The top end

Sorry it's been a while since our last update. We've spent most of the last week on the road heading into the outback and across the Queensland state border into the Northern Territory. It's a bloody long way and there's no way to express just how big and empty this country is! We've travelled almost 2,000km - about 1,200 miles - this week. In that distance, we've seen about 3 or 4 towns with more than 1,000 people living in them.

We left Townsville with our new fuel pump and headed inland. Our first stop was at the junction of the Flinders Highway where you turn off to Mingela. This was a lovely side of the road where we spent a couple of hours waiting for the breakdown truck to come and get our van started. Nothing too dramatic thankfully, just a blocked fuel line.

We were on our way to a tiny place called Ravenswood, which had been recommended to us and is 30 minutes off the main highway. The town consisted of two pubs and a shop. It's a mining town with 700 residents (400 of which are miners) and as far as we could tell, the whole place is heritage listed so almost all the buildings date back to the gold rush era, and haven't changed a bit. There's still a working gold mine there so we went up and had a nose at that which was very interesting (and free!).

The first main town is Charters Towers, another funky town built during the gold rush, and we had a couple of nights there. We got to meet a great character there who has a mocked-up old miners house, and he gave us a few tunes on the accordian to accompany our visit. Charlotte had a go too!

A few hours west along more of the longest and straightest roads you can imagine we arrived in Hughendon, where we had a quick look round before travelling a bit further to Richmond. The selling point for these places is the dinosaur fossils, but our budget kept us out of the museums and things.

Some more hours and straight roads led us to Cloncurry. The great thing about this place was that just an hour down the road was the pub where they filmed Crocodile Dundee! We couldn't miss that opportunity and so stopped there for a quick beer. The locals are clearly very proud of the film, as any questions about it are answered with, "what film?"

Next stop was Mt. Isa; another mining town, this time Copper. Here we did a neat tour of a mine, got to have a go on the drills and see all the machinery up close. It was superb which was a small surprise as we thought it might be a bit Disneyland, but was actually really hands on and authentic.

Back on the long and straight roads again, and we arrived at the junction where we stop heading west, and start heading north. But we went south, to Tennant Creek, and then on to the Devil's Marbles. These are a large group of rocks that sit precariously on top of on another. It's a strange quirk of nature and well worth a look.

Although Alice Springs was closer to us than Darwin at that point, that was as far south as we could afford to go so it was north again to a place called Elliot, and then last night we stayed in Mataranka, which has some natural springs, a bit like Mossman Gorge. Yes, we did swim in this one, although to be honest the fact that it's a thermal pool which sits at 34°C all year round did help.

Last night we met Simon and Donna, from Crewe and Newcastle-Under-Lyme respectively, and had a few drinks with them and talked about how we miss Wright's pies. They're also looking for work so we'll probably see a bit more of them before we leave this area. This morning we wandered down to the river and watched the freshwater Crocs, and then had another swim in the pool. Freshwater crocs aren't dangerous, by the way! Unless you poke them with sticks, presumably.

We didn't poke them with sticks (couldn't reach).

And now, we're in Katherine but we'll soon head to Darwin because we've been told that there is DEFINITELY work there. So we shall be working soon again unless you choose to send us aid.

Please.

Meanwhile, here's the path we've followed so far (up to Mt. Isa):