabited by hundreds of noisy, smelly bats!

Arriving back at the vehicles we headed off to the Woolies to do some serious shopping. To date it’s mostly been about fruit, cereal, milk and yoghurt for self catered breakfasts. Heading into Carnavon Gorge tomorrow we needed to shop for meals – all meals – for the next three days. We picked up ingredients to make spaghetti bolognese and cook up a BBQ. Cathy and Steve shopped for lunch ingredients and a stir-fry for one night. I’m sure we won’t starve … and it will make a change from pub food.

When we checked in Shamali’s Café & Restaurant was recommended to us so that was where we headed for dinner tonight. Bernie and Steve enjoyed the lamb curry, Cathy a pizza and I had some delicious salmon with sweet potato mash and greens.

After the ‘dancing road’ today my Exercise Ring was close to being closed. Leaving the restaurant I needed five more minutes. Bernie suggested that we walk along to Egerton Street to make sure I reached my 30-minute goal. We had a lovely walk BUT my stupid watch refused to record the exercise and remained stuck on 25 minutes. So annoying. I don’t know why it does this but occasionally it seems to stall on recording exercise minutes??