And so our Outback adventure begins....

We left Cairns and drove south towards Townsville. Yes I know we had already been here but this is the main highway into the outback so we have to go all the way back to Townsville before we can head inland. We covered 568km during the first day traveling and ended up stopping just past Charters Towers at Campaspe River Rest Area, which was our first free camping area as it was basically a roadside rest area. Wow its soooo hot in the Outback already which made it a long days drive, especially as nothing to see on the way, except for spotting a cool dust devil! This is basically a mini tornado at the side of the road (think tazzy devil!). One big benefit of being in the Outback though is the night sky. WOW! Being so far away from the lights of towns/cities really lets you see the night sky for what it is, so we got to see billions of stars and the actual milky way. Amazing!

Sunday we got a nice early start at 7:45 and basically drove all day to cover the 680km to Mt Isa. It was seriously hard going as it was steaming hot the whole time (yes we have aircon but dont like to use it as it drains fuel) and there is nothing to see out here except flat land as far as you can see. We did stop at a few small towns on the way for fuel but thats it, so we made it to Mt Isa at about 5pm totally knackered.

Horses! Yep, the Big4 campsite we stayed at just happened to have 3 horses in the field next to it which totally made Em's day :) So just happened our apples/carrots went off as soon as we arrived so Em had to feed them to the horses who apparently like "off" apples / carrots LOL!

Anyway......Mt Isa. Middle of nowhere but according to there tourist info centre its one of the biggest cities in the world! HAHA! Ozzies do like to big things up. Its probably the size of Daventry if that! You can drive across it in 5 mins and thats in traffic. Frickin hilarious!

Its centered around a huge mine there so everyone works there, or knows someone who does and as such the only tourist things they do have are mine related which we weren't fussed for anyway. We ended up not doing much at all except taking the day we had there to stock up on food and water ready to head further into the outback.

Tuesday morning, after a quick stop at McD's for breakfast we headed further into the Outback towards our night stopover at Barkley Homestead. Along the way, before we crossed the Queensland (QLD) / Northern Territory (NT) border we went through a town called Cammoweal. Another brilliant fact the Ozzies made up here is that Cammoweal has the longest main street in the world. Now bear in mind the town actually only has a population of 29 people and 4 buildings, but they put the "Welcome to Camooweal" sign 20km before you actually get there, so technically they are right....but my god thats stretching it a bit isn't it HAHA!

Just after this we got the QLD / NT border so stopped for a few pics and then headed on our way. This area is called the Barkley Region and its massive, totally open and flat which has the biggest cattle ranches in the world. They are so big that they heard cattle with helicopters and planes instead of horses and drovers! But after driving through the Barkley for 4hrs we reached Barkley Homestead which was the biggest pile of crap ever! Its the only fuel/campsite for 600km so they have a captive audience and don't they know it. Fuel was double the price of anywhere else so we had to pay $80 for 1/4 tank while we usually pay $50 for a full one, and the campsite was a right dump as well. There excuse was, and they were happy to put this on a giant sign in reception, was that they have to burn 500 litres of diesel per day to power the site. PER DAY! Have they never heard of frickin solar power!! How ridiculous eh!

But enough of that. The big plus point was the night sky here. HOLY WOW! Never seen anything like this! We both just sat outside for ages watching it as you could see the whole Milky Way and we also spotted 6 satellites go over plus a shooting star! YEAH!

Next day we headed further into the Outback, still heading towards Alice Springs and went through a town called Tennant Creek. Nothing there except the streets were lined with aborigines lying on the floor giving us the evil eye, so we grabbed some fuel and high tailed it outta there towards the Devils Marbles. These are some massive cool rock formations near the highway which have been there for 100,000 years and look like massive stone marbles stacked on top of each other in an impossible fashion. Didn't stay long as it was infested with flies so we carried on to our night stop at Wycliffe Well, which is supposed to be the UFO capital of Oz, but surprise surprise we didn't see E.T. We did see a lot of Flaming-Gallahs (ok not flaming) though which was cool, but apart from that. Worst Campsite Ever....... Nothing more to say as we want that behind us now.

Thats it. Next day we left as early as we could and drove the 350km to Alice Springs.