Map Not To Scale

When we woke up the following morning, neither of us were really keen to get moving right away knowing that we had 7+ hours worth of driving ahead of us. We had a look at the map and decided to make the drive a circuit and go north to for brekky and continue home by driving south east to Gympie.



While we were planning our route, we watched in as the families around us were breaking down there camping operations. I've camped quite a bit stateside and there is something to be said for the Australian take on it. A site for a family of four generally consists of several tents including the two story one that rises off the back of the 4WD with a special tent for the solar shower. I've seen kitchens with sinks and ovens, toy tents filled with all of the kids playthings and tarped eating areas that are bigger than my living room. The funniest part is to watch them break it down like trained worker ants; everyone has a job and the whole thing comes down in 15 minutes flat.

It was getting to be late morning and we had to start driving. After a minor incident with *someone* backing the car into a tree, we started down the long dirt road dodging cattle in our hatchback to return to civilization.



We had breakfast at the only restaurant in Rollerston. It was an experience; the town was a post office/gas station/corner store, church & the cafe. We were the only people under 60 in the restaurant; we had stumbled into a congregation of the caravan retirees that inhabit campgrounds all over the country.



The drive was gorgeous to start: rolling hills, iconic country Australian farms, paddocks filled with livestock and wildflowers, but after a few hours you've seen one windmill, you've seen them all.

Note to self: nothing is ever as close as it seems in Australia.

Manifest Destiny

After looking at a map of Queensland, we realized just how little ground we have covered. Since it was shaping up to be a rainy weekend up and down the Coast, we decided to go west. The trusty Lonely Planet guide said that Carnavon Gorge National Park was worth the trip, so the tent was tossed in the Holden and we set off not really knowing what to expect.



We set off through the Great Dividing Range and got our first taste of exactly how big Australia is - it's fairly populated in the area we were driving through, still you could pass 100kms without passing through a town. After 8 hours of driving, we arrived in Roma (home of the Big Rig - what is is with Aussies and building big fiberglass objects?) thinking that we were a few kms away. We turned up Carnarvon Gorge Road and realized, we were dead wrong. Night has started to fall and the bugs were amazing; it was like driving through that old school Microsoft Star Wars screen saver.



Two hours, a few close encounters with road trains and many kanagroos dodged later, we arived on the final road to the campsite to another shock: It was another 35kms down a dirt road to the campsite. We didn't pay much attention to the stock crossing sign, until we were literally driving through a herd of cattle, only to arrive to once again pitch the tent in the headlights of the car.



It was nearing midnight and we were so tired. So, we turned in and hoped that the morning would bring some good bushwalking.