Being Friday, we now had 2 full free days before we needed to be at Airlie Beach on Monday. So after a quick pitstop at Coles to stock up on supplies and at a petrol station to get fuel, we were on the road to Hughenden! Although a long drive (about 4 & a half hours!) the roads are really easy so, as long as you can stay awake and avoid the kangaroos, it's fairly straight forward (literally)! Hughenden is 1 of 3 places in a tour to visit along with Winton and Richmond. These all have different types of dinosaur fossils and excavation sites. Hughenden being the closest so is all aquatic fossils as all this land used to be under water and has the only skeleton of a Muttaburrasaurus in the world, Richmond has the dinosaurs that lived in and out of the water and Winton has land mammals and has the only preserved dinosaur stampede in the world.

As it was already gone 4:30pm we realised it wouldn't be sensible to try to get all the way tonight as the campsites would be closed and we would be stranded! Instead we decided to spend the night at a campsite in Pentland (about an hour & a half before Hughenden) and finish the journey in the morning . At this time we were still considering driving straight through to another dinosaur site called Winton so was no hardship to drive the extra bit first!

As we drove through a place called Charters Towers, Gareth was on the phone, suddenly this cut out and when we tried to regain signal, it quickly became clear that actually there was no network coverage this far inland and we no longer had a phone that worked! Not really a problem, as long as we don't break down, we all agreed!

We pulled into Pentland Caravan Park at around 8:30pm and I set about chopping vegetables & chicken for our dinner while the boys set up the tent and van - Matt used all his Boy Scout training to fashion a cover for the sun roof using a mosquito net so we could allow some of the breeze to circulate through the van! About an hour later we all sat down for a chicken tikka masala with a few uninvited dinner guests in the shape of some very hungry mosquitos! We were also joined by a very inquisitive frog who got so close Matt accidentally stood on one of his legs!

We all climbed into bed very excited about the next day's dinosaur hunt and wishing for a cooler night so we could all get a good night's sleep!

At about 6am we were woken from a lovely sleep by the sun shining through the windows and the birds singing (this camping lark is gonna take some getting used to!) We started packing up the van while taking it in turns to have showers and make breakfast when Gareth and I heard a funny noise coming from under the bonnet . We tried investigating but knowing nothing about engines we were baffled, imagine our horror when we tried to start the van and... nothing!!! Matt returned from his shower and he too had no idea what was wrong! It would start and tick over but as soon as you tried to accelerate it just cut out! After half hour scratching our heads and trying different things we thought it maybe needed just a push start as it was fine yesterday. The boys managed to push me out of the campsite. We asked at reception to borrow their phone but it was out of order and the nearest pay phone was up the road but you needed a pre paid card which they didn't sell (great!!) So then after a second push got they me going enough to get a bit of momentum to get on the road and hope they could then jump in. Unfortunately not, so on the 3rd push I was then able to get 2 blocks up the road to the Servo Station as Matt thought there was no oil in it and that's why it wouldn't accelerate. As I got pushed off I left the boys behind passing some workmen on the way who found it hilarious that I was only going about 20km/hour! When I looked out of my rear view mirror I could see the boys running along behind me then all of a sudden they cut across the road and were running even quicker! I was later informed that at the moment they pushed me off they had glanced to their left & seen a fully grown emu literally right behind them giving them the eye and getting rather agitated, presumably feeling that her & her young were under threat so it was getting aggressive, and so they were trying to escape!

Still having no phone signal, we were lucky that the owner of the Servo Station let us use his phone to ring Spaceships who then put us through to the RACQ! As the helpful old man said it was probably not the oil and was possibly the fuel filter . It was arranged that the tow man would come from Hughenden & tow us back there as he could get there in an hour and a half but the one from Charters Towers would be 3 hours. The only problem was it was now Saturday lunchtime and no mechanics would be able to look at it until Monday morning! Knowing we had to be in Airlie Beach by then to get on our Whitsunday trip, the panic set in! As every place in Australia is a crazy distance from the next place, it was no surprise that it took nearly 2 hours for the tow truck to arrive & then the same amount of time for us to get back to Hughenden! The man & his son had a look at the van but agreed it was going to take longer than they had that evening to discover the problem and wouldn't be able to do anything until Monday. In the meantime, Matt had been speaking to Spaceships. after about the third conversation with them, he came off the phone and announced, "I think they think My name is Max?!" This was hilarious as only a couple of days ago, when guessing our roomie's name in Cairns, Matt had said he would have liked to have been called Max! Spaceships couldn't do enough to help, and they had agreed to either provide us with a hire vehicle or get the tow man to tow us to Airlie Beach so we wouldn't miss our Whitsunday trip! But having a hire car meant we'd have to drive back to get the van so being towed seemed the best idea . On hearing that, the tow guys agreed to spend a couple of hours on it in the morning, I guess the thought of towing a van for 7 hours & then driving back was worse than getting up early on a Sunday! He dropped us off at a campsite up the road & said he'd be back for us at 7am!

True to his word, he was at the campsite at 7am & took us to his workshop. His son, who had gone out for the evening, was sleeping off a hangover so left his dad to do all the hard work! Whilst he was busy pulling Sonic apart, we went for a wander around the town. The best way to describe Hughenden is, if the world really is going to end in December then no one here would notice as it looks like that already happened a few years ago! The streets were deserted and the shops looked abandoned! In a town of a population of approx. 2000 people, we only saw about 17 and 7 of them were the mechanic & his family! We found the dinosaur museum but to our disbelief it was closed due to unforeseen circumstances!!! With nothing else to do we returned to the mechanic's workshop and waited there for him to finish his attempt at fixing Sonic! He had noticed a lot of smoke coming from the exhaust which he thought may be from the oil and when he checked, there was 3.5 litres too much oil inside! As a result, the spark plugs had become clogged up and needed a thorough clean! A couple of hours later & $165 worse off, Sonic was fixed and we were back on the road! So with this we had to hit the road to get the 7 hour journey out the way. In a nut shell we had driven for 14 hours, spent $200 on petrol and $165 on maintenance and we hadn't seen any dinosaurs but we had certainly had an adventure!