Heading south through Western Qld

From Julia Creek we headed south to Kynuna, towards Dinosaur Creek (just near the Ayrshire Hills Rest Area, north of Winton). We've stayed there before and knew there wouldn't be much firewood around, so we stopped along the road to collect some.

A bit further along we stopped for lunch in the middle of nowhere - wide open plains and a quiet road... 

Our new solar blanket has been doing a great job of keeping both fridges running, and we've even had enough power to use 240V for the hot water system!

The wheel arch we found up on the Cape came in handy as a windbreak.

A great location for campfire cooking.

Moonrise!

There weren't a lot of birds around, but Dazz still managed to find a few.

Zebra Finch

Black Kite

And a couple of random insects...

Our drive south was timed around marking blocks. We chose Long Waterhole at Winton for the first one. We chose a spot away from the water (and therefore away from all the other vans), with the right orientation for morning sun to warm up the van (after nights down around 10 degrees), good solar into the late afternoon, and a well placed tree for shade to sit under after work. 

Dazz was really efficient with his work, which gave him time to go hunting.

White-plumed Honeyeaters

This seemed to be a juvenile that the parent was encouraging to fly to a different tree to feed on flowers.

There was one particular tree at the end of the waterhole that the birds seemed to congregate on.  Here there are Little Black Cormorants, a Royal Spoonbill, an Eastern Great Egret and the Hardheads are in the water.

Eastern Great Egrets

Hardheads (male & female)

White-necked Heron (non-breeding)

White-necked Heron (juvenile)

Apostlebird

White-breasted Woodswallow 

Galahs

Brolgas

The Apex Riverside Park on the Thomson River at Longreach was our next stop. When we had the car serviced in Atherton they said the kingpin bearings needed doing, and a few days later we realised that it was the bearings that was causing the car/van to wander on the road, not the sideways headwind or the poor roads (although both of those did make it worse). Knowing it would take a couple of weeks to get a booking, Longreach was the logical place to aim for. The traffic on the roads we were travelling on was light enough that we could go a bit slower and keep the wandering at a minimum. We've done the "tourist things" in Longreach before, so our time was spent catching up on washing, doing a few jobs in the back of the truck, getting a tyre repaired (we picked up a screw and a slow leak), working, getting the truck fixed, and a very enjoyable lunch at Ilfracombe with a friend who lives in Longreach. Dazz didn't go chasing birds, but a few came to him.

Yellow-throated Miner Race flavigula

Apostlebird

And of course there were broglas, including a juvenile.

When we left Longreach we weren't immediately sure that the new kingpin bearings had fixed the wandering issue... but there were very strong gusty sidewinds. After a while the wind died down and the whole rig seemed back to normal, for which we were very thankful!