The long drive from Daly Waters to Brisbane

We left Daly Waters and began the long and boring drive to Brisbane. It was long and pretty boring but we managed to break it up a bit and it actually wasn't too bad. It's hard to imagine the landscape out here. There literally is areas where there is nothing but road and dry grass as far as you can see, no trees even.

We had a momentous moment when we hit Three Ways, the line on our map finally joined up. Just thousands of kms, dollars and a few years later! We were all pretty excited.  Its been a long time coming, with lots of adventures along the way.

We kept driving with an overnight stop in the middle of no where before we crossed the Queensland boarder. Farewell to the territory but we're excited to be in Queensland.

We love Facebook while we travel, it helps us so much to keep in touch with all our travelling buddies. We were lucky enough to meet up with two more travelling families for a night in Mount Isa as we all crossed paths heading in different directions. It was a great night of chatting and laughs with the Goughs and the Mercers.

Angus, Fred, Kellie, Duncan, Liam, Mark, Me, Charlotte, Lily, Lexie and Jake

The boys uniform

Big Big burger

We left the Isa and stop off and had a look at the old ghost town Mary Kathleen. It was an interesting place, lots of old streets and house slabs everywhere. We even parked the cruiser on the old tennis courts.

We drove for a few hours more then stopped at a rest stop for the night. The next day we had lunch in Winton and reminisced about our time there a couple of years ago. Not much has changed! Except our kids are bigger.

We kept driving and pulled into Longreach for the night. Another country town that we loved exploring last time.  We had a walk down by the river and left the next morning.  

We called into Barcaldine and had a little look. It's a pretty nice and surprisingly busy little country town. They have this beautiful old Tree of Knowledge in the centre of town but a few years ago someone poisoned it. Now it's been restored and a really cool wooden structure has been built around it.

Then we set up camp at Lara Wetlands for two nights. We had such a lovely time, so nice to stop for two nights in one spot. We did some school work, had an explore and just enjoyed ourselves. The place is owned by a Jo, whose on her own now as her husband sadly died in an accident a few months ago. There is a lovely couple, Bill and Fran volunteering and helping Jo. 

By far my favourite toilet block yet! So quaint and gorgeous.

Jo has ten horses that roam around the property. They are very friendly especially if you bring carrots and bread. Little miss Charlotte loved it of course!!  I liked them too until they got a little close and I ran back to the safety of the car.

The property has a beautiful wetlands that is fed from an artesian bore. At the camp ground they have this fabulous hot artesian pool. Each night once it was dark and had cooled down we had a lovely soak in the pool. Such a pretty place with fairy lights strung up along the fence. A fabulous way to spend an evening, except for the noisy kids with us!

Fran was nice enough to take us on a tour of the old homestead that is in the process of bring renovated. They are also setting up a small museum with lots of interesting bits and pieces from the farm.

Fran was also nice enough to lend us her kayak. Jake had a great time paddling around the wetland trying to get close to the pelicans.

And of course we had a campfire and toasted marshmallows. Was a sad moment though, as we sat there sitting around the campfire enjoying the serenity. We realised that this might well have been our last campfire on this trip. We made up a song, lit some sparklers and fare welled another of our favourite parts of the trip. We are so looking forward to going home but we are finding it hard to be ending our adventure. We could easily stayed a few more days or weeks at Lara but we had to kept moving.

The day we left Lara we planned to drive as far as we could, hoping to be to Roma. But that didn't work out, the weather sorted that out for us. The clouds rolled in the sky got dark, it poured with rain, thundered, lightening and very windy. So we pulled over for the night. Now that was hard, we'd come from 35+ temperature days to suddenly freezing and horrible. This is definitely going to take some getting used too!!!

Goose bumps

The next day we did a big 600km drive and arrived at our friends in Brisbane for a few days. We were certainly glad that drive was over!!