We left our Dakabin campsite on 9th July 2015 and headed for Caboolture where we spent a couple of hours visiting friends while a new HWS was being installed into the motorhome. (theoriginal and new, one had sprung a leak causing about 6 towels to be used overnight and day as we didn’t know where to turn a stop-cock off).
We then headed out to Kilcoy where we parked on a pleasant, free site right on the main road but, easy walking distance to the street and shops. One night there and met a lovely Dutch couple who had designed and built their own caravan to suit their purposes. What a beauty!
Stopped at Kilcoy Free Camp
We then headed out to a girlfriend’s station of 30,000 acres at Durong. She breeds high qualitybeef cattle, sheep and keeps about 9 dogs a couple of horses, chooks, guinea fowls, a donkey, a shetland pony and does all of this on her own!!
We stayed 4 or 5 nights with her and were able to help out with a few easy chores like trimmingshrubs, vines and some overgrown bushes. We learned so many things that we didn’t know about, like meeting a couple of beautiful white dogs called Maremas, that live out in the paddocks with the sheep, guarding them 24/7 from wild dogs and any other predators that may want to have fresh lamb for a meal. They come to the house fence of an evening to get their feed but won’t venture into the house yard or out of their sheep paddock. They also only come over one at a time so, the sheep are never left entirely without a guard.
How these dogs are trained and then remain with whatever they’ve been bonded with, is amazing. We also watched Julie as she applied Bowen Therapy to a horse which had sustained an injury some time ago and learned of the benefits of that.
We were able to demonstrate to her that there would be a lot of people who would be only too happy to stay a week or so and help out with basic chores that she doesn’t get time to do. She was amazed to think that anyone would want to do that or even find it interesting to be on the farm with her!!
Helping out at Durong
We then headed off for Roma to visit and stay overnight with Ray’s nephew, Ron, whom he hadn’t seen for about 20 years. Spent a lovely night with him even though it was about minus 2 outside but, we stayed at approximately 6 degrees inside. Had the power connected and the electric blankets were cosy as . . . .
Next place we headed for was another friend’s place north of Quilpy on the way to Windorah. As we’d delayed our departure for about 6 weeks, we were keen to ‘skip’ through Qld and head for the Territory as fast as we could. We wanted to avoid the very hot weather and also the onset of the wet season. We figured we could “do” Qld next year at our leisure, all being well. But we stopped long enough to be entertained in front of the camp fire.
Entertainment by the camp fire.
We spent 3 nights with Wendy & Ross on their 120,000 hectare property. Ray went out on a “reccy” to check fences, mend a windmill and sort out a water pump, with Ross. Wendy and I visited their other property about 70km away!! The isolation and hard living with drought conditions that these outback folk deal with daily, is to be admired and respected.
Windmill Repairs
The next day we made our way north to Longreach where we picked up a parcel from the Post Office (left my lap-top charger at home) that our neighbours had sent us. Spent the night at a great $3/night camp-site outside of town about 3 kms and right on the river. It was packed with about 60 campers and feral roosters who strutted their stuff and woke us all at the crack of dawn, trying to check out Freeda and Free Range Camping!!
Roosters @ Longreach. River views from Apex Park @ Longreach
Your post looks great…… I’ll have to wait till we get real POWER and a little more data allowance to check it all out.(Running on a dodgy battery and mobile data !)
Cheers ….. NatnDavid