We are sad as we know we are heading back – all good things
must come to an end, and for the first time in the trip we will be doubling
over places we have been through on the front end of the trip. So now we leave Kings Canyon to Alice Springs
– A Town Like Alice. We got in quite
early and spent the day checking it out, nice enough, but not enough for us to
want to stay for any real length of time so off we go and begin the trek
through Tennant Creek and Barkley Station heading for Cammoweal where we stop
for the night after a big drive.
It is instantly noticeable the difference in the road as you
hit Queensland again, no longer are the roads wide, well maintained and its sad
to think our home State seems to have the worst roads, and the most agro of
truck drivers, we have travelled now thousands of kilometres without any
issues, but you hit Queensland and the driving is hard. While we had to go through Mt Isa and
Cloncurry again, we decided to take another route home so we were not going
over too much of the same territory again.
We took the Julia Creek turn off to head to Hughenden which is a nice
town, the heat is instantly noticeable – we didn’t do the dinosaur museums here,
but if you missed out in Winton this would be another good place to see
them. We were pretty tired after a few
days of big driving so took a cabin here and it was lovely, in fact the caravan
park was really nice and we enjoyed it here recuperating.
Now off to Charters Towers where we had a lovely few days,
and while CT is and was a major Gold centre, there is no public fossicking here
and to be honest, no one wants to answer the question when you ask if there are
any around, we would have loved to have done some here, but it is a lovely
town, pretty up market, nice shops and good tourist walks, shops etc.
I am probably not as upbeat now, we feel like we are nearing
the end and of course the Queensland country side is just so plain after WA, SA
and NT, and while they are dry and baron as well Queensland just doesn’t seem
to have a lot going for it – maybe its just us now.
After Charters Towers, we head to Emerald where we thought
we would get some fossicking in, Emerald is a big town and while it has all the
services you need we didn’t feel it was the right place for us, so we headed to
Sapphire.
We loved Sapphire, it really is a fantastic place it feels
like you have gone back 100 years, but it is pretty, friendly, and quaint. Wanting to know more about sapphire
fossicking we took a tag along tour, which was fantastic, and we got the bug
for this, we ended up buying our own willoboughby and took up the art of
sapphire fossicking for a few weeks. We
loved our campsite here as well, and every day, horses, cows, camels, birds
would walk past our site. It’s a great
place and while initially the others in the camp ground where a little
standoffish, once they knew we were here for a while they helped us in our endeavours
of finding sapphires (not to the extent where they would tell you good spots to
go, but helping establish the quality etc of stones found). Everyone was up early here and out doing
their fossicking until about 2pm, then home for a shower – it is dirty work and
then it was an afternoon of drinking and show and tell, we loved it here and
this is a place we will probably go back to regularly – the end of August is a
good time not too hot and definitely no cold weather. I can now say I can dig a grave because there is a lot of digging to be done in the hunt for sapphires.
From Sapphire we went to Rockhampton for a few days, then
onto Gladstone and Tannum Sands, which had a lovely caravan park on the beach
and log fire pits which was nice, it’s a lovely little area. Didn’t really do much here, and we I suppose we
knew it was all coming to an end – had to get back for things that needed to be
done. Our last stop on the way home for
good was Woodgate, a place we had never been to before and just outside of
Childers and Gin Gin so not far from home in the scheme of things (we had not
that long ago done a road trip to 1770 etc so didn’t want to go there again at
this point). If you live in Queensland
and are looking for a perfect beach area then I would say Woodgate is it, very
quiet town, beautiful waters and beach areas and just close enough for day
trips to Bundaberg (which we did again, have not been there in years). Our last week was spent soaking up the sun
and relaxing – very nice.
So home it was as the September school holidays were about
to start, so there would be kids everywhere as well as everything becoming more
expensive.
The Travel Stats:
So how far did we go, how much did it cost?
·
We ended up driving 21,400 kilometers
·
Total Cost of the trip including everything was
$17,461 (that is absolutely everything we spent money on - food, petrol, accommodation, smokes, tours, souvenirs) - but not the price of the camper - so about 80 cents per kilometer - not bad
·
We were away for 14 weeks in total
We sold our camper on Gumtree on our return put it up one
Friday night and it was sold for the price we wanted (not much less than what
we paid for it) by Saturday morning with cash folding in our hands. It was sad to say goodbye to the camper, but
while we loved our trip, I didn’t see us using it much in the future – not that
we wouldn't travel again but maybe in hindsight a Jayco poptop may have been
more comfortable for us and perhaps allowed us to do a bit more free camping - we didn't want to free camp given generally the ground was rocky and we had a soft bottom floor. We did however love the trip and we did enjoy our camper from In2Campers, and the back up service and help we got from Kylie and Troy from In2Campers was fantastic, we got a lot from this experience and using a camper trailer was a fantastic introduction without a large investment. We found we could live on less with less and enjoy life in a totally new and unique way for us, we met lovely people and had a blast as well as we got to see this special country Australia in all its glory and for that I am very happy - we have so much here in our own back yard and it was a gift to be able to see and enjoy it.
I hope you enjoyed my blog about this trip it was great and loved every minute of it, it was a great way to fill in our time while we waited for our new home to be built - we moved in on the 15th December, it didn't cost any more than renting and we had a great time, saw the best of Australia and had a blast, would highly recommend it.
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