We were in Longreach only for the night to resupply and then move on, fuel was 235.5cpl and we stayed at the brand new caravan park outside of town on the northside. Only opened 3 days earlier the owners have thought about how the park should be setup including sites that are all drive through. At the moment it is just under 40 sites but will have 150 in total when done.

Crossing the magic Tropic of Capricorn the weather improved straight away, as soon as we were over the line we moved into high 20’s during the day with cool nights!

We popped some pies into to back seat oven and headed off to Muttaburra. Its been a few years since we here last – much has changed and much has stayed the same. The drive is easy and its only around a 100ks and before we pulled in we heard the sad sound of my pies falling apart and the meat landing on the oven floor. There is good GF pastry, and not so good pastry….

Into Muttaburra and we looked at the camping options. Everything is run by the council and you could stay in the caravan park, the showground or Freedom Park. The later has no facilities or much shade, and the other 2 are $20 per night, pay for 2 and stay 5. With the caravan park looking like sardines we opted for the showground and got the bikes out and paid for 2 nights thinking it would be 3 anyway. With the flys being super friendly we dug out the mesh room and strung it under the awning – it worked a treat!

The town was established in 1878 and peaked at 500 people or so in the 1930’s and was (and still is) a farming area. As always, plenty of history in these places and our first visits the original Muttaburrasaurus used to stand outside in the weather, now days he has a building around him with more intel on the local dinosaurs that were here. The old shop and house museums are well worth a stroll and donation (check the pic of the souvenir cup and saucer), and the hospital is preserved as it was mid last century which is chilling – its a reminder of how things were for ours and our parents generations hospitals were. The hospital boasted having the first western Queensland X-ray machine. When we we here last the aquatic centre was open complete with an artesian pool, not this time as they cannot get staff here to run the centre – even part time.

Other trivia for Muttaburra for you is a couple of things, did you know it is the closest town to the geographic centre of Queensland? To mark the fact they have a new monument to it next the old hospital. The real centre is 13kilometres away on private property.

The second interesting trivia item I came across reading some of the older historical stuff but who would have thought that Muttaburra and Harry “Breaker” Morant were linked. It turns out that Morant (Born in England) spent time in Queensland in the second half of the 1880’s before heading down to South Australia. Morant was a bit naughty and it seems that he liked to sell items that didn’t belong to him. In 1888 he sold horses belonging to a local station owner in this area to a 3rd person. A quick look at the info I can find is that he was sentenced to 3 months hard labour at the Rockhampton prison – not sure what happened from there.

It was great to use the bikes to get around. On one of the roads Jo yelped and said did you see the brown snake with black bands, I looked back and sure enough there was snake crossing the road, it looked about 4 feet long. I asked if she stopped the get a photo for me, I can’t print the answer… As we all know, washing never goes away, but with the car and van were still hooked up we loaded up the bike’s with the laundry and headed off to the back of the Post Office laundromat in town, 4 machines costing $4 for each load with a sign pleading not to overfill the machines. While you wait you can catch up on the latest National Geographic’s from 1964. 

Before moving on we had decided to have a meal at the pub on Friday night but after hearing that there is a wedding happening Saturday the pub was going to be busy, so we went on Saturday night instead. Sitting on the verandah with a few others before dinner we heard the wedding was a bit like Dimbulah the show if you remember it. While watching some of the guests coming to get more supplies from the pub (at 5.30), we heard from the barman that the wedding was scheduled for 3.30 but  moved to 4pm after the groom (apparently) arrived at the due time, spotted someone he didn’t like, got out of the car, took his shirt off and went and had a dust up with this other bloke. The delay – he came off second best, returned to pub to be cleaned up so the whole thing could proceed.

Apologies for the long post on one town – nah not really, there is much more here than you think.

The map