5^th August, Tuesday

We left Mission Beach in the pouring rain.  Thankfully we didn’t have any more mountains passes to tackle, it wouldn’t have been fun in this weather.  Our route took us along the Bruce Highway mainly through Cardwell, Ingham and Townsville.  From Townville we turned onto the Flinders Highway heading towards Winton.  The landscape starts changing from here as the mountains start disappearing as we head back into the outback.  We pulled in at Macrossan which is just an overnight free camp to break the trip.  The site is on the Burdekin river which when full is quite a substantial river when full. The river at the mo is quite empty, just little patches of water here and there. There are croc warnings which we are quite surprised about because it is about 150 kms inland. Not too much of a problem for crocs at the mo considering the lack of water.

6^th August, Wednesday

We set off quite early for another overnight stay in Hughenden and back into the outback heading for the gem fields (Winton is too far for us to do in a day). We had a bit of a stop in Charters Towers which is quite a large old gold mining town. I believe that they have started up gold operations here again after stopping them quite a few years ago and the town seems to be bustling.  It is a charming town with some of the most beautiful old buildings we have seen so far.  The landscape now is all outback, different colours, vegetation etc. but still has it’s charm. We arrived in Hughenden just after lunch.  I’m glad we are just here for 1 night as I wouldn’t exactly give this place the friendly town award.  The few people we have dealt with so far were quite rude, strange as we’ve not come across this before.  Perhaps the don’t like living here, who knows?  There’s not much history here apart from the fact that the Americans stored explosives here during the war and weren’t aware of the fire risks of the bush. The ammo went off and caused 20’ deep craters and caused a massive fire that was hard to put out.  Perhaps the residents here are still upset about that (ha, ha). Tomorrow we head for Winton where we will stay for 3 days.