Nomading - Ravenshoe Charters Towers and Belyando Crossing - 7 - 26 June 2022

We are unsure of where we are going at the moment, our objective was to reach Cape York and we have achieved that so now we are heading down south for home but we still have at least two months to get there. The weather is so bad at home at the moment that we are in no hurry to arrive so I think we will drive across country to Cloncurry and then start moving down from there Our first stop is Ravenshoe which is the highest town in Queensland, we have driven through here before but have never stayed and I want to go to Herberton and it is only thirty minutes from Ravenshoe which makes it convenient. We have a few ways to go home from here and I have changed my mind a few times but I will have to settle on somewhere in the next couple of days and plan our next stop. The caravan park at Ravenshoe is at the old railway station and there are a limited number of sites available, I think we were lucky to find a site here. Our neighbours are a few old railwagons in really bad repair but interesting. It is raining at the moment so we will take more photos of the station tomorrow.

We are driving to Herberton today but before we leave the park I want to take a few photos around the Railway yard. The yard definitely needs a little bit of TLC and there is a sign up saying the Railway yard and The Barn, a tourist attraction on this land, are closed at the moment waiting for renovations, I was glad to see this because it could be quite a tourist destination with a bit of work. We drove to Herberton and parked outside the Spy and Camera Museum our first destination, it didn't look much from the outside but we decided to go in and take a look anyway. This is a guided tour and we thought we would go ahead with it, I don't think Robb was too sure to start with but as it turned out it happened to be an excellent tour intriguing the two of us. The owner/guide is a professional photographer and knew everything you needed to know about the cameras on display and the tour took about 40minutes. There were cameras from over one hundred years ago and the ones he demonstrated to us were still all working, he also had photos on display taken by the cameras he showed us and these photos were so clear you could pick out every detail on the photo. The spy cameras were equally intriguing, there were some looking like cigarette packets, buttons and lighters and there was a story to go along with every one of them. The gentleman who originally set up the museum had been a spy and he had cameras from the States, England and Russia. From here we had a bit of a drive around Herberton before driving back to the Mining Museum where we did a self guided tour. There is also an Historic Village but it is huge and would probably take a day to look around so we thought we would leave this for next time. We drove home beside the Misty Mountains which were living up to their name today.

We planned a quiet day today, I had a few business type things to take care of so we planned a coffee at home before taking a good look around Ravenshoe. The weather today has taken a bit of a dive although it is expected to pick up later today, we'll see. We parked at one end of the town centre and then walked up one side and then down the other, it didn't take us long even with the bit of shopping we had to do. We returned to the car and made a decision to drive to Millaa Millaa, probably the best decision we could have made. We stopped on the way at the Millaa Millaa lookout and were greeted by four very attractive chickens who seemed to think we might feed them, we didn't have any food on board decent for chooks so we had to look at their disappointed little faces. The views from this lookout were magnificent, in fact every where we looked on our drive was just a treat for the senses. Back in the car and driving on to Millaa Millaa which we found to be a very pretty little town which seems to exist to support the number of dairy farms in this area. We noticed a sign for the falls circuit and thought that might be fun to follow, the first fall we came to which was only a few kilometres outside of town was Millaa Millaa falls, there were three falls on this circuit and I would just like to say now these were my favourite. We walked down the steps to the viewing area and were very pleasantly surprised, the falls are quite high and at the bottom is a large swimming hole, on a better day I would have joined the lone person in there. From here we drove onto Zillie Falls just kilometres down the road. These falls are different to the first ones in that the fall is not so high and is more gradual but you can see more of the creek feeding the falls. Our last stop is Ellinjaa falls where we had quite a steep walk down to the viewing spot which is on the rocks on the creek beneath. It was worth the walk and the falls are very pretty and different again from the other two, there is also a swimming hole here but we didn't see anyone in there but as I mentioned earlier it is not really that warm today. We drove back home from here being very satisfied with our day exploring.

