Thursday, October 15, 2009

Toowoomba to Barcaldine

Day 2 of our trip is complete. We are at a campsite in Barcaldine, Queensland which happens to have free wireless internet. The rolling hills and trees we drove through yesterday changed to mostly flat roads and scrub bush.  But it's getting hotter as we get closer to the outback and we had to keep the heat on in the Land Cruiser during the afternoon to prevent it from overheating.  There's much less traffic on the roads, but we are seeing a lot of  road trains

We also saw a fair amount of live wildlife today in addition to the frequent roadkill. When we were stopped in Miles earlier today, we saw a small herd of emu.  There were about eight in total.




As the sun was setting, we began to see more and more kangaroos near the highway.  We really had to watch out after dark and honk the horn to get them to move off the road.



 Here's a picture of Alex.  He's dressed interestingly, but at least he didn't hit any kangaroos with the Land Cruiser.  Any live kangaroos, that is. 


In case you were dubious about the campsite with internet, here's picture of our internet hotspot around the picnic table.





And lastly, a picture from dawn on Coogee Beach.  Alex, Andy and Annette stayed in Coogee Beach while Chris and I were in Sydney.  We took a bus to meet up with them the morning before we left for Darwin.




Tomorrow our goal is to get as far as Camooweal.  If we have time, perhaps we'll get to visit Camooweal Caves National Park.


Fiona

(pictures: Chris Pentacoff)

4 comments:

  1. "interestingly"
    Those emu have really funny feet.

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  2. I am enjoying your blog but am worried about your Land Cruiser. It doesn't seem right that you should have to run the in-cabin heater to keep the engine from overheating. Suggest that you have someone at a service station check the coolant level, check whether coolant is actually flowing through the radiator, check that the fan is running, and check to make sure your trailer brakes are really disengaged while driving. Don't try to check coolant level while the engine is hot...dangerous!
    Have a safe trip, and hopefully we will see you in Darwin soon. I will be joining the Stanford team there in a few days.

    john Z

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  3. Wow this very nice post and thanks for sharing the wonderful post.


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    ReplyDelete