"On the road again" and ain't it a rough one!

We finally pulled up stumps and left Jondaryan Woolshed on Wednesday morning, it was a little sad to be leaving but also exciting to be travelling again especially as we are now heading for the N.T. to visit with Stuart, our youngest son and his girlfriend Alex, will be great to catch up with them...and hopefully the Barra are biting in the Victoria River!

The staff at Jondaryan made a public presentation of flowers to Lucille at morning tea time on Tuesday, she was a little chuffed! and Lucille being Lucille had also bought flowers for them! A women's thing I reckon, anyway was great to be appreciated and to be asked back again in the future, time will tell.

Wednesday we drove to Morven where we camped at the local Recreation Ground, very nice with good showers and toilets for a $5 donation for the night, about 30 vans camped there and you may stay a maximum of one week.

Today we travelled from Morven through Augathella, Tambo, Blackall, Barcaldine, Longreach and finally bedded down for the night at a roadside camp at Morella, about 60k's N.W. of Longreach, only about four vans here tonight.

Weather has been good the last two days as we have finally got some warmer temperatures, around 28degree mark.
All going well but know wonder the Queensland Govt. is going broke as every road we travel on is damaged from the floods and are laying in a state of disrepair or they are being worked on and in some cases the old roads abandoned and new ones being made.

As you might have gathered we are not doing a lot of touristy things on this leg of our journey, a bit of a bolt to the Territory.

Any way laptop nearly out of battery and no power here so thats it fior now
Cheers Chris

Ps To Harry and Cal, great to have a chat the other night, hope to talk again soon

Waltzing Matilda Centre

Just a bit more info on Ned Winter who I wrote about in my last post, just the other day I found out that Ned is the voice of the narration at the Winton Waltzing Matilda Centre, I'm sure many of you have heard it.

"Ned's Corner"

Today we had a thick frost, heavy fog but eventually a beautiful sunny day, just right for a drive so Lucille and I went with Geoff and Anne Lees, who have been here with us for several days and headed off to Cecil Plains, Millmerran, Pittsworth and back to Jondaryan, drove for many miles through the flat farming land of the Darling Downs, have not seen so much cotton before in my life, it was everywhere.

The main destination of our drive was to "Ned's Corner", this place is owned by Ned Winter and we got to know him here at Jondaryan where he has been a volunteer worker and entertainer since the early 80's, (I have repaired a couple of his whips, one a 22 foot bullock whip) his property, "Ned's Corner" is a 1700acre farm that he and his wife developed over many years into a tourist business centred around camping on the property and camp oven cooking, especially damper and stew cooking, the "cookhouse" is a large bough shed that will accommodate large bus groups and they are fed and entertained by Ned and his helpers, it is full of Australiana "stuff", photos and Ned's Poems, they have now closed the bus tours and plan to sell the property and retire next year.
Geoff asked Ned if he had any stock on the property, he thought for a moment and replied, "well you must have seen the couple hundred Roo's as you drove in", which we did, they were everywhere, "oh and we have two camels out there somewhere" he said,; the roos are here because he has built protective fences to preserve the wildlife and they have a free run of the place, the camels are here to eat the prickly pear and apparently they do an excellent job of it.
Anyway Ned cooked us a very nice damper for lunch and we washed it down with billy tea and spent a few hours listening to his stories(of which he has many), poems, singing and guitar playing, he really is a character. He is also the instigator and first organiser of the Great Australian Camp Oven Cooking Competition that is held very year at Millmerran, the first year he had three teams and a handful of spectators, last year they have over 7,000 spectators and many of them camped on and around the showgrounds for the festival.

We are all ok except for Lucille who managed to slip over while walking down a ramp from the verandah of the dining room, quite a few sore bits and and a skun arm, not happy...see photo.

Won't be long now before we head for the N.T. to catch up with Stuart and Alex, at this stage plan to leave here on the 25th July, spend a few weeks there then back here at the end of August to be here for the Jackie Howe Golden Shears festival, it is expected to be a huge event, for those that are like me and not into sheep, Jackie Howe was a famous hand shearer who held shearing records for many years and he is also famous for inventing the "Bluey" singlet, he told his mum that the sleeves of his flannel was to hot and could she cut them out, she did and the idea caught on.

The photo below is a camp oven that holds 45lbs of flour/damper mixture

We are still here

Hello everyone, thought I better report in and let you know that we are still alive and well, there has not been much to report this last few weeks, we have won the mice war which is nice but we are still leaving our traps set just in case.

The weather has been freezing the last few days, heavy frosts, sunny days but very cold Southerly winds, at least it has stopped raining. (I guess it's not cold in Hobart Pete/Kate?)

The other night a couple of stray dogs ran amock with some of the farm breeding sheep, killing a couple and seriously injuring quite a few others, the staff not happy, especially when the Council Ranger caught the dogs and advised that the owners would most likely have them back by the next day.

Will update again soon

Cheers Chris