The Overlanders Way

We left Mount Isa in the morning, william with a bit of a hangover from the rodeo, and headed towards the coast. (about 900kms away) Found out that Crocodile Dundee's pub was a detour of 200kms off our journey so decided to go and pay it a visit. So off to McKinley we head, nothing but long straight roads and flat land again. Got to McKinley in good time as there was hardly any traffic on the roads. The only thing there is the walkabout creek pub and a few houses. Very Outback! Glad we went though. Its got lots of photos of the filming taking place at the pub inside. After we took some photos we headed back to the overlanders way to drive to Julie Creek (the next town). About 20kms from Julie Creeks william heard an unuasual sound from the van. We had a puncture and were losing daylight fast!!! He managed to get it changed just before the sun had completly set and we decied to stay in Julie Creek for the night instead of going on to the next rest area so we could get to a garage on the morning to replace the flat tyre. Stayed in the worst caravan park over-run by beasties of all sorts!! No Like it!

Up early the next day and away from the park asap, we got the tyre replaced so all good. Back on the road towards the next town of Richmond, famous for dinosaurs. Richmond is a very good place to go fossicking being the 'fossil capital of Austrlia' but we decided to give it a miss and kept on going to Hughenden. It was a nice wee town. There was a national park only 70km North of the town which is descirbed as the small grand canyon of Australia so we thought we go and stay there for the night.

The drive was on unsealed road but it was ok just a little bumpy! The camp ground was very basic but it was all good for one night. William got up during the night needing the toilet, torch in hand he ventured out into the darkness only to discover a scorpion!!!! Mental!!! The next day we were up early and headed on a bush walk down into the gorge. The scenery was spectacular. Once down at the bottom there is a huge pyramid shape which is the rock face of the gorge side. It's amazing. The colours of the rocks were like we had never seen before. The climb back up almost killed me but it was worth it.

The next couple of days we drove to Charters Towers, nice looking plce, then onto Townsville. We made it back to the coast in one piece having throughly enjoyed the Queensland outback and meeting lots of friendly peeps.