Leaving Gindie , we head into Emerald to do some shopping , and were surprised to here all about the covid numbers in Qld , all the supermarket staff were back wearing masks - and so were we ! Shopping done , fuelled up , we couldn't get out of there quick enough - we were told there were 5,000 cases in town !!!!
Bogantungan appeared and we stopped for a rest stop , checking out the train station . Trains still run through here on the way out to Longreach & Winton . There was a major rail disaster here on February 26th 1960 . Rain had washed out one of the rail bridges and the train from Winton plunged 7metres off the bridge into the flood waters , killing 4 passengers and 3 rail crew .
Here's one of the old houses still here - there aren't many - maybe 6 ?
Out of town and heading west , you come to the Drummond Range , where the road climbs up & over the mountains - as does the train line , winding it's way slowly upwards following the contours till it reaches the top . It would look great from above , but it was too windy for us to get any shots !
This is the train track on one of it's big " S" bends .
There's plenty of these grevillea out flowering now .
Making our way to Barcaldine , we were surprised to find there was no room in any of the 3 caravan parks in town - the overflow at the Showgrounds was also closed due to an upcoming event next week . That made our decision for us , we kept going - probably not a bad thing , as the weather was forecast to dump a lot of rain anywhere east of Longreach , so the closer we can get , the better off we'll be - at least that's the theory !!
Here's a station entrance !
We found a rest area and pulled up stumps for the day , a nice sunset with some cloud , Hmmmm .
Well , everything went to plan until about 10pm , the cloud had moved over us , there was thunder & lightning , and more rain !! Too late to do anything about it , we thought we'd be okay - we were only 4m from the bitumen of the rest area . Back to sleep .
We wake to another sunny morning , and look outside to see puddles of water , water just sitting in big pools . A couple of others had made their way out and disappeared , we took our time . Stepping out we found mud sticking to our shoes and growing with every step , suddenly the 4 metres to the bitumen looked like 400m !! Fortunately ? it was still dryish under the ute , so we packed up and we reversed a little to give us a run up to get on the bitumen . When I say a little , it was about 500mm before we started to spin the tyres , hmmm , time to go forward , it started slowly then gained a little bit of speed before the mud & the weight we are towing started to slow us down , wheels started to spin again , but at least we were moving right ? With a bit more urging , and everything crossed , we made it to the bitumen , not before spraying mud up the ute and over the van as we took off down the road . Anyone that was close to us would have got some mud flicking off the tyres - all ten of them !!
Ilfracombe was a short drive away , so we decided to stop and have a look at all the farm machinery on display . There are tractors , trucks , fire trailers , graders and all sorts of machinery . They've had a fresh coat of paint before going on display - it's a really interesting diversion ! Here's some of them .
This one is towing a Comet fire break maker - it's just like a couple of grader blades set at angles to remove the vegetation at a set width and depth .
Here's the old , and on the truck , the new !
There's a shed with a collection from one of the local families - a collection of rifles , shotguns , pistols & ammunition that they collected as they went around the country during WW2 - I've never seen that many rifles in one collection !
There was also a bottle collection there as well .
Some looked like they wouldn't be moving anywhere again .
Here's an old kerosene powered tractor - one of only 3 left in the world .
An early bulldozer .
Plenty of graders .
And a dirt & gravel compactor .
An old horse cart .
Interestingly , we met a guy a couple of days later that told us all the machinery still starts and has been driven onto site for the display - now that is remarkable !!
Here's map link :- xhttps://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1Pu5XbfMcFkYyvz2Z7MM64SVXx52epuo&usp=sharing
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