30th August – Charleville – 512kms today, 9,707kms to date

We had our second last freeze dried meal, Mexican Chicken, for breakfast at Longreach before heading for Charleville. Another perfect sunny day, not a cloud in the sky. Unfortunately they need rain badly through the whole of western Queensland. The road to Barcaldine was wall to wall road kill mainly kangaroos. This happens a lot during droughts as there tends to be more feed on the road side than in the paddocks.  Colin reckons it should be called the Slaughterhouse Highway.

The countryside is flat and bare with only the occasional cluster of scrubby trees.  The land was cleared by the pastoralists supposedly to increase grass cover, but the complete absence of trees makes it more susceptible to damage during drought and denies any shelter to the stock.  There were other areas that still had trees and they looked in much better condition.

We are staying in a cabin at the Bailey Bar Caravan Park where everything actually works which surprised us greatly as in some of the places we have stayed in a lot of the appliances/features  didn’t work.  A maintenance man appeared to replace the fluorescent tube without us actually reporting it, which was amazing.

This is the Corones Hotel the only pub in Charleville which was open for dinner. It seems that Saturday in Charleville is a slow day and most of the eateries don’t bother opening. We had a couple of great steaks at the Corones served by a rather good looking Chinese waitress.  Colin was so impressed he spilled his chips just to see her clear them up.  We watched the final free practice of the British MotoGP with Marquez at the top of the list.

Corones Hotel

It was a slow day for Colin with the photos so he took this one of the bar in the Corones. They were having a “Disco” night so we beat a hasty retreat before it started.

This is a genuine Queenslander house. There are not many of them around these days and this is a great example.