Blackbutt

 Blackbutt is just 100 KMs from home and they have a great bakery there so of course it was a good place to stop for lunch.

I walked up the street while Warren queued to get served.

Unfortunately we were too late for pasties and he didn't want to buy pies. We knew from previous experience that the pies from there, can't be eaten while driving, so he bought cream buns. Also a bit difficult to eat while driving but at least they were quicker to eat before we got going again.

I found a great painted mural on my quick walk.

It was quite massive.

This is a close up of the train. 

No train goes through here now but they have turned the railway track into a rail trail for bikes, horses and walkers.

We rode from here down to Moore about 27kms for Warren's 70th birthday.

Mitchell to Miles

 My turn to drive and of course there is roadworks and a detour coming into Roma. We used to drive longer in a day and would do a couple of hours each and then swap over.

Every time I drove it either rained or there were roadworks or something else. One time, I had to drive through no less than four river crossings. Well, there was water over the road on four occassions, in one stint.

Warren does most of the driving now with descent stops.

We stopped at the Big Rig in Roma,never been there but think it's about drilling.

We were headed to an old cottage to answer a question.

We could only walk into the hallway and look, it appears to only have three rooms.

The question we needed was how many kids do this couple have, the answer was nine. 

A driller was across the road.

From Roma it was an easy drive into Miles where we were staying the night.

Mitchell

 Was two hours along the way, we stopped here on the way out and the coffee was good.

Today there was no one in the pools or cafe when we got there.

Warren was chatting a couple on the way in so I went ahead and ordered, a coffee each,  a scone jam and cream for him and a savoury muffin for me.

It became lunch. Did not expect that, think it was $6.

These are the artesian pools, apparently very good for you. The far one is between 39 and 40 degrees and the other is 20 degrees.

There is a stained glass window between the street and the pools.

Goodbye Charleville

 Time to go home but first there is a parkrun to do.

6.55am saw us the local park, the Graham Andrew park. As it is domestic violence month, there were flags galore, many people were wearing a variation of them and many of the volunteers were from the community groups assisting these groups. Volunteer days was earlier in the week as well.

I took a photo of the start, Warren is all in black about in the middle. He

did 37.47 today, came in 17th and first in his age group.

I left to walk back into town the the Milk Bar. It was the place to meet after the run. I ordered breakfast when I got there about 7.30am, to give us a head start for the day.

Back to camp, Warren had a shower while I did my bit of packing up then he did his bit, we were on the road at 9am. We wanted to drive 400kms to Miles our overnight stop.

Usually loose plans as we don't ring and book until lunch. 

Charleville day five

 We headed south today, I had planned on going to a certain spot which would net us 10,forgot about the limited service. Luckily service did just come in when we were at a bridge. There was a disaster back in 2014, luckily and they don't know how but no one was seriously hurt.

We did a tree fishing on the way back in.

Broken bridge

Tree fishing this was a very short easy one

Historical gates at the showgrounds.

The mosaics have been done by the kids at school.

There is a primary and high school here, seven caravan parks, six cafes about four pubs.

Lunch today was at the Paris cafe, I had a ham of the bone sandwich with usual salad and an extra was roast peppers.

Next door was the laundermat and the other side was a drive thru drinks place, serving coffee, smoothies, milk shakes, fappes, no food just drinks. I was surprised that it made enough to be viable.

Charleville day four.

 Bit of a disappointing day with only eight caches found. We did replace two of a letter box series. We could see grass on the fence up to the third strand of wire behind where they had placed. I sent a message to cache owner if she would like us to replace them. 

Bought a couple of large boxes at the $2 shop, a can of paint and some rope to tether them. I had log books and stamps in my geo caching box that I carry in the car.

Finished off a couple of adventure labs which had bonuses with them, that wasn't straight forward, lots of adding and subtracting, did that while waiting for lunch.

Got beaten up by a bouganvilliage bush, left a bit of blood, that was the only did not find for the trip.

