Well it is on the way and Roderick and Jodelle are in the process of moving house.

This is the start of our longer trip for the year the plan is to head to South Australia via the Oodnadatta Track and Lake Eyre.

We didn't get off to the best of starts. The start battery was flat and the car wouldn't start. We managed to jump start it with a combination of the small lithium battery I carry for this event and the house batteries.

The Silo in Bilo was pretty busy - all the powered spots were taken.

It was good to spend time playing with Clara. She seems to have grown even though it is not that long since we have seen them. That chocolate biscuit was finger lickin good. We managed to do some odd jobs to help with the move.

That forecast rain is here. We have spent a wet night at the free camp overlooking Virgin Rock at Springsure.

While it is not raining in Longreach it was pretty wet last night. The cheap campsite on the banks of the Thomson River out of town has been closed. The already heavily booked caravan parks in town are now bursting at the seams. At our park there are vans parked on the street with power leads running across the footpath. There is no flooding just lots of mud.

The rail line heading north west of Longreach.

We couldn't get into the Stockmans Hall of fame today so will have a look tomorrow morning before we head up to Winton.

This meant that I could have a look at the QANTAS museum this afternoon. The Catalina outside the main hanger. I didn't realise that these aircraft were doing 20 and 30 hour non-stop flights during the end of World War II.

Once again Wiki Camps has come up trump and allowed us to find this waterhole.

Not only could we visit the water hole we could camp nearby - and it was free.

There is a lot of aboriginal art work around the waterhole. Apparently it was an important meeting place. The water hole has filled up with sand and gravel and is no longer a permanent water source. The signage suggests that the cause is the introduction of hoofed animals the increase erosion. I wonder also if the aborigines used to maintain it as well.

View from top of the jump up and the stream that feeds the water hole. Looking towards the main road from Winton to Kyuna.

We are in Banjo Paterson territory now. This is Combo waterhole on the Diamantina River. Banjo was here on Dagworth Station when he wrote the words to Waltzing Matilda while flirting with Christina Macpherson at the same time stringing along his fiancé Sarah Riley for 8 years.

The Combo Water Hole is part of a series channels in the Diamantina River. The holding capacity of the water hole was extended on the 1800's by the owners of Dagworth Station. They constructed a series of stone overshoots (weirs) to increase the water lever in Combo Water Hole.

Our old house in Meldrum St. Cloncurry is still standing and is for sale. 🙂

No photos but did have a chat in the mains street with a couple of fellow explorer owners.

We had purchased the Cloncurry Trails booklet and were keen to explore a few of the out of the road places between Cloncurry and Mt Isa.

This is Kuridala from on top of one of the spoil piles. Kuridala was a mine but more prominently a smelter for a lot of smaller mines in the district.

When the smelter closed down most of the machinery was sold off. This is the largest piece of the smelter left. I am not sure what part of the process it was but it is right next to the slag heap.

The slag heap.

You can even see the shape of the crucible in these pieces of slag.

One of the lonely graves in the Kuridala Cemetery. While there are a lot of graves without headstones it was interesting that a lot of the people who died here are men killed in industrial accidents as opposed to a lot of other older cemeteries where it is younger women and children.

The Cloncurry River at Malbon.

White Chested Herons on the Cloncurry River.