We've had a very rare lazy day today starting with coffee and a read at home before taking a walk to town and once again up and down the Main Street, stopping at a couple of shops for a look through or to pick up needed items. We stopped at the craft shop that was closed the other day and had a quick look through there, the shop has a mixture of handmade items and commercial products. I have been looking for a diffuser for the caravan but they didn't have anything suitable. When we arrived back to the caravan park we noticed the Barn was open, we had previously been told it was closed for renovations, Robb waited outside while I had a quick look through. I found a cloth shoulder bag which would be perfect for me to carry my zoom lens in when we are hiking. I noticed the front zip was broken which didn't really bother me because the lens would fit in the top opening and the bag was only $6.50. When I took the bag up to pay for it the owner also noticed the broken zip and offered to sell its to me for $2.00, I was happy to take it at the full price so this was a bonus. When we returned to the van it was close enough to lunchtime and after lunch we intend to plant ourselves outside the van as the weather is beautiful and sunny without being too hot.

How did your day go today, better than ours I hope. We left Ravenshoe driving towards Charters Towers and planning to spend the night at The Lynd Oasis Roadhouse. We arrived at Lynd Oasis Roadhouse only to find it closed down but they did have fuel access with a 24 hour payment system. We filled up and then filled our 20 litre can because we weren't sure where our next petrol stop was. We had been driving for two and a half hours, usually our maximum and were now faced with another 3 hours driving to get to Charters Towers. That's ok you do what you need to do. We stopped about another hour on and found a spot to pull in to have a simple lunch of biccies, cheese, dips and salami. Back on the road and then about 125kms outside of Charters Towers we had a Brahma steer run out in front of us. Luckily we had been watching for cattle all the way along and I had told Robb that there were cattle by the side of the road at that time and he had slowed down. There wasn't any time to do anything but push down on the brakes and keep the car straight, luckily the steer turned so that he was running along side of us. Braking we didn't have much control over the car and then had a huge thump on the driver's side. The side mirror was completely taken out as was the caravan mirror, we did manage to find all the pieces and pick them up for insurance purposes. We pulled over and hopped out to inspect the damage to the side of the car which, we still can't believe it, was minimal. We expected the driver's side door to be completely caved in but the only mark was where the mirror had hit the upper door under the window. So a mixture of good and bad luck, we are both a bit exhausted tonight but very thankful because it could have been so much worse. We pulled into Dalrymple Caravan Park and luckily secured a spot for tonight and tomorrow there will be a permanent spot for us. The staff at the park were so kind in that we had told them about our day so they said just to get set up and come and see them in the morning to pay for our stay. Our temporary spot was beside the veggie garden and I was tempted to do a bit of weeding because I kind of miss my gardening, they have a couple of beautiful pumpkins on the ground which look ready to pick. The hens were out and they like to call in to see if you have anything to feed them, I will have to find a agri store and pick something up for them. We are both exhausted probably due to the long drive and the 'incident'. I am pretty sure we will both have a good nights sleep.

We moved onto our permanent site this morning, it didn't take long to pack up and set up and I needed to do a couple of loads of washing so once the washing was out we drove into town to the Visitor Centre to pick up information to plan our next couple of days, we also needed to do a bit of shopping which we quickly took care of. Our priority at the moment is to have repairs to our car after 'the incident' yesterday and we plan to call our insurance company after lunch to try to work out how we are to proceed. On our way back to our van we stopped in at the Olympic van we had seen yesterday at the top of the park just to see if they were aware of the warnings we had on the Swift 500 series stoves which are in all Olympic vans. They weren't members of the Olympic Owners Group and didn't know anything about the warnings so we were glad we called in. It was funny because they live about forty minutes away from us in Victoria, it's a small world. They said there was another Olympic van just down from them so we called in here too and lucky we did because they had problems with their stove with gas leaks and flames coming up where they shouldn't. We returned to the van and had lunch and after that we called AAMI our insurance company and we have sorted something for how we are to proceed, we have a list of names to call tomorrow for repairs and if they are not able to repair the damage we are covered to have emergency repairs taken care of. This is a very pretty park and we are happy we were able to book in here, I have taken a few photos to include with this blog. We also had a very quick look around town, we need to have a much better look as there are so many beautiful old buildings here.

