(15/10/2017 – 20/10/2017)
CHARLEVILLE
After leaving Lara Wetlands, we continued south on the Landsborough Highway to our next stop at Evening Star Tourist Park, Charleville. It was a very looooong drive being around 4 hours with a few games of eye spy, Mitch watching movies on the tablet and us listening to numerous music CDs!!!! We had lunch in the car on the way with an afternoon stop for cofffeeeeee……. a large cofffeeeeee………..
We turned off the highway and travelled about 8kms down a bitumen and dirt road. The tourist park is located on Thurlby Station and is a 33,000 acre working cattle station.
We arrived late afternoon and there were only a few caravans so we could take our pick as to where we wanted to set up. There was a huge camp kitchen with a licensed bar along with a large Pit Fire and seating area. They had very clean amenities and huge washing machines in the laundry. There were also all sorts of old farm machinery memorabilia placed around the park.
We met in the bar at 5.00 pm for happy hour with some other travellers!! There we met the owner of the park, Craig. What a very friendly down to earth guy with good old fashioned hospitality!!!! He and his mum even cooked a BBQ for dinner for us – how nice was that (love it when I get a night off from cooking!!! LOL LOL).
We ended up staying at this park for 5 nights. A couple more families arrived on Monday afternoon which was great for Mitchell as he had some kids to play with for a few days!! Each afternoon we met over at the bar for drinks. These families had been on the road for most of the year and it was great talking to them about their travels and getting advice and info which all helps!!!
Unfortunately the weather changed for the worse for the rest of the time that we there. Lots of rain and cloud around so that meant we could not do the Telescope Sun Viewing or the Night Telescope Observatory tours because it was just too cloudy so that was disappointing. And on the day we left that’s when the weather cleared up, typical!!!
One day we went into town and we did a tour inside the Cosmos Centre which was very interesting with an outback star gazing theatre, information about space and the solar system, stars and meteorites!!!
Craig took Andrew out clay pigeon shooting one afternoon. Andrew did very well shooting alot of discs and Craig thought that Andrew had done this before but he hadn’t. Andrew loved it and really enjoyed experiencing something new and different!!!!
On another day, Craig took all of us out in a little bus and showed us around the property and surrounding area.
We had a lovely time at this park and thoroughly recommend it. If we hadn’t met the NZ family at Lara Wetlands who told us about it and suggested we stay here we probably wouldn’t have known about it and not come here!!!!! A very big thank you to Craig for all his generosity and good old fashioned country hospitality!!!!
One of the families that we met at the park said that Roma was having a festival on the weekend and there was going to be a rodeo on which I really wanted to see here in the Outback!!! Perfect timing!!
We left Charleville on Friday morning and drove east along the Warrego Highway to Mitchell. Well, we just couldn’t not stop at a town of the same name as our son!!!!!!!
MITCHELL – (20/10/2017)
Mitchell was very excited to visit a town with the same name as his!!!! It worked out perfect that it was on the way to Roma where we now planned to go to for a few days and attend the Roma Festival.
There was the Great Artesian Spa in Mitchell, a little bonus thing for us to see and do!!!! We arrived in Mitchell late morning and we spent some time at the Spa. There were two large pools of artesian water. One pool has heated waters from the Great Artesian Basin and the other pool is cool.
Ohhh, now nice was this!!!!! Loved it, very relaxing and quite therapeutic actually. It wasn’t as hot as Lara Wetlands’ hot pool because this one is properly checked and maintained to keep the temperature comfortable. Again, you couldn’t sit in there for too long so we had to hop in and out a few times!!
After our swim and lunch we then hit the road again to Roma!!!
Laughtons Living Life 