Back to Woop Woop -- on our own this time!

Travelling west from Townsville one is quickly in Woop Woop. We followed the Overlander's Way through Charters Towers, Hughenden, Richmond and Julia Creek before arriving back in Cloncurry and Mount Isa. There is much evidence of dinosaurs along this route and in Richmond in particular there was a superb museum displaying skeletons that have been found on local sheep and cattle stations.

An almost complete skeleton of a plesiosaur

What there is to see can be covered relatively quickly, however, and we did not spend the expected two nights in each place. Julia Creek was a disappointment -- Sunday and dead! We passed through Cloncurry and Mount Isa, having covered those on the safari, and carried right on to Camooweal, which is almost at the Northern Territory border. Another day of concentrated driving has brought us through very barren country, made worse by a bushfire which apparently ripped through two days ago, to the Three Ways Roadhouse.

Much of the time it was like this on both sides of the road. We assume the road would have been closed.

This is where the Barkly Highway (The Overlander's Way) meets the Stuart Highway from Darwin to Adelaide. We have just had a very refreshing swim in the roadhouse caravan park's pool. We were hoping to cross the solar powered cars which left Darwin yesterday on their race to Adelaide; as it is, we have missed the leaders, but still hope maybe to see some of the remaining contestants tomorrow.

It is a different feeling being out in such isolation without the backup of 21 other vans as we had on the safari. The roads, however, so far have been excellent, especially on the Queensland side of the border and there are plenty of road trains and other vehicles. We have conveniently missed some violent thunderstorms, and the weather does look as if we can risk doing the loop up to Kakadu and Darwin, so we will head north towards Katherine tomorrow.