Onto the second day of the Strzelecki and the going was tough on Meg & Mog. While the tray on the Ute is waterproof, strangely it's not dust proof so there was a layer of very fine dust covering everything, and I mean everything!!

First stop was Innaminka, which has nothing in it but a little shop attached to the service station and a hotel/pub. The lady behind the counter was from Kent who had been living there since 2002 and we had a good ol' chat about Midsommer Murders and left wondering what the hell brought her from green leafy England to the middle of absolutely nowhere. There was a back-story there I was keen to hear but we had to head off to see one of the iconic spots in Australia, Burke and Wills "Dig Tree".

For those that aren't familiar with the story, Burke and Wills were famous explorers in the mid 19th century for whom fame and fortune drove them on to take risks and eventually die out in the desert in tragic circumstances. A little known fact about them is that they were also the founders of the hipster beard in Australia, which is clearly seen in the photos I've attached. They actually first met in Melbourne in 1855 where they set up a coffee shop called "Cough-ee". Unfortunately the venture failed as they couldn't source enough cool jam jars to serve their brew in and it was also in the middle of one of the worst epidemics of Whooping Cough Australia had seen, so the name didn't go down too well. So, when the opportunity came to be the first to traverse Australia from Victoria to the Gulf of Carpentaria and back for a prize of £2000, which was a lot of money in those days, they rose to the challenge. The venture was a disaster, mainly because Burke had an ego to match his beard, ie BIG, had no experience and treated his men and the native aborigines appallingly. The group took ages to get anywhere and when they finally reached Cooper Creek in the far North of South Australia Burke split the expedition up and took up Wills and two others and set off alone with instructions for the others to stay and wait for them. The 4 made it to the Gulf and returned but not before one of their party had died and they ended up missing the rest of the group by 9 hours, after the depot party had waited 4 months for them but left as they believed Burke and Wills to be probably dead. The "Dig Tree" is where the leader of the depot party carved some dates and an instruction on where they had buried some supplies just in case the 4 had survived. It's still visible today and this is what we went to see. It was pretty cool. Burke and Wills eventually perished about a month after that. Had they been nicer to the Aborigines, (which King was, the only survivor) they would have helped them. But as it was, the locals left them to it and Burke died under a Coolabah Tree on the way to Innaminka wearing his Chambery shirt and holding a jam jar with what looked like a dried flat white in the bottom. This is the other memorial we went to see. We stayed the night on Cooper Creek at the "Dig Tree" and looked to head as far East as we could the next day.

Crossing the border into Queensland the roads went from dirt track to sealed roads but in about the same state as the Strzelecki, pretty rough. It was here that the Kangaroo road kill started to go from bad to serious. There were so many on the side of the road that we lost count after about 25 minutes and when we saw one lying right in the middle of the road blocking our path we decided to do our civic duty and drag it out of the way so it was safe for other road users. In hindsight it was the correct thing to do but probably not advisable wearing thongs. We stopped the car and all got out and trotted over to the poor little fellah lying on the road. The first thing we noted was that he stank…. he REALLY stank . The boys were intrigued at what had killed him so as we got closer it was clear that it was a car rather than a truck as he was relatively intact, and what was also clear was that there was Kangaroo faeces and a lot of some very smelly decomposing fluid seeping out of most places of him that it could. I grabbed his tail and dragged him to the side of the road but as I did this my dodgy left thong slipped off and got caught on the road and I accidently slid the roo over it. My thong lodged firmly up the Kangaroos now faeces covered anus, which was also oozing that decomposing goo, and lots of flies…… this was not good. I continued to drag him to the side of the road and then went to retrieve the thong. As best I tried the goo wouldn't come off so I just had to put it on and head back to the car as quickly as possible. When we all piled back in feeling proud of our achievement of helping other road users we instantly realised that the car now was completing reeking of dead kangaroo and faecal matter. That smell lasted for about 150km. It was the last roo we dragged off the road. We just slow down and go around them like everyone else. We now know why.

