Outback

Good evening
Ah, the Aussie outback, the aroma of mosquito coils and rid with a background of frogs and road trains.  Seriously, it is a truly magical place, especially when its green.  The night skies are clear and the milky way is amazing, so clear and so many stars.  Hopefully we will make it to the Charleville observatory.  Dan is entertaining himself with minature frogs this trip, geckos have taken a backseat.
This area of Australia, Queensland, usually does not get alot of rain.  Lake Eyre and the channel country are still getting rain, so it is quite a sight.  Lake Eyre is usually dry, but not this year.
The outback is like our prairies in many ways, although not as fertile.  Lots of flat grazing land and cattle, but it takes 100 sq miles to make a cattle ranch work.  Usually not very lush grazing.  This year, lots of cattle and lots of cattle to market traveling in double decker road trains.  The locals say they have never seen this many cattle trucks.
We travelled inland from Townsville back to Charters Towers, an old gold mining town and visited the Venus Battery which was one of the 27 gold processing batteries in the area in the late 1800's.  This one was different as anyone could use it for a fee.  Most of the batteries were owned by the mine owners and were on site as it took 1 ton of rock to produce an ounce of gold (if you were lucky).  The rock had to be transported by horse and wagon to the battery.  The gold was underground and the rock had to be brought up  from underground then crushed, mixed with mercury to form a pudding.  They did this for the first 20 years and threw the tailings in the river.  It was then discovered that there was almost as much gold in the tailings and it could be extracted with cyanide.  They then dug up the river.  this continued for a while until the gold ran out.   After the cyanide process was discovered, they sent the tailings to a vat and mixed it with cyanide and removed more gold.  Men had to jump into the vats and shovel them out.  I am sure there are lots of job vacancies.  Most of these men did not live past 50.  There are still gold mines in the area, as the techniques have improved and the price of gold has skyrocketed.   A faster process was discovered in the 1950's and the cyanide, which was recycled in the early part of the century, was then just dumped into the river.  Apparently the locals used to swim in the river, but never put their heads under.  It is interesting to see all the shafts under the town, they are several hundred feet deep so the town is not in danger of collapsing.
We then headed to the thriving town of Hughenden, where dinosuars where discovered in Oz.  We then travelled up to Porcupine Gorge which is their version of the grand canyon.  Very pretty with red, yellow and black rocks.  The gorge is quite beautiful and deep.  We trekked down to the creek to take a look at the lovely sandstone formations, and the gorge which was carved thousands (milliosn?) of years ago.  The banks of the river are sandstone and have amazing formations carved into them by the water and the rocks.  The pyramid, which the park is famous for, is a pyramid shaped cliff of sandstone and basalt ( and other stuff, which I cannot remember the name of ).
PORCUPINE GORGE

The pyramid in Porcupine Gorge national park.      

Off to Longreach, which is a real outback town.  It is famous as the birthplace of Quantas and the founders museum is here.  A very interesting place, the Aussies are very proud of their heritage and there are many museums and monuments to their achievements.   The outback has many small towns, and I mean small, most have a pub and little else.  There is even a tour of outback pubs.  We found this great little pub in Prairie, which is just outside of Hughenden.  The owners are a young family, the father could be Simon's aussie twin.  The town has 10 people and the pub is the only real establishment.  It is full of neat old memrobilia like saddles, hats, etc.  The owner had to open the ice cream freezer with pliers as his 7 yo daughter had broken the latch trying to get into it.  You have to wonder at the people who inhabit these isolated places, they are really fun to meet.  All of them are so friendly and willing to sit and chat.
A typical road (highway) in the outback.

"Capt  Dan"  sitting in the cockpit of the Quantas 747 in the Founders museum in Longreach.

I sitting under the big sky, a sliver of a moon and the milky way glistening above me,  listening to the Magnificent Seven theme sipping Aussie wine,  life is good .

good evening and happy travels
Kim and Dan