Another big driving day ahead- 780km ThreeWays to Cloncurry which has been reduced from trying to get all the way to Winton due largely to not really getting to sleep until the wind finally died down at 5am. We shouted ourselves brekky at the roadhouse to help wake us up and Matty attempted the truckie’s big brekky which broke him even combined with Tom’s assistance!
We took a left turn out of the roadhouse and headed east towards QLD..... straight into a headwind which messed up our driver’s ideal fuel economy situation for a few hours, almost all the way to the border where we farewelled the 130km signs, lost another half hour and started almost straight away to see the country open up into more grassland plains with some ghost gums starting to appear again.
We stopped at Camooweal not far from border for lunch and drove onwards with Stephen Fry keeping us enthralled for the remaining hours to Cloncurry. A quick ice cream stop in Mt Isa which although I’m sure it has got some appeal wasn’t doing it for any of us being surrounded by mine pits. Just as Stu and mummy were about to part company we arrived in Cloncurry, which, although very much a mining region too was a much more appealing town than Mt Isa. The campground we stayed in was full of mining workers and FREE washing machines and dryers which was most exciting and well utilised by the Whalans. We used the communal camp kitchen for the first time for dins to minimise packup the next day and headed to bed exhausted and with our jumpers on as getting down to 6deg tonight!