Boodjamulla

Cooling off

I have found my favourite place so far. Its Boodjamulla National Park or known in English as Lawn Hill. This place is in outback Queensland. The last town before this area is Mount Isa, 356km away. 

Exploring the gorge

Postcard sunset in the outback

The drive in is on unsealed road for almost 200km. It is desert country. However, at the end of the day, you get a pristine river running in the gorge. The water is crocodile free. So we are free to jump in and enjoy.

We took the kayaks out and spent a few hours exploring the gorge. We paddled up to the waterfalls and took a cool dip before lunch.

A selfie

TJ taking a dip

I am glad we decided to head here after the unexpected return to Sydney. I would highly recommend this place and make sure you book your campsite. It is very popular and busy.

Dinosaur Capital of Australia

Are we chasing the property dream?

After an unexpected trip back to Sydney for a couple weeks, we were northward-bound again. The change of plan saw us driving 7 to 8 hours a day for 2 days to Winton. This place is famously known as the dinosaur capital of Australia.

The drive took us back to places that we have been 8 months ago. We stopped at Longreach, where 8 months ago, we experienced temperature of about 40C and today, was about 26C. That's outback Australia.

Dinosaur footprints. Large and small

Arno's Wall in Winton. Just junk stuck to a wall!

We set up camp at the North Gregory Hotel, which is a pub/hotel with parking spots for caravans for $10/n. This place comes with showers too. Its the cheapest campsite we could find in town.

The next day, we drove to Lark Quarry National Monument. This is the area where they discovered dinosaur footprints and based on studies by experts, there was a stampede. Thus, the name Dinosaur Stampede.

We are definitely in the outback 

Every Family needs a Farmer

The title above was a common catch-phrase when we were living in Brisbane more than 10 years back. Being city folks, we don't realise where our food comes from and how farmers do the hardyard to produce it.

We were fortunate to meet the S family when we first embarked on our trip. They camped next to us on Fraser Island and invited us to visit their farm if we do pass through. Sure enough 7 months later, we were there, on our way up north to NT.

We had a lovely stay at "Merlwood", a cattle and piggery farm. Its my first time to a piggery. RS took us around the farm and explained the process. Cleaning and looking after 1000 pigs is no easy task and this was scaled down from breeding over 4000 pigs a year ago. The smell do stick on you.

Another downside is the price. Unlike us consumers where we only see price increase in our bacon or pork, pig farmers are subject to price fluctuations. And, according to RS, the price has been on the down for the past couple of years. Not that this was reflected in the supermarkets for us.

Farming is definitely hardwork. There are no weekends or public holidays. You work from sunrise to sunset in all weather conditions.

It was a good experience for me and we want to thank the S family especially RS and the lovely JS who invited us to share their home even though they only met us for 3 days. We hope your trip to Europe in July goes well and the beginning of more trips to come.