Bye Bye Birdsville, Qld

Monday morning the 3rd of September... it was time to pack up camp on the  Diamantina River, say goodbye to our campsite neighbours and hit the road again.

We were ready to go by around 10 o'clock and headed into Birdsville for a coffee and some brekky, before hitting that long red dirt track aka the Birdsville Developmental Road. 

The steady flow of traffic in front of us and behind us went on for as far as the eye could see.

That long dusty dirt track

The Birdsville Races really isn't an event you just happen to be passing through for, you really have to want to go - because the road is long, tiresome, dusty & rugged.

We stopped midway to help some camp neighbours who'd pulled over on the side of the road to fix a flat tyre. They were grateful for our offer but they had it under control.
It was at that point I decided to go into the caravan to the toilet, I closed my eyes and looked the other way when I saw red dust everywhere - I would deal with it later.

After 4 hours of eating dust, we finally hit bitumen road, it was so nice to be able to see the blue skies in front of us rather than red dust.

By that stage I felt like every single orifice of my body had been infiltrated by pindan. I now understand why people say this red dirt gets under your skin, but I think they say it for different reasons to me. This experience has helped me to realise that I am more of a coastal girl than a desert one.

We finally arrived in a much quieter Windorah around 4:30, we filled up the car and continued north. Our plan was to be in Longreach by the next day.

Along the way we saw this.....

A dead dog tree

The dead dog tree, from a distance

Richard stopped so I could take a picture, we got close enough to look at these animals, but we're still not sure whether they were dingoes or wild dogs or maybe a bit of both.
They'd been killed and hung on this tree... they had a black nuzzle and even dead, they looked vicious. Too weird, but the most interesting thing we'd seen all day. We then stopped to let an emu family, including some chicks, cross the road....

Mother Emu and her chicks

We reached Jundah by about 5:30,  exhausted after a big day of driving, only to open the door to a caravan with an inch thick layer of dust. Even though I knew I had to face it eventually,  it made my heart sink.
My wardrobe door had flung open and every piece of clothing in my wardrobe had turned red. Our quilt was red and to top it off, the sugar had fallen in the cupboard and opened and there was sugar and red dust throughout the cupboards.
I took a deep breath, sucked it up and got down to work. If there was an inkling of sadness to be leaving the Simpson Desert - it ended there, we had brought the Simpson Desert with us, in every nook & cranny.

In hindsight, I should have taken a photo of the van to show you so you could see I wasn't exaggerating, but it was too heartbreaking at the time.

I finished cleaning what I could and by 7:30 I hung up the mop, the chux and the spray n wipe bottle and we headed to the Jundah Pub for dinner.

Jundah is a gorgeous, neat little town, occupied mostly by Shire workers and situated on the Thomson River, which flows down into Lake Eyre.

Dinner at the pub was as you would expect in a small town and after chatting to the Irish girl over the bar and a few other tourists passing through, we wandered home to our big red car, and now our big red van haha! Amazing what a few gin & tonics can do... At lest now I could laugh about it.

A quick pack up and we were on our way, Tuesday 4th of September, to Longreach. We watched as the terrain changed from desert to wide open grazing country. One moment we were travelling along a plain,then next we were at the top of a hill, heading into another vast plain. 

We stopped along the way to look at the town of Stonehenge....

.... it looked almost as ancient at its English namesake, there wasn't much to see other than this sign which caught our eye...

This sign was all Stonehenge had  to offer

It made us laugh because there was very little sign of any human life, let alone any kids.

We continued on through station country and had to stop many times to gauge the thought process of a cow and whether it would dart in front of us or not... There're not very clever on this side of the country either.

By around 1 o'clock we had reached Longreach, the home of Qantas, Rm Williams and our Governor General Quentin Bryce. This Qantas tail was the first sign of   Longreach on the horizon...

Almost in Longreach

A quick shop and we pulled into the caravan park to set up camp and begin the long task of washing red dust off piles of clothes etc... We also had some visitors, these brolgas who got a little too close for comfort...

Go away Brolga

Brazen Brolgas

The afternoon was a busy one between piles of washing and dusting and Richard trying to fix the water tanks.

I also tried to post a week's worth of blogs in between loads of washing. It was nice to have internet connection again.
It was an early night. We all crashed soon after dinner.. tomorrow we will explore Longreach.