We departed the very pleasant Lake Maraboon around the usual time of 10am and headed into Emerald for a fresh juice for Renee & Eamon, some petrol, and a new bladder for mum's camelback. We stumbled upon the world's biggest Van Gogh 'Sunflower' painting located in a park on an easel - it's 25 metres high (Emerald was once famous for its reputation as a major sunflower producer!). We turned right off the Capricorn Highway onto the Gregory Highway heading...

Eamon was first up about 7am as usual and desperately wanted Renee to wake up to go on the go-karts. Finally at 9.15am she opened her eyes, and they were off for the next hour rolling around the caravan park having a great time. Another very hot day meant we spent most of it in the pool - it was even too hot to get the kayak off the car! Dad went into Emerald for a haircut and to get some supplies for the weekend, while Mum, Renee & Eamon just lazed th...

Another hot sunny day in Queensland. We packed up and headed east on the Capricorn Way stopping at a very nice little town called Alpha for lunch under a shady tree. Alpha is the last quiet town it seems, because as soon as we came into Emerald, it was like we'd hit civilisation again - lots of cars, shops and traffic lights! Lake Maraboon / Fairbairn Dam is 20km south of Emerald and has about 3 times the capacity of water of Sydney Harbour apparently. It...

Having seen all the attractions over the last 2 days, we opted to depart Winton and start heading east to Barcaldine. We dropped into Longreach for a lovely lunch at the 'Yeast and West Bakery' and to get some shopping done - it's the biggest town we'll see for a while so we took the opportunity to pick up groceries and other bits and pieces down Eagle Street. A very interesting thing about Longreach is that all the streets are named after birds - even more i...

An early start to the day saw us make the 110km drive out to the Dinosaur Stampede and Lark Quarry Conservation Park. We took the short spinifex walk just before the 60 minute tour at 10am. Over 3,300 tracks mark the site of the only known dinosaur stampede on the planet 95 million years ago - the area is indoor about the size of a netball court - the tour guide gave a really interesting and dramatic tale of what happened to cause the stampede. It appears a ...