As soon as we turned out the light last night, a breeze began to blow, and gusted all night; it wasn’t a gale or anything, but enough to make the tent flap and the campers squeak, and blow some cloud over us. So it was somewhat chilly packing up this morning, I had my jumper and trakkies on. When we camped here a few weeks ago it was windy and freezing cold and we had a blower heater going for half the night. Perhaps Barkly Homestead is just situated in a windy place.

After getting up today I found I was listless and crook, so Debbie drove us here to Camooweal. We toyed with the idea of continuing to Mount Isa, but after a stop at Drover’s Camp (http://www.droverscamp.com.au/) we decided to save it for tomorrow. Camooweal was an important hub on the major stock routes of yesteryear, so some enterprising locals have recently built the Drover’s Camp museum, and they run a festival every August which last year attracted 3000 visitors, ten times the population of the town. The boys found a couple of items of interest, one was a real (taxidermied) bucking bronco, which you could climb onto for a photo; this pic is of Max up there. There was also a very cool miniature stock yard, with gates that open, a cattle crush, and feed and water troughs; it was built by a drover for a raffle, but the winner donated it back to the museum.

So we’re camped behind the roadhouse, on grass, with power, and with the best view of the sky we’ve had all trip. Because I was still feeling dodgy this afternoon I laid on the grass and read my book, which was a fantastic change from photography and hiking. At least, I read it until Max decided to have a play in imaginary-land, which he wanted me to share. So I joined him there with as much enthusiasm as I could muster, as we pretended to be, firstly, very fast trains having horrible crashes, then clowns trying to catch the person who painted their red noses other colours, and finally he wanted to be a baby while I was a visitor trying to make him stop crying. It was great to have some relaxed quality time with him, even though I would rather have been reading.

We were also in raptures over the showers tonight. Unlike so many places we’ve been, these ones are hot and strong, clean and spacious.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KEISHA!