While having coffee this morning we phoned the panel beating businesses our insurance company had given us to see it they would be able to help. We had luck with the second one we phoned and said we would be there shortly to talk to them. We found them easily and spent a bit of time sorting out how we were to proceed. They are going to try to have the replacement mirror sent to them and think it should be there by the end of the week, if it is going to take a lot longer than this we will need to rethink what we are to do because we can't stay here forever. If it does arrive we will extend our time here so that we can have this repair taken care of. From here we drove to Towers Hill a suburb of Charters Towers and then up to the lookout where we had sweeping views over the town and surrounding areas. There is an amphitheatre here but I don't think is it operating at the moment, we drove back into town, stopping off at a couple of the thirty bunkers in the area and had a look inside and listened to the audio podcasts that run thoroughout the day. In town we parked in front of the Visitor Centre, there are a couple of tours I would like to book but when I enquired about the first one they said I needed to contact the company direct to make a booking, I didn't worry about booking the second tour because I wanted to leave our week free to do the Longhorn tour before making any other arrangements. We are now booked in for the Texas Longhorn Tour at 9.00am tomorrow. This is something I really wanted to do so am looking forward to it. When we left the Visitor Centre we walked next door to the Stock Exchange Arcade building, this was the first stock exchange in Australia and the building is quite beautiful and is now broken up into individual shop fronts. We drove back home from here and had lunch and after lunch we packed our chairs in the car and drove over to catch up with two couples in the park that we had met yesterday. We spent a couple of hours here chatting and then returned to our van so that I could prepare dinner.

We set our alarms a bit earlier this morning so that we could meet our tour at the Texas Longhorns meeting point at 9.00 am. We arrived in plenty of time and joined the other people on the tour. We started with a talk from Mick the property owner and then after that we watched a 20 minute video on the history of Texas Longhorns in the States. This is the one tour I really wanted to do in Charters Towers so I was pretty excited to be here. Both Mick and Linda the owners of this property were very friendly and Mick is particular suited to this role as he loves a talk and he loves a good story, He had lots of one liners to share with us but it was all good fun and they both seemed to be very nice people. When we originally checked in Linda asked Robb if he could help them out by driving one of the vehicles we were taking around the property, Robb was more than happy to help out and I grabbed the seat next to him so that I could take lots of photos. After the video we had smoko which was a cup of tea or coffee and there was a magic slice on offer and also a plate of ANZAC biscuits. After smoko we hopped into our cars and we were driven to the Love Shack which is where all the AI happens, this is Linda's job and she was very knowledgeable about the process. Back in the cars and we drove down to the paddocks where all the cattle are. I thought we were only going to see Texas Longhorns but there was a mixture of cattle including a Mexican and African longhorn, Scottish Highland Cattle, Brahmas, Water Buffalo and Bison. We were interested in the fact that the Longhorns were all very different colours. Mick and Linda breed there own cattle and every one of the cows in the paddock were currently in calf or had just delivered and their calfs were with them at the time. All of the various breeds seemed to get on very well together, however, there was a distinct pecking order which they all seemed to adhere to. The Texas Longhorns were all very placid and easy to approach you just needed to make sure you stayed away from their horns. We felt ok taking photos of all the cattle, even close ups, except for the Brahmas who were quite aggressive. We spent quite a while out here and I am sure I wasn't the only one completely fascinated by this tour. We returned to camp and parked our cars and then Robb and I visited the museum where JR's horns are. JR was entered into the Guiness Book of Records for the length of his horns which were 10foot 4 and a half inches, this length is hard to imagine unless you actually pace it out. and then it just seems mind boggling, there are photos of him around the facility and when you see them it is really hard to believe his horns could have been so long. This record has since been broken and JR died of natural causes in 2017. I can safely say both Robb and I loved this tour, it was different to anything else we have done and it was a real treat to see this very special breed. I don't know how I am going to limit my photos on this blog as there are so many I would love to share.

