Charleville QLD

Another day, another few hundred kilometres…

Today we officially left the tropics, crossing back south of the Tropic of Capricorn.

Our first stop on route was Barcaldine (pronounced Bar-call-din), home of the famous Tree of Knowledge. It was beneath this tree that a meeting was held in 1891 which ultimately led to the formation of the Australian Labor Party.

From there, we continued along a surprisingly busy highway, sharing the road with an endless convoy of caravans and road trains - big ones - and at least one with a pretty scary tail end swagger 😬

Somewhere between Blackall and Tambo we crossed the Wild Dog Barrier Fence - better known as the Dingo Fence - which stretches more than 5,500 kms to the Eyre Peninsula in SA. It was built in the 1880s to protect sheep from dingoes and wild dog and remains one of the longest man-made structures on Earth.

Further down the road, we stopped in Augathella for a happy snap with the town’s giant meat ant - the six legged variety that is 😆

By late afternoon, we rolled into Charleville - home of stars, secrets (so they claim) and some of Australia’s darkest night skies. We checked into the Cobb & Co Caravan Park before joining the grey nomads around the communal fire pit for happy hour, where I’m pretty sure Anth and I lowered the average age by at least a decade 😊 We now have a new wealth of travel knowledge and a thousand more places to explore on future road trips.

P.S. It seems every town out this way is keen to claim a piece of the Qantas story. Even Tambo proudly declares itself the site of the airline’s first crash!Read more