We packed up and left without delay as the flies were pretty bad!
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| Packed up and ready to go On a previous trip we were bonnet deep in water here |
It was interesting when driving back along the creek to come to the detour point where we had crossed the creek some years ago. The water had been up to the bonnet of the 4WD on that occasion. No sign of water today.
Back to Big Red where we all managed to get to the top without any difficulty. We'd had plenty of dune practise by now. Even David in the Merc was breasting the dunes comfortably.
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| Back to Big Red |
After the obligatory photo shoot on top of the dune we headed down the eastern side, pumped up our tyres and headed for Birdsville straight to the pub for coffee. The first women to serve us didn't think too much of our soy milk order - "Soy milk - nah! Oh just a minute let me look - Is this soy?" Next it was the skinny cappuccino "No you can't froth skinny - you need the fat to make it froth". Fortunately Carol then came in and whipped up our order of weird coffees. First woman came back a little later and said "Well she made me look stupid didn't she - she's worked in a coffee shop". We were glad she had. By this time it was 11:30 so we decided to hang about and stay for lunch. Burgers all round and very nice they were.
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| Coffee and lunch at the Birdsville Pub |
Jill and I headed back to the caravan park, picked up the camper and set up camp. You don't mind paying $30 a night for a camp site in a remote spot like Birdsville but we did think it a bit rich to be charged $20 a night to leave our camper while we went out to Poeppel Corner,
After nice hot showers we had a bit of a drive around town. Checked out the new hardware store in the industrial estate. It gets high marks - good quality and good variety. Alex bought some screws and a toilet chair having decided that squatting for any length of time is becoming a challenge at 67 years of age - enough of that!!
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| 'Shots' around Birdsville |
We then went to the information centre and watched a movie about Birdsville and western Queensland - very interesting and with lots of humour in the interviews with old timers - both aboriginal and non-aboriginal. Before dinner we went for a walk west along the lagoon. Checked out the new jetty which has recently been constructed. Also took a photo of Onslo outside the Bakery. Onslo is a 1964 beetle which crossed the Simpson Desert in 2012. And we thought it hard! Jill bought the book of Onslo's adventure for the grandkids.
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| Birdsville's new jetty Onslo the 1964 Beetle which crossed the Simpson in 2012 |
Dinner tonight was at the bakery. Very quick service. Jill had Green Thai Chicken Curry and Alex the Lamb Shanks - all good.