Painted silo, had to send proof that we visited with name on. 

Memorial in middle of town

Tiny tiny flower growing on the banks of the roads.

As they need to keep rolling the roads, the banks on either side can be quite high, great for hiding stuff.

Charleville day three afternoon.

 There was a WW11 secret American base here from 1941, so secret that no one knew about it. The towns people were sworn to secrecy and any communications, letters or phone calls were monitored.

Still a bit cloak and dagger ish as it was reported that there were 30,000 soldiers here altogether. Seem to think there were more because of the infacture.

The museum was only put up three years ago.

As we are both military veterans we were free but after the tag along tour, I made a donation. We followed an old troppy land driver through the bush.

These were the baths that soldier had to go through every week, not to get clean but to ward off any bugs, it was similar to a sheep dip.

Can't see much in this photo but it was one of the shower and toilet blocks, the holes for the toilet outlets were still there, 20 in a row and about 4 rows.

Royal flying doctor service use this airstrip now but apparently there were large bunkers for about 15 KMs and many of the planes and equipment are buried there.

The bomb vault

This was the secret. When used in a bomber it increased the hit to 70% from 20%, apparently it changed the war. It is held in a locked bunker.

There were 25 units of  Australian Army and Airforce personnel here in Charleville from 1942 to 1947, so a hell of a lot of people.

The tag along tour took almost two hours and then another 30/40 minutes seeing the exhibits.

Charleville day three morning.

 We were following plaques caround the town and outskirts. Thank goodness there was a story with them otherwise, there was not much there. First one was a brewery not far from our camp site.

 However, it closed shortly after opening due to unsuitable water, I guess it was in 1890s so could see why. The water here is bore water and very soft to shower in but does have a definate smell of sulphur, we have been using it to make coffee and can't taste any difference.

Then a plague about the smith bros and their attempt to fly from London to Brisbane in 1919, prize was 10,000 pounds if they did it in 30 days.  They were stopped and interigated in Turkey and then came down in Charleville where they had to wait for a piston to either be made or repaired, it took 52 days.

We did three, then headed to the airport for lunch, it's only about 3 KMs out of town.

Charleville day two

 The plan was to travel out of town collecting a series of mailboxes. Letterboxing started in the states even before geocaching and basically it was a bit of to work out where the letterbox was located. In Aussie it's more simple like a traditional but with a stamp inside to stamp the finders book.

We just go and find them log as normal. The series was the signs of the zodiac.

First one was Aries the ram, inside the big bucket was a toy sheep, bales of wool on abase of artificial grass. Two little containers, one with log the other with stamp. Most were the same depending on what it was called. 

Back in town we went to this park and had to find different trees and answer questions, very pretty park, the waterfall was at the start.

A camera setting up place, I am sitting on the big red chair, my toes are in the foreground.

This is the big red chair, couldn't find any info on it. Three steps to the side to get up on it. Just after Warren set up the phone on timer, a lady walking her dog offered to take our photo.

Nice park, there was a shag on a rock but too far away.

 Back in town, we had lunch at the Blue Gem cafe. We aim to have lunch at a different place each day. Sounds extravagant but we are on holiday and spreading the dollars. First day was the bakery.

We went our separate ways, me to the op shop where I bought some wool and cotton yarn. Warren went to the $2 shop to buy a couple of containers. Two of the letterboxes had been washed away in the recent flood. We know the owner and had sent her a message about replacing, she said yes please. On the fence line behind the missing two, grass had been caught up on the third strand so the water had rushed through there.

I passed the library and the above photo was what was outside.  Dog parking with full water bowls and next to that was a pile of free mystery sticks. Someone has a sense of humour. On my way back there was a dog lying alongside the water bowl, must have been a local as no lead in sight.

Charleville day one

 Our main reason for coming here is to cache so we arrived about two and set up. We are at a bush caravan park, 1.5kms from town. No smoking, no vaping and no pets is the rule, no kids are here either but that's probably more to do with, it's not school holidays.

