To Emerald

To Emerald

Posted on 5 Nov, 2009 18 comments

8/10
I walked the dogs on the wide verges in front of the motel and the next door caravan park, and across the road. It was quiet outside, as we were real early. The morning sun felt warm and by 7 I had organised breakfast for us outside on the veranda. This motel had a little kitchenette, which was easy. It was quite peaceful as all the workers had left already. I reorganised all our boxes, eski’s and bags, as at the last minute in our house I just grabbed all there was left and just put it wherever I could fit it. Now at least we had some system and I was able to find things.
We left Charters Towers at 8.30 am after refuelling. It was 24C and we were at 20 degrees South, still in the tropics, heading towards Clermont. The countryside was undulating, dry and vegetated with straggly trees, looking very much like the NT and the North of WA. Long road stretches, no population, in fact nothing much but dead kangaroos, providing a feast for the crows. So this was dry savannah land again, dead trees and some short green eucalypt and malaleuca trees. We are heading for BC, so the little distance signs on the side of the road told us. What would BC mean? Which place was that? We would find out after another 200 kms. Certainly it was not on our road map. This was the outback again, no roadhouse, nowhere one could get food, drink or whatever for miles and miles. The traffic was sparce, certainly no tourists about, mainly trucks and even road trains, some carting cattle. We were driving for 2.5 hrs and the temp outside was 27C, blue skies cheering the day. Undulating country with gullies and creeks. Names like stockroad gully, policeman creek, little policeman creek, boomerang, corroborree, 5 mile, 7 mile etc. creek. These little waterways were now dry as a bone, looking sad and desolated. The road was narrow and slow, then widened a bit again, even some lines on the road now. More dry creeks with names as plain creek, black wattle creek. Hundreds of dry creeks; you wondered if they’d ever flowed. We drove through Blackwood N.P., passed a coal mine. The road surface was shocking, no potholes, but wavy, which made your car jump up and down and sideways, as if in an earthquake. We suddenly saw a sign saying: Belyanda Crossing rest place. There it was: BC. We were wondering what that would look like. Not long and we found out. It was a place of dust, rusted away and uninviting, a real outback forgotten roadhouse cum restplace. But we wanted some ice coffee and tomato juice for our lunch later on. We had by the way, made our own sandwiches for lunch to save money. This place was terrible. The minute I stepped outof the car onto the dusty earth, it smelled like cattle, cattle urine in fact. Soon we saw why. This was a stop for roadtrains filled with cattle, who of course urinated from the truck whilst waiting there. The dogs didn’t mind, they smelled everything. I took some pictures of this crazy place and Paul came out with apple and blackcurrant juice, nothing else was available. So we soon continued the journey and arrived at 1.30 pm in Clermont. Here was IGA, a supermarket and we stocked up on apples, fruit and…ice coffee. At 2.10 pm we finally had our lunch somewhere under a shady tree. It was now 28C. After lunch we were heading for Emerald. The road was still bad and the countryside here even poorer and drier. In this section of our trip we passed the Tropic of Capricorn at 23 degrees S. We had now left the tropics….By 3.30 pm we rolled into Emerald, where we were booked into a lovely cabin. It almost was brand new. It had a little veranda on the front, not as wide, private and comfortable as the one in Fishery Falls, and certainly not set in lush green rainforest. Pivot wasn’t feeling well that day and didn’t want anything to eat, so I forced some yoghurt into him and later on he had some of my fish! Where could we eat? Paul had enquired at the reception and they said that the local swimming pool did take-a-ways. The pool? Well, we walked to the pool, which was adjacent to the caravan park and indeed they did some take-a-ways. We ordered fish and chips and salad, which Paul picked up after we’d finished our beer at the cabin. The meals came in polystyrene dishes, from which we ate. The food was delicious, even pineapple in the salad, the fish grilled ( well, mine ) nicely. We had some yoghurt for desert and again hit the sack real early. Dogs slept in the car again, which they prefer anyway. It is after all, their home away from home.
It was quite cold in the night and early in the morning at 7 am I had my cardigan on when I walked the dogs around the park.

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