Longreach 22/10/07 -23/10/07

Swimming in the Thomson River. Longreach gets it's hot water from an artesian bore, and the drinking water from the Thomson River. The land around Longreach very flat and the temperature was 38 degrees. Would you drink this water after we had been swimming in it?

Longreach – Stockman’s Hall of Fame
Called the Hall of Fame because it is dedicated to pioneers, farmers, and stockman who setup the first farms in outback Australia. It was a very hard life. This museum had levels for each period of time, starting with explorers and finishes with drovers.

Every little town we have been through has a war memorial dedicated to local people who fought for Australia. Mitchel and Callum are trying to shoot at a vintage Qantas plane. Luckily, they were arrested and taken away before they could do any damage.





Larks Quarry – 100kms South west of Winton. 23/10/07
Real dinosaur footprints and fossils baked into the ancient mud. This area tells the story of a carnivorous Tyrannous chasing small dinosaurs in all directions. This inspired the dinosaur stampede used in the film Jurassic park. There was a dinosaur robot that Mitch and Callum played with. The country around this site is almost desert (its called Jump Up country).. plenty of lizards.

Yabbie Racing! There is no Lobster flu affecting effecting the racing today.

Winton 24/10/07
Lots of opals around Winton. An opal miner gave us some opals. Winton is the town where the famous song Waltzing Matilda was written.

The world famous Mckinley Library. Mckinley led a search party to rescue the explorers Burke and Wills.

Cloncurry 24/10/07
Cloncurry has the hottest every temperature recorded in Australia – 53 degrees Celsius. When we where there it was 38 degrees so we built a fire.

Burke and Wills Roadhouse
The famous explorers came through here in the 1800’s. Burke later died under a tree after looking for Aboriginals that had helped him earlier.

Boodjamulla National Park ( Lawn Hill) 25/10/07-28/10/07

It is 40 degrees and no electricity for power, Mitchel sleeps outside on the ground between the snakes, spiders and Cane Toads.
Boodjamulla is beautiful. Plenty of wildlife; crocodiles, Barrmundi, Archer fish, Salmon catfish, kingfishers, cormorants and wallabies. We spent much time in the water, and both Mitchel and Callum were to large to for the freshwater crocodiles.

The trip to Boodjamulla was quite a challenge, one lane dirt roads that we had to share with 3 trailer road trains. The dirt roads destroy car tires.. we managed to get through without loosing a tire.. but we did crack the windscreen.

Mitch comes a cropper in the water when someone fell on him, making a gash in his head and sending the local nurse to his rescue. Luckily, after a bit of attention and a good night's sleep Mitch has made a full recovery.

Mitch, Kate and Richard go in search of crocodiles, Callum stays behind to collect firewood and is the only one to see a crocodile.

Mitch and Richard find a wild bore and it runs off in Kate's direction. Kate is not amused....

Willie Wagtails nest, didn't like the look of me, but she would not leave her nest

Swimming in the rapids, the fish swim around you...

New friends.. Brian and Alissa nurse Mitch after his accident, and Ayden lends his bed to make Mitch comfortable. Michael, Lyndel, Rebeka and Connor make the stay in Adels grove great fun.

Capricorn Highway 18/10 to 22/10

Capricorn Highway is in Queensland and runs west from Rockhampton to Longreach along the tropic of Capricorn.

Emerald and Rubyvale 18/10/07

Emerald and the nearby towns Sapphire and Rubyvale are famous for there precious gems. We went looking for gems, this is called fossicking. Callum found the best gem a blue sapphire that could have been cut into a shape. There was 100 year old underground mine that we toured. A boy found the largest Sapphire ever found, while walking home from school, it was the size of an adults fist.

Ochre is used for aboriginal paint, it is brown, orange, red, yellow, and white, and it tastes like salt.

Barculdine 19/10/07

Barculdine houses a museum dedicated to the workers of Australia. There are rooms dedicated to each type of job. Richard and Callum are taking a lesson from teacher Mitchel in the one room classroom. A typical class would be made up of all years from K to 6. Mitchel's favourite room was about the building of the roads (Main Roads Department). Callum's favourite was the big tent that showed prison punishment cell (very scary).

Longreach - 20/10/07 - 22/10/07

Longreach is on Tropic of Capricorn and is flat (very flat and hot!). We visited the Qantas museum and toured a Boeing 747. To get this plane to Longreach, it had to land on a runway that was half the required size for a normal jumbo. The pilot could use only 2 of the 4 engines to land the plane safely. The jumbo is huge (it carrys 400 people) and we found where the black box recorder is kept (can you guess where..?). The black box is actually orange and is used to record the events onboard the plane if there is a crash.

Sydney to Emerald 1/10 to 17/10

Sydney 1/10/07

Callum, Kate and Richard started the trip around Australia, leaving Sydney on Monday 1st October 2007. Mitch had gone ahead to Queensland by plane to a Gym camp.

First night started with a sleep over in a public carpark in Brooklyn, 40 mins out of Sydney.

Gloucester - 2/10/07 - 4/10/07

Callum found this neat swing in rainforest. We camped by the Gloucester river, swimming was very cold. There was a swing near the river that we used to jump into the river. After swimming we found a red belly black snake.

Dorrigo -5/10/07 to 6/10/07

Beautiful rainforest in the Dorrigo National Park. But where's Cally, somewhere in the picture.. can you find him? Rainbow Lorikeets and Rosellas live here, plenty of Bush Turkeys as well. All around Dorrigo are waterfalls. Callum and Richard went swimming in one.. the water is very cold.

Byron Bay - 6/10/07

Byron Bay is the most easterly point on the Australian mainland. Captain Cook sailed past this point and named the surrounding land. A light house was built here to protect the passing ships. Callum would like to live here.

Roma - 13/10/2007

Roma is the centre of a big mining district. The town is in the middle of an ancient artesian basin with natural gas and oil deposits. Roma was the first gas discovery in Australia. The gas was found accidentally in 1900 while searching for an underground supply of water. The land around Roma is flat and dry.
There is a great Gas and Oil mining museum in Roma called the Big Rig!

Carnarvon Gorge 14/10/07 - 17/10/07

Carnarvon Gorge was created by water running through the cracks of rock and eroding the soft sandstone to form a gorge. Many insects are found in the gorge, including blue, red and green dragonflies, bees, many spiders and fly’s.
Many animals live in Carnarvon; Platypus, Pretty Face Kangaroos, Eastern Grey Kangaroos, turtles, Geckos, Skinks, Water Dragon. The most impressive reptile we saw was a Banded or Lace Monitor, which is a large lizard. Far upstream in the gorges, we saw catfish and feral fish. Where's Kate?

There is always a good water supply in Carnarvon Gorge, all year round and during droughts. The Aboriginals liked this place because the food and water supply is good

Mitchel went with the Ranger and learned to catch insects. Many types of butterfly and dragonfly live at the gorge. Armed with a net you can catch, but are not allowed to keep these beauties.