Charleville - Sat 10th Oct to Tues 13th October

Charleville is 275 km west of Roma at the junction of the Warrego and Mitchell Highways. We arrived in Charleville about lunch time on the saturday, after we set up camp and had a light lunch we went into the town, we were practically alone there, everybody had gone home! Closed shops and vacant car parks galore. So, we learnt something, there is no business in Charleville after 12 noon saturday until sometime monday morning. Similar to many outback towns, Charleville is a town of very wide streets, with grassy median strips down the centre, some of then with garden vegies like silverbeet, we picked a couple of serves. The following two shoots were taken Monday morning.

We stayed at the Bailey Bar CP, a Top Tourist Park with permanent residents! The amenities were not too bad but the sites were a bit cramped for space. We chose three of the windiest and dustiest days to stay there.


As all these towns use artesian water for their town supplies, users have to adopt different principals when having a shower. As the water comes from the bore "hot" there is no "cold" water as we know it. So you start your shower with just "cold" water and if this is not hot enough for you then had some "hot" water from the water heater. It is not often that you have to use the hot water tap.


We met Michael and Judy at Mitchell and ran into them again at Charleville. Had "happy hour" each day with them and anybody else that came along. On Monday Michael invited us  and two other couples for "tea at three" which included a "secret recipe damper" with jam and whipped cream (really came from the Womans Weekly), this was delicious. Three o'clock ran into four o'clock and then it was "happy Hour" again! Tuesday morning we swapped e-mail address and mobile phone numbers with Michael and Judy and left Charleville, heading for Blackall.

Michael, extreme left and his wife Judy, extreme right. The other two couples were from adjoining camps, the two women were sisters. Judy and I didn't get into a photo.

Graham Andrews Parklands hosts the Outback Native Timber Walk, Steiger Vortex Rainmaking Gun and water course complete with many water birds.

Some old steam engines, with the vortex gun in the background.

The Steiger Vortex Rainmaking Guns. They were a failure in their purpose of making rain but were apparently very spectacular in other ways, they were known to explode, probably with an overdose of charge. You know the adage, more must be better!


A couple of posts ago I posed the question: why was the water blue in one of the photos I took of the Moonie River? Well, the answer is refraction of light, have the sun behind you and refraction of light rays causes the water to look blue instead of muddy.