Magnetic Island

Our day on Magnetic Island was great, we hired a car for the day, drove out to Horseshoe Bay

& had lunch headed back towards Picnic Bay which is where the ferry's used to land 30 years ago (no wonder I did not now the new jetty). The ferry ride was fun both ways.

Ian enjoying a beach on Magnetic Island

Fig trees on the beach front at Picnic Point, quite a lovely mall but no shops open other than 

the pub.

We found this on Magnetic Island October 1883

Our friend kept watch on his area

Yacht at anchor in bay

Small bay from walking track

More Red Tailed Black cockatoo's feed 

Ian with the hire car (not a mini moke but a Topples )

Karumba to Townsville part 2

The roads in QLD have been interestingly bad, on the way to Charters Towers we where bounched about it may have been straight but not smooth. we have come accross some large loads on these roads, Ian notice a lot of chatter on the CB re a wide load going west we are going east, after a quick word with the lead car we pulled up just before a bridge & bend. The load was 2 x 6m (2 large trucks 6 meters wide) we had others that day 4 mt wide 2 lead cars but 6 meters was getting big. 

A few of the road to Charters Towers

Hughenden, On our drive from Richmond to Charters we stopped at Hughenden to see another Dinosaur (Muttaburraaurs) he is 2 dinosaurs part found in Muttaburra & part just outside Hughenden, he is very local, large & complete for bones. The display here was excellent, lots of mineral rocks & various fossil bones. We had lunch at the Holden Cafe, nice lunch. 

Charters Towers was a quite place, we went to the look out, to view the country around but the smoke & dust made  it hard to see the area.

The gold battery was very interesting, bits of old machinery, inside the machinery was still in place all the bricks in the building where made on the site by the workers, the battery was working up to the mid 1980's & was preserved by the QLD. Charters had quite a lot of gold & some small scale mining is still going on. The building a beautifull and old. 

Parts of the old engine @ the Battery (crusher)

The Charters Towers Telegraph & Post Office

Bunkers for storing amumnion in WW11

Townsville, we stayed here for a week, the first thing to get done was the fridge in the van, it stop working on AC in Charters Towers. We meet up with Gavin Hall and had lunch (he worked for TR p to 3 years ago) We went to the RAAF Museum which was quite interesting, the Maratime Musuem was great lots to look at, with a good display about the women in the WW11 and the effects on Townsville as a whole. Lots of interesting & different displays.
We went to the Strand to relax it is quite a nice place to walk, 2 1/2 km of beach front lots of cafes. Did a quite a bit of relaxing. The park was nice but at the end of the RAAF base with choppers going till late at night & trucks going to a building site. I did some sewing cut out my quilt & lots of harts to sew.

Plane at the RAAF base

A view of the Strand in Townsville

Well that is all for now I will tell you all about Magnetic Island and more on the next installment of our travels.

Karumba to Townsville

Hear we are again, with more of our travels. 

We left Karumba with our freezer full of fish & prawns, sipped down the highway with lunch at the Burke & Wills Road House. A very over priced place that is. Arrived in Cloncurry mid afternoon with coffee at our favorite coffee place there and returned to the same caravan park as before for just one night. Next day we headed for Townsville. We stopped for coffee in Julia Creek not much there. Next stopped was Richmond with a visit to the Fossil Centre, this was very interesting with the complete fossil of a dinosaur.

Cloncurry to Karumba

Well here we are again, I am trying to catch up on the blog thing.

Whilst in Cloncurry we tried to visit the Ernest Henry Copper Mine  but the tour needed 10 people & we were only 2 so it did not run, on the Friday Mike Butcher from TR in Perth passed through going west, they stayed at the same park as us so we had a great evening chatting with them.

On Monday 14 th we left Cloncurry for Karumba & got as far as 85km north when the truck decided that really it prefered the town of Cloncurry. There we are no phones at a way side stop, Ian had to flag down a vehicle going south and ask him to call in on our friendly tow truck driver from the Monday before. He came out to collect us & took us back to the same park & the truck to the same garage. The truck (snowflake) had no power steering as a clamp came of a pipe & all the fluid went on the road. RACV total care to the rescue again 2 nights free. Tuesday night we where chatting to Murray re his motor home, on having drinks later he came Canberra & was ex navy. I asked him Do you know Dianne & Richard? Yes I was Richard's best man. It is amazing who you meet on the road. Come Wednesday morning we up stakes again to see if we could get passed 85km north of Cloncurry.