We had notification that power was going to be off this morning at the park between 9.00 and 10.30am so we thought we would call into McDonalds for our morning coffee. From here we drove to the Panel Beaters who are handling our claim for the repairs to our driver's side mirror. We need to know how long the mirror will take to arrive here as we need to let the caravan park know if we need to extend our stay. The park has someone scheduled to come into our spot on Monday which would only give us another two days but we may need to extend for a week and we don't really want to move if we don't have to. The panel beaters will follow up tomorrow on the part and let us know so that we can organise something for our stay and Brad at the caravan park has been nice enough to wait until tomorrow to see if he can organise for us to stay where we are. While I was there at the office I took the opportunity to book in for the spit roast dinner at the park tomorrow night, we were told it was really good and worth attending so thought we would give it a go. From here we drove to the Pioneer Cemetery to read the story of the the area. We pulled into the car park overlooking the cemetery which is in really bad repair, however, the cemetery was used between 1872 and 1895 and we thought worth a visit. There are some really old graves and headstones which were really interesting to read, there were a lot of young people in this cemetery, some of who died in the mines. There were a handful of headstones that had been replaced and that made it easier to read about the people. This was a very sad cemetery because of the condition of the grounds and the graves, it could be a good attraction with a bit of care but there isn't any sign that this will be happening. We drove from here to Burdekin Weir and Waterfall Park which is 13kms outside of Charters Towers. The water is running at the moment and the falls were very dramatic, we were told that they are emptying the dam in readiness for the wet season and are bringing it down to 80+%. There is a lovely park beside the weir which would be very pleasant for picnicking, there are covered picnic areas here, toilets, a children's playground and lots of lush grass.

Our mirror has not arrived so we have booked another week at the park, we can't keep the owners hanging on and they have been very considerate to us pushing our dates out as long as they could. It is going to be a long week because we have exhausted all the main attractions here, I will need to be a bit inventive now. We had booked a tour of the Venus Gold Battery today and had to meet there at 10.00am. We arrived and checked in and waited for the other people on the tour to arrive. John our tour guide was very informative, he has worked here for over thirty years originally in the mines doing every job imaginable and now taking the tours, he was a bit of a character. The tour was good but there wasn't a lot to see there was one main shed and a couple of buildings that were used for processes connected to the extraction of gold from the rock. We sat and watched a couple of holograms telling a story of the Mills and then Charters Towers, one of the holograms was seen through water which was interesting. The tour took 75 minutes but at the end a few of us sat and had a chat to John and this was really interesting and we learnt a lot about the early days of Charters Towers and Millchester. Millchester was a large town here when the gold battery was working but as time went on Charter Towers grew and Millchester declined. John was telling us that a lot of the people from Millchester moved to Townsville and took their homes with them. We drove to the Commercial Hotel in town, we had heard they had a lovely dining room and I wanted to see it, unfortunately the dining room is only open for meal times and we were a bit early. We had a quick drink in the bar and then drove home.

I love it when we have a day that surprises us and that is exactly what happened today. With a limited amount of tourism options left to us we decided to drive to Ravenswood which is an hours drive from Charters Towers. Ravenswood is still an operating gold mining town with a population of approximately 220 people, in it's heyday it had a population of over 5,000 people, all there looking for gold. The attraction for us was the historic buildings in town but we found much more than that when we arrived. We had a quick drive through town when we arrived and noticed a sign for a lookout, we turned off here and drove to the parking lot, from here we had to walk about 400mts uphill to reach the top and it was absolutely worth it. We looked over the large gold mining pit from the lookout, the pit is filled with water and the view is quite spectacular. In town though it is a very different story, the mines are forever encroaching on the town and it's historic buildings. The school has already been moved to another spot and they are in the process now of trying to move the beautiful Catholic Church which is on the road between town and the mines. We spoke to a local in the pub who works at the mines and he is not very happy with the mines movements but as he said they offer enough money to get what they want. While we were at the lookout we had a conversation with two couples who were staying at the Showgrounds, they have visited here many times over the years and have seen the changes, they recommended we visit the Imperial Hotel when we return to town. We drove around town so that I could take photos of the buildings before stopping at the Imperial. The Hotel is indeed worth a visit and after asking if it was ok if I wandered around inside to take photos I was encouraged to do that, they were expecting a group of bikers to come in at any time now and they were staying the night, the rooms upstairs had been prepared for them but I was told I could take a good look around before they arrived. I just managed to do this before the bikes started rolling into town. We had a quick drink and as I mentioned before we had a good conversation with a local gentleman who gave us lots of interesting information. We drove home from here and I took some excellent shots of the Burdekin River when we crossed over the bridge.

