Great circuit
Where are we now:
Round Water Hole Rest Area 4km from Chinchilla
Preparation for this Trip:
It has always been a given that we will travel in Australia, each time we travelled overseas Rob kept reminding me that he wanted to “do” Australia. He didn’t mind where, he just wanted to go exploring I wasn’t totally adverse to the idea but just wanted to keep travelling overseas. Then Rob retired in September 2014 to enable us to buy a motorhome and travel in America – read about that in Ann’s Space in the USA . We ended up having 2 trips to the states and in between in November 2015 we purchased a SLR 4wd Expedition Truck. Isuzu NPS300 with a home on the back complete with queens sized bed, dining area, kitchen and ensuite with toilet & shower and plenty of room underneath for storing our gear. Over the last year we have been slowly making improvements with greater emphasis in the last 3 months when I had 12 months leave approved. These 3 months flew by making lists, doing research, spending treasured time with family, buying a modular kayak (our previous one was too difficult to load) and then building a carrier rack for it. All our personal possessions were already in storage so all that was left to do was to pack up but this took longer than planned fitting everything in our vehicle, bulk buying of staple foods and clothes for 4 seasons.
Travel tales to get where we are today:
We left Brisbane on 4th April 2017 with lots of last minute cuddles from our daughter and 2 Granddaughters rather sad not knowing when we will be able to give each a hug again but so thankful that we live in a era where we can Skype and share glasses of wine and watch the children grow and develop. Our youngest granddaughter is only 15 months so it will be she who changes the most. We had seen our other daughter and 2 grandchildren just the week prior so long cuddles and hugs there also.
We have a vague plan for our first month staying mainly in Queensland so we headed west and spent our first night 4km off the Warrego Highway at Bowenville Reserve. A large free camp area with only a dozen other campers, due to the rains following cyclone Debbie the Oakey Creek that runs beside the camp area was rather brown but this didn’t detract from the area. It was peaceful which I’m sure helped us both in sleeping 11.5 hours on the first night of our adventure. Yes packing up had been exhausting but worth taking our time to make sure nothing was missed.
After our great sleep we were ready to get on the road our first stop was to explore Jimbour Station, an old homestead about 20 minutes from Dalby. A beautiful property which is well maintained, while there was no entry to the house as this is still a private residence we enjoyed wandering the gardens and having a chat to the caretaker. Then it was a short drive to see some of the dingo fence – I was surprised to learn that this is still maintained by a number of teams and in doing so saves millions of dollars of cattle and sheep being destroyed by dingoes each year.
Taking some back roads we saw what appeared to be dead bats in trees, interesting ants nest and even a fox going for a stroll. We pulled into our overnight stop about 4pm to find that there was no one else here so enjoyed watching all the birds and jumping fish in the lagoon before having our first campfire and another early night.
Ann's Space In Australia 