Total km – 1883km

After one final coffee we parted ways with the clan this morning, so grateful to have had a few days together but  sadly couldn’t convince them to drop everything and stay on the road with us!

was good to know the coffee shop shared our sentiments

It was an easy but slow road to Charleville, much more windy than we expected given we were in the ‘big country’.

Definitely out in the big skies today

For the first half of the journey we travelled behind a 3 trailer road train. He was travelling at 80 most of the way but unlike the locals we were neither brave enough or foolish enough to try passing with the unknown bends. Thankfully he did let have ‘the smell of money’, coming from his cargo !

We all stopped at the Marven Roadhouse for lunch and we munched through our steak sandwiches quickly to be on the road ahead of the truckie.

And of course no visit to an outback roadhouse would be complete without the obligatory jerky purchase (even if it is made in NZ).

Arrived in Charleville round 2.30. Were staying at the Charleville bush camp- a fabulous camping park about 5k out of town- we are camped up in a beautiful shaded spot under the canopy of  a bottle tree that’s keeping us nice and cool.

Last thing for the day was a visit to the Royal Flying Doctor Service Visitor Centre . It was really informative, they do such amazing work in rural  and remote communities both in terms of emergencies and  health promotion. It was a bit sobering to know they do over 350k emergency flights a year.

Finished our day with a cool drink in our shady spot, salad and some locally sourced lamb cutlets. We have 2 nights here so we are looking forward to being able to  have a relaxed morning tomorrow.

Neighbour just came over and told us they had a brown snake just slither through their cam site EEEEEK. We are now making lots of noise and preparing to scurry into our tent!!!!