We are running out of places to visit from Charters Towers so we started with coffee at home this morning before driving to the Ambulance Museum in the City, this was the first QATB (Queensland Ambulance Transport Brigade) in Queensland. It is housed in an historic building that has had minor changes over the years, there are some very interesting items on display but for us the most interesting was the building itself and the ambulance at the front entrance. There wasn't a lot to see but everything was well presented. From here we drove back to a fair we had passed on our way it wasn't very big but we thought we would stop and look. It turned out to be a youth fair and the tents were mainly promoting youth education and activities in the area. It was still too early to return home so we went in search of the Miner's Cottage we had heard about. Unfortunately this wasn't opening up until 2.00pm today and I don't think we will go back. We had a quick look around the outside and a chat to the gentleman who owns the facility who was very keen to show us an art piece he had made up from iron scraps that cost him $9000+. It was a full size man supposed to be a blacksmith looking across the road where the original blacksmith building was, it was very good and very lifelike so much so that he had been ordered by council to move it from the front yard because of the school children passing the residence. He didn't want to move it especially because he had paid so much so he found an old leather apron out the back and he covered up the offending part of the statue and council was satisfied.

Sunday night we were booked into the Spit Roast dinner at the caravan park, we had originally booked in for Thursday night but because of supply issues it didn't go ahead so once we found out we would be here for another week we transferred to the Sunday night. We had been told of this evening by people we met here earlier on in the week, they had been to the previous Sunday night dinner and they highly recommended it. Before attending the dinner we planned to drive to Towers Hill to watch the sunset, we asked google what time that would be and she said 5.02pm, as it turned out it was not until 5.44pm and we didn't feel like waiting around for 45 mins and decided to drive back to the van and return tomorrow night. We had a fantastic night at the Spit Roast Dinner, there weren't many seats left when we arrived so we asked if we could join a table with two other couples that had two spare seats and they were very welcoming so we sat down and unpacked our tableware. Tanya the parks co-owner was the host and she was hilarious and had us laughing the whole time, The food was excellent we had roast pork, roast potatoes, roast pumpkin, peas, gravy and a roll, a huge plate of food. After the main dish we had a very yummy sticky date pudding with ice cream, a lot of food but we ate it all. We enjoyed the company of the people on our table and conversation about travelling and destinations flowed smoothly throughout the evening. There was a raffle towards the end of the night and I won a bottle of white wine so that was a perfect way to end the night. We parted with the others on our table and thanked Tanya and team for an excellent night.

Our hope for today is that we will hear from the panel beaters to say our part has arrived but alas we didn't receive the call we wanted, we have been told it may turn up tomorrow but we are not holding out much hope. We will have to look around for a temporary arrangement for a mirror so that we can move on at the end of the week. We had shopping to do and prescriptions to fill at the chemist, we were also due for hair appointments so I picked one of the hairdressers from the three available and called in to make an appointment, we were very lucky because they managed to squeeze us in for the next day. We didn't have anything else to do for the remainder of the day until sunset that night. I had misgivings about the prospect of a decent sunset as the sky was intermittently covered with rain clouds and the Kookaburras had been calling at various times in the afternoon. Sunset was to be at 5.44pm so we drove up to Towers Hill at 5.30pm to wait for the 'event'. The sunset itself was less than spectacular but we did get a bit absorbed watching the many rock wallabies bounding from one rock to another, they are so easily camouflaged with the rocks that it was difficult to find them in my photos when I returned.

Charters Towers is a very pretty town with lots of historic buildings, we haven't really had a walk around the Main Street yet so that is our plan for today. Robb was looking for new earplugs for his iPad so we called into a couple of stores on our walk to see if he could find a set, unfortunately he didn't have any luck. We also called into the very large variety store to have a bit of a look around, we couldn't find anything we wanted so we left here and walked across to the little cafe in town where we planned to have brunch. We both chose, as we always do, Eggs Benedict, Robb wanted to have it with salmon but they only did bacon, and we were both hanging out for a coffee because we hadn't had our morning one yet we were saving it to have here. The Eggs Benny was very basic, maybe we had been spoiled by the excellent one we had in Port Douglas, the coffee was good though. We were intrigued that they had the fire going in the cafe, the locals seem to have a saying here that if the temperature is under 20 degrees it is cold and it would have been close to this and indeed you could pick the locals because they were all rugged up, one lady even had gloves on. After brunch we drove to the local Leading Edge store to see if they had the earphones Robb wanted but he didn't have any luck here either.

