North Queensland - 25 Aug 2021

We woke to a crisp morning of 7.5C, and were ready to leave pretty early but the men went for another look around. 

Pulling out at 8:20am we stopped almost immediately to check out another bottle dump along the main road.

The grass up this way was a lot dryer but there were majestic bustards (plains turkeys) and brolgas aplenty. 

I saw a sign that said "Eromanga Sea Tourist drive", so we turned in. Unfortunately, there was not a lot to see apart from a lookout. It was really windy so we pulled into a gravel pit further along for morning tea.

Looking out over what was once (110 million years ago) the Eromanga Sea

https://www.abc.net.au/science/ozfossil/ageofreptiles/eromanga/default.htm

Native Hibiscus

There were plenty of galahs on the road to Prairie where, curiously, the public toilet was the original town lockup. 

A huge Wind and Solar farm was at 'Kennedy'. We filled up at Hughenden, and John discovered he had a 'pet' tick which Darryl removed. 

After a quick call into the Tourist Information, we lunched by the Flinders River. I put Porcupine Gorge into the GPS but it led us in the wrong direction. It didn't take me long to realize, and we turned around and found the correct road passing through sandalwood trees, until we got to the gullies for fossil fossicking and we found some within 5 minutes of looking! They are fossilized squid (Belemnites), and were available on the surface beside the road after being washed out by heavy rain. 

Belemnite fossils

I also found some fossil mussels and cockles. 

We proceeded to Matchbox creek to camp for the night. Darryl drove along the fence line to try and find a quieter spot away from the road, but the better spots to camp were near where we first pulled in. The track was so narrow and overgrown with grass that we had to disconnect the trailer to turn around. Had a wash and Darryl found that he also had a tick. 

Darryl's unwanted 'pet'

These are some sort of desert fungi

We had a good night, all slept well with very little traffic, just a truck around 6:30am. But it was pretty cold.