Back to Darwin

We left Brissie and headed north up the coast to Rockhampton.

From there we went west through Emerald to Barcaldine.

On the drive through one of the ranges we stopped off to check out the view.

We hit Barcadine and went to see the Tree of Knowledge. It was poisoned some years ago but the tree itself has been preserved and remains as part of a monument.

Barcaldine itself is also noteworthy for having six pubs in a 200 metre length of street!

Longreach - we decided to stay there for a couple of nights and to visit the QANTAS museum and the Stockman's Hall of Fame.

I will have to edit this picture a little, but I think it has the makings of a decent image. What do you think?

After a few hours driving we arrived at McKinley where they have the pub from the first Crocodile Dundee movie installed on site. Yeah - we stayed the night and had a few beers!

We drove on again, this time going through Cloncurry (holder of the title of the hottest temperature ever recorded in Australia) and headed north through the Burke & Wills Roadhouse and Gregory Downs and on to Lawn Hill National Park.

Wow! Lawn Hill was a special place indeed and we stayed there for four days, walking through the park and canoeing up the gorge.

In the outer reaches of the park the spinifex was everywhere.

But the gorge was, well, gorgeous!

We headed up to "Harry's Hill" for sunset while sipping a wine and nibbling cheese and biccies. Magic views!

Termite mounds . .

An old meteorite crater. . .

From Lawn Hill we headed south to Camooweal and then across the Barkly Highway to the Barkly Homestead Roadhouse as people advised we would not get the van through the Savannah Way - it is in disrepair.

Travelled up the Tablelands Highway to Cape Crawford and stayed at the Heartbreak Hotel.

Drove across the Carpentaria Highway to Daly Waters and spent the night at the pub,

North from there to Katherine.,

Then Darwin via Mayse's at Pine Creek and the Adelaide River pub.

Heading back to Darwin

Well, after visiting my brothers (one from the UK and one from Brisbane) down in Brissie for the past few weeks we are heading north west to Darwin. Karen has picked up a role with the Red Cross and I will be looking for work in the area.

We stayed some of the time in Brissie at the home of friends (thanks Joan and Rob) and although we found SE QLD to be damned cold we enjoyed our stay there.

Here is a pic of all three of the brothers with my son James - the royal family would never allow this to occur though - all four McDermott tadgers in one place!  What a loss to the world if a terrorist had gained word of this!

The reprobates are, from left to right as you view the pic, me (Joe), Fint, James (the brother) and James (the son).

I had to post this picture too - yes, in Brissie they sell firewood at $3 a piece!

While we were there we took Fint away for a few days down to Evans Head in NSW. It was cool enough, but the sun shone and the days were glorious and we had a ball.

This is Fint relaxing at our camp near the river.

We spotted a Falcon XR8 with his initials too - I think he'd have driven it away quite happily.  :)

Karen and Fint next to the Richmond river at Evans Head.

And some beach photos!

Fint and I decided to walk to the next headland.

Time to postpone the rest of the trip

We seem to be spending a heap of money on the Patrol (performance chip, new exhaust and other small things like the turbo control vacuum lines failing) as well as the fact that we have covered over 22,000 klms already and we have "done" less than half the country and the funds are running out fast.

So we have decided to seek employment and see about doing the other half of the country in a year or two (or five) if we still want to.

I will be osting stuff on this blog, but we will be calling a halt to the travels for a while.

Cape York - Weipa

Weipa. Now a visit to a mining town is probably not on everyone's agenda, but it suited us so we took the road across the Bauhinia Downs Station (and excellent road it was too) and called into the town.

We were expecting something a little bigger, but it offers most things (including "cheap" fuel at around $1.65 a litre) and is a very civilised stopover.

There is just the one place to camp so that's where we went. This was the sunset from the beach where we were camped.

Looking down the beach

I couldn't resist just one more picture of the sunset! We had sunsets like this every night - just glorious.

While we were there we took a tour of the mine. Lots of people recommend it, but apart from being awed by the sheer scale of the operation I wasn't that impressed.

This pic shows the smoke from the burning off work they do when they clear the land - we took this photo from the beach at our camp site. It is a lot worse than it looks on this!

On the mine tour we learned that they skim off the topsoil then they skim off the 3 to 4 metre layer of bauxite before slapping the topsoil back on with a heap of tree seedlings to make it pretty again. Then they move to the next spot.

The trucks are big though!

This was a mine site - the bauxite is gone and they are about to put the topsoil back.

I told you it was boring didn't I?

We headed south then, back to Cairns to get our Patrol fixed. I was running like a dog after the Steinbauer chip was fitted.

On the way we passed through a town named after out little girl!

It isn't a big place, but it was pretty enough,