It was a cold night,heater and extra blanket in use.

We headed out the Quilpie road and collected ten caches, varying between small to regular, reasonably easy finds except one called Too much fun, it was at a rest stop with toilets, quite new looking toilet block and shelter, no rafters in hide in, not under the seats or table. We were scratching our heads thinking maybe it had gone. I looked up and pointed out to Warren why it was called Too much fun. There was a sticker or magnet on the top rail of shelter that had Too much fun club on it. He got up on the table and there was a very small tube looking like one of the bolts! Sneaky thing.

Here Warren is signing it, container is alongside between him and the pen.

Replacing it

Large photo of the area on one of the galleries.

Mitchell

We stayed here last night, quite cold. Had to find our extra blanket during the night. Only 180 KMs to do today so we did an adventure lab in town, prepared by JACS, our daughter.

First point was photo above. Two bush rangers had been chased after stealing a pony, one policeman and a station owner were shot and killed. The pair were brothers and escaped capture for a few months. Patrick was caught, this is a sculpture showing the two police standing over him, he is on the ground with the aboriginal tracker at the back facing away. Patrick was hanged at Brisbane Boggo goal. He was unarmed when captured and his brother Jim had two loaded rifles when they found him and he surrendered, he received 12 years in jail. It's understood that these two were the last of the bush rangers in 1902/03.

Then we returned to town for a nice walk around, gathering other info. This bull is a sculpture using discarded hardware. Springs, Tin snips, spanners were some that we identified.

Cattle yards that had interesting gates to walk around the race.

Inside the race is a xylophone using large pipes. The dongas are held there with rubber covered chain. Warren got a tune out of it, I made noise as I don't know what notes follow which ones to sound good.

This was an interesting seat in town.

Lamp posts and seats had mosaic decorating them. It was pretty quiet and I despaired of finding a coffee shop, then I saw a big sign with coffee on it. It was at the artesian spa, several people were in the pool. We had not given it a thought but apparently that's why many visit. They did good coffee.

 

Dalby

 Finally we are on our way west. It was to have been earlier but needed to have wheel bearings and brakes looked at on the camper trailer. There was a four week wait! We took the earliest time, Friday morning and booked Lucy in for dog sitting.

Warren had a drs visit to get results of the scans on his shoulder, he needs physio and rest, although doctor did ask if he wanted surgery. Not likely!

Caravan place finished at 1pm, as it was poets day although the boss had not heard of it. Poets day, piss off early, tomorrow's Saturday. 

We left town about 1.30, luckily we only planned to go to Dalby. Park run starting with a D. We chose to stay at a park that we hadn't been to before as it was an easy to walk to shops and parkrun. I didn't pack any food as it was possibly be a few hours before we could access the fridge and freezer.

Woke to a foggy morning and cold, 9 degrees.

He ran with his Steptoe gloves.

My job apparently was to take photos so murals on a toilet block along the path.

Motivation messages along the path.

Warren doing a Cliffy Young shuffle 

This dog couldn't wait to get going at the start and started braying, think he was looking for the fox.

Ducks on the river/waterway.

Hard to see but Dalby grows cotton and we passed several crops of cotton.

Costco

 I joined Costco a few years ago in June at a cost of $60, it's now $65a year. I received an email reminding me that our membership was due.

I thought long and hard about it, should I renew or not? We usually only shop there two or three times a year. I decided that we would go and suss out the "savings" before committing.

As we were almost out of milk, it was off to Costco a day earlier than my usual shop. Warren went to fill up while I walked into the supermarket part.

He caught up to me and said that he had had to pay the membership before fueling the car.

Looks like we are members for another year at least.

This was our haul.

Butter cheese and milk, bought a carton of ten milks for $17.50, usual price is $2.10 a litre.

I want to try to go more often and see what savings I can make, petrol is always a few cents cheaper and it seems a long way to go but it is only 17ks rather than 5kms.