We passed Quamby pub, had a free camp at Bang Bang camp spot & duely arrived in Karumba the next day.
Whilst in Karumba we went to the Barramundi Discovery Centre, Sunset Cruise on the river & drove around a bit. Purchased Barramundi & King Salmon for the freezer as it was cheeper than a fishing trip (you know what you are getting) sat at the Sunset Tavern & watched the sunset.

Croydon Hotel in FN QLD. we went on the Gulflander what a day left Normanton @ 8.30am got to Croydon @ about 1.45pm had lunch & took photo's then onto the bus back @ 3.30pm what a long day but what a great day we had.

train line into the distance, no grass to look at due to the floods early in the year, killed all the grass. now there is no feed for the cattle.

Crossing the Norman River in the Gulflander

The motor rail called the Gulflander

Ian feeding the Barramundi @ the discovery centre

Ian enjoying a beer & watching the sunset @ Karumba

Red tailed black cockatoo in the park @ Karumba

Osprey feeding on the sunset cruise

Sunset from the Sunset Tavern in Karumba

O" this is us trying to leave Cloncurry, but we did leave & had a great time going north. We return to Cloncurry stayed 1 night & then headed EAST. I will tell you more of that in the next issue of Dryden's Travels. 

Winton to Cloncurry

Hi All,

Pictures of wildlife & places we went to around Winton & Cloncurry as follows for you to look at.

Goanna that posed for photograph on the way to Opalton

Ian putting the bone puzzle together

Spinafex Pigon at Opalton

The drive to Winton was uneventfull. Whilst in Winton we visited Opalton, Lark Quarry & The Age of Dinosaures. Did not bother with the Matilda Centre as just more old stuff.

Lark Quarry was just the most interesting

 set of footprints I have ever seen. After doing the guided tour we had a picnic lunch then went for a walk around the park. The drive out was 

110km of gravel road but well worth the drive. 

footprints in the rock

walking track with animal track crossing

Opalton again was all gravel road, with dry creek crossing, lots of cattle grids & an air strip across the road. The local wild life photo ops wer

e great. Opalton was a strange place, very hot dry and a few old blokes working their mines, hoping to

 make a fortune. We went fossicking but did not make a big find. You have to dig down very deep for the boulder & matrix opal but we had fun anyway.

Opalton Store

Age of Dinosaurs tour was on top of a mesa (flat top hill) here we got to touch real bones that are millions of years old. Just the most am

azing thing to do, hold a dinosaur bone that was part of such a big creature, we watch how they find, document, clean & display these artfacts. 

We are always washing & cleaning the van, truck as the dust is allways around. So after a few days we went onto Cloncurry for more adventures. On the way went had lunch @ the Blue Heller Pub in Kynuna, spoke with a few travellers & photograph the bird life. Drove straight through McKinlay as we decided to make a day trip for lunch later in the week.

As we got to 35km out of Cloncurry the truck stopped that right STOPPED, so we had to get the RACV (RACQ) to tow us in. Ian is not happy with this. It turned out that we had run out of fuel (we worked on a 254ltr tank only to find out the hard wa

y that it is only 200ltrs) Not happy with Brown Davis at this point as all our problems with the truck have been caused by Brown Davis. Also we received a chip in the windscreen.

us n the tow truck to Cloncurry

Cloncurry, went to rideing the bikes, visited the Mary Kathleen 

museum, this was full of mineral rock samples. Visited the Burke & Wills

 campsite 109, such a pretty creek Corella Creek, meet a bloke riding his push bike round the top of Aus (mad). John Flynn gallery & the Mary Kathleen Ruins, the town streets are all still there but no houses or shops. We did do the day trip to McKinlay to have lunch at the Walkabout Creek Hotel but it does not serve lunch or Gin.  After a week we headed of to Normanton, more about next post.  

Mary Kathleen ruins

Walkabout Creek Pub