At this place I saw them form on blades of grass. They also form on boulders, street signs and metal posts. Oddly, they never seem to form on dead wood.

From the simple beginnings, they seem to grow organically.

Just over the border we pulled into a rest stop for the evening. So did everyone else!

The Leichhardt River itself was mostly dry. Dog and I had many pleasant walks along it. But despite our efforts, we could get no closer to it.

There are many interesting things to do in Mt Isa, but we all had run out of steam by then, so mostly did housework and arrange some repairs. In the end, the ubiquitous dust (and lead {Pb} warnings) drove us on.

Winton is proud to host three unique species of dinosaur – a raptor called Banjo (shown above) and two sauropods called Matilda and Elliot. However, the labratory at Winton (on a jump-up off the highway) has a ten year backlog of excavated bone waiting to be cleaned up. All the digging and cleaning is done by trained volunteers. The digging is done for only three weeks of the year – that is enough to refill the backlog. The guide said that the bones were everywhere.

The cleaning was being done in the lab as we toured. There were eight cleaners sitting with large magnifying glasses and using what looked like dentist drills to remove the rock from the fossils. The guide said they were closer to jackhammers.

I chatted to one of the volunteers who was a bit older than me and was proudly describing a fossil he and an 81 year old colleague and found earlier. (It was the size a large eski.)

A volunteer needs a few hours training and ten days support to be fully trained. Thereafter they can return as often as they wish. This is what I want to do. I shall return!

Interestingly, underneath the dinosaur fossils are a bed of marine fossils – there was an inland sea at Winton. From these beds, there were beautiful fossils of crabs, crayfish, mussels and the ubiquitous nautilius.

On the approach to Longreach, the first thing you see is a QANTAS 747 tail.

What you do not realise until much closer is that there are two tails; the second is for a 707, but it is dwarfed.

This might have been the plane I first flew to Australia in – that was a 707 from San Francisco.

The QANTAS Founders Museum is quite good, with many models of planes, that give you an idea about how brave those founders were.

There is also a Stockman’s Hall of Fame with a great set of exhibits on pioneer life, including a great section on the Flying Doctor Service.

There is a lot of bird life in Longreach. The amazing ones are the Brolgas which are a bit tame ans visit the caravan camp looking for a feed. At over a metre tall, you are not inclined to disappoint.

This town is also on the Tropic of Capricorn.

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!

I particularly loved the picture of his parent’s home in Bundaberg with his plane parked in the back yard.

Unfortunately I did not get long at this fascinating museum on early flight as the dog began complaining loudly outside.

Like countless other towns in Australia, Bundaberg is famous for its Japanese Gardens. I am going to need to add a category to this blog called “Japanese Gardens” there are so many of them.

I think the dog was showing a bit of ennui as we walked around these. Fortunately, they were not too big – more of Bonsai Japanese Gardens!

These gardens are part of the Bundaberg Botanic Gardens, which also features Chinese Gardens. These were very small too, but made for a nice photo.

The larger gardens feature a huge lake filled with ducks and turtles. On an island, the ducks look like a rockery.