Welcome 2013

It is Friday 4th January and we have arrived in Mt Isa, maybe not on the terms we would have preferred but arrived safely never the less, more on that later.

I should also mention here we said farewell to acquaintances made over the past week, in particular a lovely couple, Lyall and Trish, their Spinifex Caravan is something to be seen.  They have plenty of experience with caravanning and this is abundantly clear when you see what they have been able to build in the design  of the their Spinifex. Have a look at  their blogsite www.lyallandtrish.blogspot.com


We left Karumba New Year's Eve to spend New Years in the bush. We drove out on the Burke and Wills Developmental Road and found a place to pull off the road a few kms before the Burke and Wills Roadhouse, we drove about 200 - 300m off the road far enough not to be seen by any traffic ( as if -I think we may have heard 1 vehicle), found a very nice shady spot, beautiful. Mother Nature put on a wonderful fireworks show for us with a spectacular electrical storm to the North, pity I can't work the camera properly to capture it, just lots of nothingness.
Here we saw in 2013, playing charades around the camp fire and Blockus of which Jessica still remains the champion. We must also note that when Les points to me in Charades it is his description of day (not parent, mother, you, taller, old, elder- you had to be there) .

Lightning doesn't strike the same spot twice, we thought we would be safe camping by this struck tree.

As with the rest of Australia at the current time, we too are in the middle of a heat wave  with most days being over 40.  We choose to drive through the worst of it and hopefully find some sort of breeze when camping. The idea of camping beside water is always appealing even more so when the temperature is this high, with this in mind we headed down to the Gregory River, after a cold drink at the Gregory Pub we found a camp site beside Fiery creek just East of Gregory, the only neighbours the mooing cows to woo us to sleep. Not much water in the creek but a bit of breeze.

Continuing down the Developmental Road the next day we just pulled over in an overnight roadside stop, The Terry Smith Lookout, named after the local postie and transporter of this area since the 1950's, and what a beautiful sunset over the surrounding ranges, but what a hot, still and unbearably uncomfortable night.

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