Warning – lots of pictures this time

Leaving Muttaburra we headed to Lake Dunn for the night. To get there we drove through Aramac (nice town, no photos, didn’t stay) and headed to Lake Dunn.

On the way there is choice of roads with either of them forming part of the Lake Dunn Sculptures Trail. We chose the longer of the two roads to Lake Dunn, all dirt but in excellent condition. The 40 sculptures on the trail claim to be the biggest outdoor sculpture exhibition anywhere. The artist – Melynda Rogers uses scrap metal and barbed wire to make them up with as little as 150 metres and up to 3 kilometres of wire used. Each sculpture is located somewhere relevant to the artwork. Coming around a corner and finding the returned soldier up on the rocks made a great pic and was a little eerie. The drive also takes you past Gray Rock, once the location of a Cobb and Co overnight stop. The stop (in its day) was complete with a pub (there’s a surprise) sits up against some small cliffs, and the namesake Gray Rock is a gray sandstone rock where the travellers etched their name into the rock. The photos don’t show it well but there are names back to the 1880’s

We didn’t overnight at Lake Dunn, it’s a nice spot but crowded with the nomads and not much room unless you were desperate to stay there. Pushing on over the dirt towards Clermont we had Tuna casserole for dinner in a roadside stop. Over the 250ks of dirt we saw 3 other vehicles – 2 of them caravaners.

40 minutes outside of Clermont we stopped, started up the oven and put the leftovers in to be ready for lunch (no spills this time!). Clermont is another nice town so lunch was next to the lagoon (no spills this time!) and filled the tank (211.5 cpl). In to the servo and the counter girl comes out and asks if we were paying by cash or card? Their, and the town’s internet had been down for a few days and if paying by card then we would need to use the prepayment card machine. Luckily that worked.

Its weird how the government works. The big sporting news here was that the Rockhampton Cutters Rugby League team was due to play in Port Moresby as part of their last round. For days the Cutters didn’t want to go because they were worried about the security up there and couldn’t afford it. Our new PM has stepped in and went on the radio saying that the federal government would guarantee their security – I am puzzled where that fits in to the core business of running the country….

Sadly, the bonnet is heading south most of the time…The next stop was for a quick pic of the Copperfield chimney stack before ending up Theresa Creek Dam for the night. The dam was built as part of the Blair Athol Coal mine to supply water for the mine and Clermont. Now it’s the town water supply and has a huge camping area with facilities for a reasonable fee. The waterfront was packed so we stayed out the back in a nice and quiet spot.

Heading in to the Queensland Gemfields we had to ring ahead at 8am to make sure we could get in. Getting into Rubyvale (known for it sapphires) we set the van up before heading into Emerald passing through Sapphire (known for its rubys). There is also a small town called Anakie nearby but the entire district should be called Broke with all the gem shops around here (Batting average – Gem shops and Jo 1 – John 0). We did a fossicking tag along tour with a guy (Keith) and spent the morning out in the fields digging up an ancient creek bed – we did find a bunch of sapphires that people told us was a good mornings work with blues and greens being the predominant colour. In reality, I think we paid some bucks to do the excavation for him on his block! Despite being close to Emerald and reasonably sizeable villages, Rubyvale does not have TV or Radio reception and even using the internet is very patchy as well.

For our last night in the Gemfields we had dinner at the Rubyvale pub. The meal was quite good and we were glad we booked as every table was reserved – looking up at the open ceiling you can see a couple of rowing skulls, when I asked the question why were they up there, the girls behind the bar rolled their eyes then explained that it was because they were part of the local Policemans Creek rowing club….fact or fiction – who knows!

We headed out the next day.

The Map