Cobar is called “Copper City”. They found a bit of gold amongst the copper, but that was just used to defray working costs of the mine – a nice problem to have. Although the mines are mostly abandoned now, there still is a lot of copper still – the owners are waiting for the price to rise.

The heritage society had done a great job at rescuing the various artefacts. I fell in love with the fire engine.

I also really want this for my work chair. The red button on the right would be my “publish the new web site” button. I reckon two joysticks would be better than a mouse!

Poor dog has been finding the rocks and burrs of the Red Centre a bit hard going on his paws. We went to the vet to get advice and walked out with four small vinyl boots. After a bit of getting used to, Dog seems to have really taken to them, scampering around more than we have seen for a couple of years. Also, everyone who seems him in them comes over for a chat, so he is getting more pats too, which he loves.

We have been very lucky with good weather. The last place we were expecting rain though was Yulara, near Uluru (Ayres Rock). It was light, but wet enough to be a nuisance. I tied our clothes line under the awning, and that did the trick.

The road from Glen Helen to Kings Canyon was quite an adventure. It was our first long stretch of unsealed road on the trip. I had driven a kilometre in the Barooga State Forest finding Paradise beach, and about 500 metres to get to Stanton Bend at Rutherglen, and 20 km round trip to get to the Australian Museum of Dinosaurs near Winton, but this was a 120 km rattler. While most of the road was find, the few bad patches were horrible to drive – rattling at 40km/h, bone shaking at 60km/h and deafening at 80km/h. We managed to shake off and shatter one or our driving mirrors and dislocate our toilet flap.

The road was pretty straight, but there were a couple of blind bends when we went through gorges. We found the “politically incorrect” street sign shown in the left. I remember it from last time we drove this road (15 years ago). The tin on the other side had been amended from “Put um back down” to “Take a break”.

Soon we came on to Blackwater, which had a huge open cut mine just to the south of the highway. As we disagree with Tony Abbott that the future of Australia is coal, we kept going. Although our goal was Longreach, we decided not to drive 700 km in a day so stopped at Emerald in the Botanic Gardens, where we found 8 other caravans with exactly the same idea.

That evening I went for a walk with the dog and found the maze. Although it was very dark (no moon, just stars), the Meleluka Maze was quite easy to solve as I could see the scuff marks of the foot prints of the previous visitors in the soil. Assuming no-one got lost in the maze, and everyone makes a random choice at each corner, everyone must walk on the right path, but only a few will take the wrong path. So by following the most footmarks, I made the right turn every time. (My brother, Jean-Leo, would ask, “…but what is a crowd of Japanese tourists went into the maze, took a wrong turn and called for a helicopter to get them out?”)

After the maze I did the Celestial Garden, but that was just a set of concentric circles and no challenge at all to solve. I tried to find a wrong path and failed!

On the way back I met a large cane toad in the middle of the path. I shone my torch on it so the dog would avoid it. The dog was curious and stuck his nose against it. The toad just ducked a bit but showed no concern. Fortunately the dog moved on.

On the way back I met a chinese gentlemen with a long beard doing something to the trees with bread. The following morning I heard and found what he was up to.

We stayed in Yeppoon for a few days while pondering whether to head north or west. Eventually we chose west, and have revised our itinerary. Yeppoon in a beautiful spot just in the tropics, but otherwise quite reminiscent of the south coast of NSW. The bird life is quite different. We saw a lot of this bird around the bushes and in the camp site at night.

One night, on a dog walk, we came on a few quite suddenly. The dog chased one into the scrub and disappeared into a bush. I pulled him back and fortunately he had caught nothing. Upon returning to the caravan, I found the dog was covered with burrs.

Carmel and I spent the evening pulling and brushing them all out, with many yips and yelps from the dog. Moral of the story – if you chase after roadrunner, you come off second best!

Later he took the Nissan Patrol around, but I must have been too fearful to take a photo.

I am sure rescuing cane toads is on par with getting involved with foreign wars, so I expect to face the full force of the law on my return,

With the tide turning, we were able to mosey along the riverbank, annoying many birds, fish and rays. The pelican was the most relaxed, watching our approach without disturbing his grooming.

Past the island, the environment changed from mangroves and mudflats, to forest and sandy beaches. We sneaked up on an eagle having a bath.

Further upstream we found a few cormorants to sneak up on a threesome of cormorants or herons – I can’t really tell the difference. They really weren’t bothered by us so we got almost underneath them.

When we found on why, I began paddling quickly. Can anyone see what is to the right of my paddle-head?

Here is the cause of my anxiety. We got to within 5 metres of her before I clued up to the interesting diamond pattern in the tree.

She was about two metres long and did not move. Still, I believe Python’s should be admired behind a nice glass wall with a near label assuring me that it is not deadly. Clare insisted we go back for a better selfie, but if the snake joined us in the boat, no amount of restatement of the word “harmless” was going to stop us from swimming back to camp!