I overslept this morning and missed the first light of the day but given the amount of dust in the air it probably was a good thing. When I first got up I thought it was fog - but no folks - that's dust! We had noticed yesterday that Longreach had a dust warning. If it was this bad here I'd hate to have been in Longreach today.
An early morning visitor at the tap was happy to pose for a photo.
And the dust got thicker!
Back on the road around 9.30am and heading south again this time on the Landsborough Highway.
The vegetation was changing throughout the trip, always very dry but varying degrees of trees and shrubs along the way. It was very windy and once again the road was pretty bad in places making for a fairly unpleasant trip.
The Fatigue Zone appeared again - the question was a little difficult this time though......
And the further we went the thicker the dust got.
Along the way there was the township of Blackall - home to.........
the not so big kangaroo.....
and equally not so big Merino! Blackall however obviously has a decent water supply as it was noticeable how many homes had green grass both in the yard and on the nature strip.
Once out of Blackall it got dryer and even the trees disappeared.
We arrived at our planned stop Tambo just around lunch time and headed out to the river to a free camp.
It was a super spot and we were fortunate to be just the second van there so had our choice of position alongside the river. Once set up I took the opportunity to take a walk around the area to see what was there. The actual freecamping area is huge and on two levels. One by the river and an upper level closer to the road which runs to the local racecourse. Apparently it is very popular in the peak season but I wouldn't be that keen to camp on the upper level because it is essentially a dirt paddock with no trees. From my perspective the only real down side to the camp was the barking of a group of dogs nearby - I counted at least 5 and they aggressively barked in the distance virtually non stop well into the evening. I pity the poor people who have to live near them all the time.
We settled back with a wine and some nibbles by which time we had been joined by at least another 7 caravans and I thought I should check how the sunset was going. At first I thought this was the moon, but then remembered it wasn't yet a full moon - no - this was the sun being almost completely blocked by the dust. It was certainly an eerie sunset.
By this time the temperature was really starting to plummet and so we packed up everything outside, rugged up and spent some time reading in the van. Sadly our days of 30 plus degrees are over! Time to acclimatise for the cold weather at home.
211km
Total - 11,173 km
Top today 21°c - expecting overnight 10°c
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