Thursday 23rd July After stocking up with food supplies and filling up with diesel we left Cloncurry and headed along the Barkly Highway to travel the 757kms beween Cloncurry and Three Ways Roadhouse (Three Ways is the intersection between the Barkley highway and the southern and northern sections of the Sturt highway) The only large town between is Mount Isa, 121kms from Cloncurry. The scenery between Cloncurry and Mount Isa is just beautiful and looks as though it has been untouched for hundreds of years. The first night we stayed at a free camp which is a World War II runway site. This was a very roomy camp, but the road noise from road trains heading to and from mine sites woke us up frequently. One really kind driver thought it would be good to use his horn nice and loud as he passed at 1.30am. We were not impressed. At about 6.30 the road train noise stopped. We climbed back in to bed and slept till 10am.
Friday night we booked into Camooweal Caravan Park. The temperature had climbed to 34c which was quite a shock compared to the cooler temperatures we had, had so far. Camooweal has a population of 330 and consists of a small BP service station a general store with one petrol bowser and one diesel bowser and what they call a supermarket which is almost empty and a pub, which is where the caravan park is. The caravan park is very clean and even has green grass amongst all the dust of the dry outback. We slept well and were well rested for a longish drive (for us) to Barkly Homestead. The rest of the Barkley Highway is flat as a tack in most places. I mean flat for 360 degrees as far as the eye can see. Good for driving though as we could see what was coming from a long way away. We had to pull off the road twice for very wide loads, which was fairly easy for Ross and less stressful for panic merchant me, as we could see them coming from miles away.

Saturday 25th July 12.30 pm We are resting in the shade at Barkley Homestead Caravan Park. Over the years we have stayed here several times, this time however we can see a marked improvement in facilities and the overall look of the park. An area of artificial grass provided for each site was a really comfy touch in the very dry, dusty and rocky countryside. It gave you somewhere to put your chairs and put your feet up to have a drink and watch the world go by.
Then we drove on to Three Ways where we filled up and went on to free camp 48kms north.

Wednesday 29th July
We arrived at Mataranka yesterday the 28th and found a nice site with its own toilet and shower. Don't know if we are meant to be using it but we are!!! The local Aboriginal community kept us entertained last night by playing the theme song from Dirty dancing (We had the time of our Lives???) over and over. We shut all the windows and vents facing that way and turned the telly up. They went to sleep about 11pm and so did we a little while later. We are watching the series "Nashville" at the moment and are quite involved with the story, although reminds us of "The Bold and the Beautiful" combined with "Days of Our Lives" as to who is sleeping with who, but it has a good story line that is keeping us intrigued until all hours of the night We went out for tea to the restaurant at this park. It was a beautiful meal. The best meal so far on this trip. It was so good we went again on Thursday night
We left Mataranka on Friday to pass through Katherine to do some food shopping. We plan to stop for a day or two on the way back.