July 16

Well, today got off to a pretty disastrous start. We planned on an early getaway from Charleville however on stepping outside the van discovered we had a flat tyre on the Prado. I managed to make a quick change and get down to the Tyrepower store by the time they opened at 8. They inflated the dodgy tyre but couldn’t find a leak of any kind. I’d checked the tyre-pressure yesterday so can only assume that a bit of dirt or something may have blocked the valve open. It’s OK this afternoon. Had a good chat – another life history - with the local who did the tyre. You’ve gotta love these outback people!

Eventually got under-way at 9 so it wasn’t too bad and it’s only a 3 hour run to Roma. The country was different on this leg – more undulating and hilly. We were fascinated by the size of some of the cactus trees along the road. As we got closer to Roma there was more farming instead of all grazing.

The condition of the bitumen was quite “lumpy” and really checked out how well we’d packed things in the van. There were lots of triple road trains as well between Charleville and Mitchell – after Mitchell they were restricted to two trailers but that didn’t reduce the numbers any. Of course therewas lots and lots of road kill.

There isn’t much to see here in Roma so after a stop at the Visitors’ Centre and a look around town we hit Woolworths to do some stocking up for the next four days. Worth mentioning is the number of Queensland Bottle trees around the place – we saw one really huge one and an avenue of bottle trees – one for each deceased serviceman. We saw our first Maccas and KFC since leaving Dubbo and mum shouted a shake at Maccas to celebrate.

I filled up with petrol for the first time since arriving in Cunnamulla although I did put 60 L in yesterday in Charleville, just to get us here. All the evidence indicated that petrol here was cheaper and at 160.9 cpl it certainly was – actually the cheapest petrol since leaving Wollongong. We averaged 15.5 L/100 km which is pretty good although half of the travel we did was on the dirt roads to Hungerford.

There probably won’t be any updates for the next 4 days while we’re at Carvarvon Gorge as there is no Telstra mobile coverage – the only phone is a satellite public phone. As soon as we hit Emerald on Monday I’ll upload everything. If anyone needs to contact us the phone number for Takarakka Bush Resort is 07 4984 4535. I daresay we won’t have TV or radio coverage either – back to nature in more ways than one!