The campfire...

Thursday, July 23, 2015
Camooweal, Queensland, Australia
Day whatever... oh ok, Day 6, Thurs. 23 July

Last into camp yesterday and last out this morning .

We were trundling along, just getting into the swing of things and the headlights that I’d noticed in the rear view for some time were now right behind me and they were flashing. The red and blue lights on top of the car were also flashing!

The nice young (very young, didn’t look old enough to drive!) policeman said “You
haven’t done anything wrong (my breathing started again) it’s just that
something is sticking out the side of the van”. It turned out that the steps to get up into the van had not been retracted! Now I’m not pointing the finger, but I was on the driver’s side when we finished folding the van down!

We did a drive around when we left and the site was clear, fridge was switched to 12 volts, roof clamps down, gas off etc. etc. It hadn’t happened before, just lucky we struck a nice young cop.

We must have encountered a soil change, there are termite mounds everywhere . Some of the locals have taken to dressing them up in shirts and construction helmets or sunnies, skirts, whatever. G saw a beauty a minute ago whilst I was writing this, fully dressed with branches
for arms and a beer in each hand!

We came across a “Puma” fuel station in Cloncurry and fuelled up, we’d been watching the fuel consumption since our load of dodgy fuel and had just averaged 14.9 L/100 km which I was rapt with! They must have won a lottery and been paid out on urinal blocks because there
were over 30 in each urinal! The small of napthalene was overpowering!

I kept driving after we had a very nice coffee in Cloncurry and I managed a new record fiel consumption of 13.9 L as we entered Mount Isa – that’ll give his nibs a target to beat!

We refuelled at Maccas and bought some supplies. The nice young fellow at the United fuel station let us leave the rig there while we shopped.

Despite doing laps of the shopping centre like a manic eagle looking for prey, I couldn’t find a loo and needed to hightail it back to the service station whilst G shopped for dinner . I shouldn’t have left him alone…hot dogs for dinner! Honestly, he’s a trim as a bloody greyhound, drinks coke, eats white bread, wanted to buy devon…and has better cholesterol than me! Sheesh!

We trundled to Camooweal and G was very happy that he managed to get the fuel consumption down under 15 L/100km after I’d handicapped him by filling up with regular unleaded fuel (was all we could get at Mt Isa).

Every free camper in northern Australia was at the Camooweal billabongs, or so it seemed! We had to navigate a couple of kilometres along the lagoons to find a spot to camp. We took some photos and enjoyed a beer and some nibbles in the afternoon peace and quiet. Later, G managed, with the help of a friendly neighbour who supplied some good firewood (which was pretty scarce), to get a very nice fire going to satisfy his pyromaniac tendencies! Of course photos were taken and G was content that we'd had at least one campfire on the trip!

Of course, G’s phone had a signal and despite the assurances of the nice young lady at Telstra Mt. Isa, mine is still not picking up many signals and did not! I had hoped to restore some of my phones capabilities at Maccas wifi in Mt. Isa but alas it was very limited so it is still hobbled after I did a full reset trying to fix what turned out to be a non-existent problem!

Oh well, time to sack out!
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