Day 8 - Mingela to Richmond

New sleeping bag did the trick, warm and toasty all night. Woke up to a gorgeous morning raring to go. First stop was Charters Towers for breakfast. Such a pretty town, they have retained a lot of their old buildings, I particularly liked the Stock Exchange, which was built in 1890 and was one of Australia's first rural stock exchanges. Its primary purpose was to raise capital for the deep reef mines in the area. Today it houses the mining museum and a very nice coffee shop.

Stock Exchange Arcade

 The view of the main street.

Wattle was in bloom along the road from Charters Towers to Campaspe, the scent was just gorgeous. The Campaspe river is just a sandy bed at the moment with a trickle here and there. Which reminds me, Greg is taking great delight in telling me exactly where I am when I ring home.  I was standing by the Campaspe river when I rang this morning and Greg said "oh, your at the rest area by the river" before I even mentioned my location. He zooms in on the tracker and then google earth which gives him the street view of where I am. Very cool! I got lost the other day and he could see me going around in circles.

Next stop was Praire, mainly due to the fact you go pretty much anywhere from there.

I've already told you about the unusual humps on Queensland roads, well from here on in they get worse. It seems that the heavy vehicle wheel tracks wear the tar out and also push it to the centre so you end up with a ridge in the centre of the lane. This can be quite disconcerting when your front wheel wobbles over it. The engineers who built the Flinders Highway have added a further piece of excitement by not signposting dips in the road or double dips for that matter. So Quiver turned herself into a pogo stick for the last 100k of today's journey. The first 5 minutes were a nightmare as my brain came down to meet my bum over each dip that you could not see on the long straight road. I finally twigged that if I watched the end of lane line on the left I could see the dips coming. You wouldn't think that riding on 100k of straight road would be that technical, but it was I had to ride over hundreds of dips whilst dodging the centre hump and avoiding the split tarmac on the right outside of lane. Once I got the hang of it, it was actually quite fun.

I was amazed at just how much nothing there is and the silence is incredible.

Tonight I have luxurious accommodation in the form of a donger, but a 4 star donger, it has a tv and air conditioning. Tomorrow I'm off to Mt Isa.

HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY - Pogoing along the Flinders Highway.

GREY NOMAD TIP OF THE DAY - Save your tea bags love, dry em out in the sun and then stick them in a jar of kero. They make great firestarters!

KILOMETRES TRAVELLED - 410