Thursday morning at 9.00am we finally received the call we wanted from the panel beaters to say our part had arrived. We organised with them to drop the car at 10.30am and someone drove us back to the park. We spent a day around camp but we were very happy to do this because our car was going to be fixed. We were contacted at 2.30pm to say the repairs were complete and they sent someone around to pick us up. We were very happy with the service here and of course very happy to have our car back in one piece, Robb found it very disconcerting driving without the driver's side mirror. We came home and planned our next day, I was over sitting around and we decided to take a drive before returning to Charters Towers for lunch for Robb's birthday.

Thursday afternoon when we emptied the toilet we were unable to close the cassette, Robb had a look at it and couldn't see anyway of fixing it so we will probably just have to buy a new one. The park we are staying at advertise caravan parks so we thought we would try there on the way out Friday morning but unfortunately they couldn't help us. We drove to the dealer in town that sells caravan parts but they didn't have what we wanted either so we have decided to make do and then see if we have any more luck in Emerald when we get there. We are coming back to town later to have a birthday lunch for Robb but in the meantime we thought we would drive out to have a look at the Fletcher's Creek Campground. We had passed this campground on the way into Charters Towers and were amazed at the number of vans there, we like to have power and water when caravanning but lots of people like to free camp and we thought this might be of interest to someone. It is a very pretty spot and very large, it covers both sides of the road and extends back a long way along the river. We drove firstly to Dalrymple National Park and had a quick look, there wasn't much to see there so we drove back to the campground. We had a good look around but unfortunately the septic unit was being emptied at the time and we needed to get away from the smell. We drove back towards Charters Towers, we kept an eye out for Big Bend and Macrossan Campground but found neither and by this time we were close to town so we continued on to Woolworths to pick up the few items we needed and Robb wanted to select a nice steak for dinner tomorrow night on his Birth Day from the butchers. From here we drove on to the Rix Hotel for lunch, every time I had asked someone in town to recommend somewhere to eat this was the first place they mentioned, so now after eating here I can see why. The dining room sits nicely between fine dining and casual eats, the service was fit for fine dining and the food also fit into this category. As usually Robb and I decided to share our meals so we chose two dishes and asked for separate plates for serving. The first dish we chose was Pork Belly three ways so three pieces of pork belly on a plate sitting on avocado and parsnip foam and on top of each individual pieces of pork belly were scallops, prawns and chorizo. A stunning dish but only one of the pieces of the pork belly had good crackling, taste was good so we overlooked this. The second dish was pork ribs with chips and coleslaw, this was the better of the two dishes and the pork just fell of the ribs, the coleslaw was very tasty and the chips surprisingly were good.All up it was a good start to Robb's birthday celebrations. We are returning to camp from here, we will pack up what we can in the afternoon and hitch up ready to move on.

It would have been a 5+ hour drive to Emerald from Charters Towers so we thought we would have an overnight stay on the way. Belyando Crossing was just over two hours away and there is a roadhouse and caravan camping out the back, we thought that might be a good stop. We filled up with fuel before driving around to the powered site and at $2.49.9 for diesel this was the highest we had paid so far. We didn't have water here but our tanks should still have had a bit in them so it wasn't a problem, our biggest issue was the lack of service for internet. After setting up and having lunch we walked over to the bar and set up at one of the tables to be able to get some service but it was still a bit scratchy. While we were there we checked out the dinner menu, there was only 6 dishes on offer but we had been told the food was good. Because we are restricted with our cooking at the moment with the recall on our stove and not wanting to get the Weber out for one night we thought we would have dinner in the roadhouse, also it would be another celebration for Robb's birthday. We returned to the van in the afternoon and had a birthday call from our son and we had so much to say we didn't return to the roadhouse until after 7.00pm for dinner. We both ordered the Lamb Shanks, Robb managed his but I needed a doggy bag to take back, we had a lovely night talking occasionally to the staff and locals but still returned to the van and had an early night. We are driving on tomorrow to Emerald and hoping to find a park when we arrive.