Mt Isa to Bedourie, Queensland
We pack up from Mt Isa and head south, passing the pleasing Boulia for the scruffy town of Bxxxx (it's Bedourie but I'd rather forget.)
Well, we packed up the truck and got some last supplies in Mt Isa: bread and roast beef and cheese for sandwiches, bananas and apples and mandarins to snack on... and we mailed Yet More Boxes home: one box of books, which gets the super cheap rate, and another box of cruft. Sadly, I've decided to give my pet robot, Gaybot, the boot, and he got sent home in one of the boxes. He's part of a magazine kit called 'Real Robots', and now that I have issue 9, he's starting to take up my Cruft Box. So he goes.
Our plan to day was to head south towards Birdsville, a good 600km or so away. Not that we'd drive all that way today, the road is paved only halfway there; after Boulia there's not much more than a graded track according to the maps.
Boulia (population 300) is home to the Min Min light, a peculiar nighttime phenomenon where lights appear on the horizon to dance and swoop around you. They've just tarted up their visitor center, so for $11 each we enjoyed "The Min Min Experience", an Animatronic walk through exhibit where fair dinkum local replicas natter on about the lights. Chris enjoyed it far more than I did. I thought it wasn't cheezy enough to be interesting, and not humorous enough to be fun. I just call it lame.
We then walked over to The Stone House, an old house of (yes!) stone from the 1880's that the local council restored a few years ago. It was pleasant, and had the odd addition of a steel barn in back housing this one guy's collection of marine fossils from the Cretaceous period... 100 million years ago. It was interesting, somewhat. The fossils were big, but ichthyosaurs just don't grab my imagination.
It was getting towards 3:00, so we decided to say farewell and push on to the next town, whose name totally escapes me, even though I'm writing this on its main street. It's dry and very dusty here, with very little trees for shade and sand mounding everywhere. Chris nearly had a heart attack when he saw the campsites offered: a patch of sand, gravel, and tin cans, with a dog urinating on the corner of an amenities (toilet) block. Blech. It was bleak, but you know, 'we'll always have Guerrero Negro', truly the most hideous place we've ever stayed at. I was slightly in favor of just ditching the $16 and bush camping, but it was almost sunset and finding a nice patch under some gidgee trees that the cattle hadn't found already wasn't sounding too appealing.
So we pitched the tent and camped. Curiously, the campground has private toilets for each campsite, and a little concrete verandah outside. It's not too horrible. Plus (dare I say it?) it's pretty quiet here, even at 8:30 on a Friday night. No dogs yapping, no people wandering drunk through the streets (like the half dozen we saw as we came to this town, population 60 I might add.)
It's a good thing that I can't remember the town name. But if you're coming to Bxxxxx, Queensland, don't even think about staying at the Simpson Desert Oasis Caravan Park/Motel/Cabins. Take it from me.
Weird Wildlife Sighting
Easy: the four emus grazing in the grassy median in the center of Boulia. It was amusing to watch them as cars whizzed by.