We pushed on and ended up at a place just outside Cunnamulla, which was some sort of Animal Sanctuary called Bowra. There were so many Kangaroos and Emus that it took us about 30 minutes to travel the 6km down the track to the camp office. We were paranoid of hitting something and having to explain to the lady at the office what a wonderful job she is doing helping orphaned roos and emu's but did she have a hose so we could wash the blood off our bonnet from one we just hit on the way in….. Luckily it turned out to be more of a bird sanctuary and we stayed next to a little lagoon where all the animals were bounding around right amongst us. The night was absolutely freezing again so we woke early and bumped into Jeff. He was a nice chap who was staying on the property for 5 nights and was a hard-core bird watcher. He brought over his laptop and showed us some pictures of some birds and imitated some bird sounds for us. Not quite sure if he was being serious but the 3 people he was with were quite odd too. We talked about how cold it was overnight so I mentioned to him that I had seen two Blue t*** in my tent last night to try and make a joke. He actually corrected me and said they only come out during the day. I made a mental note to myself not to tell him we were having roast chicken for dinner the next evening, he clearly loved his birds. We bid farewell to Jeff and his binoculars to hit Cunnamulla town, famous for the "Cunnamulla Fellah", a bronze statue of a drover, for some supplies and a coffee. It was at the Boulder Café in Cunnamulla when we nearly had our first incident of double filicide of the trip when both Fi and I completely snapped after the boys created havoc in the coffee shop. We cooled down after removing all hope of them using a Kindle for at least a year and headed to the Red Lizard Caravan Park in Charleville, which was only a couple of hundred km's up the road. We got there with enough time to set up, have a shower and then head to the " Cosmos Centre" (The reason we stopped here). This was the most awesome place where we learnt loads of facts about the stars and got to look though these super powerful telescopes while Mel, the lovely guide, told us all about the sky at night. Fi and I were pretty happy as it was all very interesting and the boys were agog when they showed us Saturn. You could even see the rings and moons around it!! It did look suspiciously like the florescent sticky glow things you put in your room when you were a kid and I was wondering if maybe they had sneakily stuck it onto the lens when we weren't looking. Either way, it looked amazing. Harry even said to the lovely Mel, "Wow, seeing Saturn was even more awesome then when we hit the Kangaroo". We left quickly afterwards….

The following day was a massive drive and we were in the car for 8 hours to get to Carnarvon Gorge and the Takarraka Bush Camp. We got sorted, cooked that delicious roast chicken on the Webber, thought of Jeff the bird guy, and then went to bed. The wind was howling as though there was a hurricane but weirdly we didn't feel it; only hear it, so none of us got much sleep. The plan was an early rise so we could see the famous Platypus, which apparently shows up in the pond at the campsite and we weren't to be disappointed. We saw two of these shy little creatures before Harry's orange top scared them off. We'll look again tonight and make sure the boys are in camouflage gear and don't talk next time….It was then coffee, breakie and a 14km walk through the gorge. It was stunning. Very Oz in the natural things we saw. Rock pools, Waterfalls, Moss Garden etc. and we managed to even get a glimpse of a real Echidna on the way, which we were stoked to see. Fi also came face to face with a massive roo that was just standing on the path as we crossed the river, which we didn't see so almost walked straight into his face. The best bit was some incredible aboriginal rock art that we saw which was thousands of years old. There was one section where "women's business" was apparently held and they carved hundreds of vaginas into the wall. I thought this was very interesting and rushed to tell Fi but she just gave me one of those looks and told me to stop being so immature. We had a brilliant moment when Bailey, in front of a tour group that had just arrived suddenly shouted "Daddy, where is the biggest vagina on the wall?". The entire group stopped and stared and we pulled down our hats and scurried off. Classic… As we'd done no exercise properly for a couple of weeks the four of us were knackered so we headed back to our site, which was now 50% full as the group from the Rotary club, a 60 strong convoy, had upped sticks and left. With Bailey and Harry now back in camp and the Rotary Club gone the average age has dropped from the high 60's to about 59… We are still the youngest on tour…but loving it. We have one more stop to try out the new yabbie net then we make it to the East Coast in Mackay, for 5 days of proper relaxing….ahhh….