Australia  The East Bit   Days 7 and 8 Barrow Creek to Barkly Homestead and Mount Isa 12 & 13 July 2016 

As a general observation traveling through this part of northern Australia is that the locals are truly crazy!

All the way from Erldunda to Mount Isa there are termite mounds, dotted at an increasing frequency along the road side. At some time in the past I assume someone though of a great idea, “Let’s dress up the termite mounds!” There are now 100’s if not 1000’s of mounds dressed in everything from Hoodies, to Bali “Bintang” t-shirts to santa costumes and bras!  It is a great distraction from the white line fever! 🙂

The lasted road sign I have found amusing is one that looks like it is warning of “Car eating cows”!!! You be the judge!! Just maybe it is a warning of possible cows on the road?

Barrow Creek to Barkly Homestead 12 July 2016

We left “Wolfe Creek” without mishap, much to the relief of Deb.

We filled the car at Wycliff just up the highway. Wycliff has as it’s cliam to fame as the self appointed “UFO Capital of Australia”. Complete with statues of little green aliens, stick your head in the hole alien picture ops, alien spacecraft and numerous murals. What a great place to refuel!!  🙂  So hard to leave!!

Next stop was the Devils Marbles. We had a short stroll around the rocks and got a few selfies. To my knowledge it is the only Tourist Attraction in Outback Australia with its own free WiFi installation, no mobile signal, but satellite wifi, no problem!!

Further up the road we stopped in Tennant Creek. A town bustling with people, but sadly most activity was around the courthouse and the Centrelink Office! We had a stroll up and down the street (There was an Ingress Mission that we just had to do!) and then did a bit of top up shopping, before we got back in the car and drove to Three Ways for lunch.

We pulled into the Flynn of the Outback Memorial park and had lunch. We are both enjoying having very tasty wraps for lunch. So much better than anything a roadhouse could put up!

After lunch we took the turn east at Three ways and headed towards Barkly Homestead for the night. Not far down the road we saw a person doing something on the road 400-500m in front of us. Deb slowed right down, it was someone who had lost a load off the back of their ute. We stopped about 50m from them, put our hazard lights on and went down to give them a hand. It was a Jillaroo for Rockhampton Downs Station who had a pallet of chips and twisties on the back of ute, and the plastic wrapping came undone. Yep, boxes everywhere and more than half split open and chip packets were everywhere!! I helped her get it all back into boxes and made sure she was alright before we left. She said she was glad it wasn’t the chocolate!   Apparently the station hands would have gone ballistic if their chocolate was lost!

The drive from there to Barkly Homestead was uneventful. We got a site for the night and headed to the bar for happy hour. $8 for a beer and a cider, great value anywhere! They had a duo from Mullumbimby, Lou and Phil, playing live country music.  We both love live music and it was a great way to wind up the day.

Barkly Homestead to Mount Isa    13 July 2016

We refuelled at Barkly and headed out by about 7:30am. The trip was uneventful with a couple of stops. First stop was at Camooweal for more fuel. While we were there Deb put up an Ingress Field from the Camooweal portal, to join up with a set of linked portals we had done the day before (Flynn Memorial to Devils Marbles). A nice big green triangle, her first across state borders!! 🙂

We had lunch about 50km before Mount Isa and then drove on (with a quick stop at the Gunpowder turnoff, an Ingress portal) and checked into a caravan park in Isa. After setting the van up for the next 2 nights, we went into town, called into the Visitor Info Centre, got some brochures for Qld, and then somehow, spent the rest of the afternoon doing an Ingress Mission and generally greening up the town. It was a fun afternoon.

The weather isn’t going to be flash here tomorrow, generally all of Australia is getting a very good dose of cold wet/snowy winter weather. It’s even cold up here, around 14C (but felt like 8C)  late in the afternoon today and will be colder and much wetter tomorrow (it was 28C here yesterday).

It’s NRL State of Origin tonight, let’s hope Queensland don’t get a clean sweep.

We just might spend a bit of time hiding in our cubby house tomorrow and just relaxing! 🙂