So now my motorcycle is packed, fueled up and ready for the start of our adventure. I can’t wait to go!

We made it to Esk without getting rained on and made our first stop at the Esk Bakery; stopping at the bakery has become a tradition whenever we go on a motorcycle trip - no matter where we go! \240We continued onto Nanango, with the ever present threat from the rain clouds above.

Before we got into the town of Nanango, we started to get the first light rain shower. \240Not enough to impact us, but enough to have us know we were about to get drenched. \240Fortunately, it never eventuated. \240The light shower continued, but we were spared the ‘fun’ of heavy rain.

Today was definitely a big day. \240Our first big sight was the Big Orange in Gayndah, an impressive tourist spot for ALL ages!

We rode down the Burnett Highway between lush green farms, large wooded areas, and through little towns only the locals know. \240Choosing not to follow the main coast highway was a great idea - we had minimal traffic except several groups of fellow motorcyclists.

We stopped in Gayndah for lunch. It was our first attempt at the freeze dried meals we took along and despite what the photograph looks like, Our Tuna Mornay was actually a lot better than we thought it would be! \240It just took ages to boil the water in our little hiking stove, and then even longer sitting around with the boiled water in the packet waiting for it to ‘cook’ (or whatever it does).

We stopped in Mundubbera to see our next big location - the Big Mandarin, and then kept heading north

We arrived in the town on Monto around 4:30pm and the sun was starting to fade. Our goal tonight was Cania Gorge - while it was only 1/2 hour further down the highway, we called it a day in Monto and checked into the Monto Caravan Park.

After we setup our camp, we made our dinner and settled in for an early night - we are out of practice riding long days now so we both need a decent nights sleep!

Tomorrow’s weather reports are more favourable than today’s were, so hopefully it will be another awesome day for a ride like today was!

We packed up, and left Monto and continued our journey to Biloela, stopping briefly for fuel and breakfast. \240After Biloela, we drove through Dululu and onto the historic town of Mount Morgan.

Sundays during COVID times meant the place was quiet, so we kept going. We did see of first police vehicle of the trip to date.

Just outside of Mount Morgan you start the decent towards the coast and Rockhampton.

We arrived in Rockhampton a bit after lunch, checked into the Caravan Park and dropped off our panniers and kit before heading out to lunch.

We had to stop at the Tropic of Capricorn as I was totally expecting to cross the line from the cold southern part of Rockhampton into the ‘Trooics’ and feel warmer. Alas, this did not happen and it was EXACTLY the same as the southern side.

From here we headed to the local pub and had lunch; a huge steak sandwich and chips that totally filled us up - I don’t think we will be having much dinner tonight!

We also rode out to Yepoon as we wanted to go to the beach, and see the ocean for the first and only time on this trip. After today, it won’t be likely that we will see much water.

It was a beautiful day at the beach, and we stayed for a beautiful sunset.

This morning I woke up to find two old ducks hanging outside Nick’s tent. They weren’t the only two old ducks that tried to chat him up this morning, but of the others, one had a mobility scooter and the other seemed to be carrying a latrine bucket to empty in the bathrooms.

This morning we had planned to leave early, however I am needing to go to the camping store to get a new pillow! I blew up my inflatable pillow last night to hear a lovely consistent airleak which deflated it in a matter of a minute.

I suffered a little bit more of the cold last night and used my warm jacket as a pillow since my profile pillow failed to do its job.

So we packed up all of our camping gear and headed out to the big shopping centre in Rockhampton \240to find an Anaconda store.

To add to our fortunes, when we tried to leave the shopping centre, my fancy motorcycle wouldn’t start. We tried and tried again, but the battery had died.

Fortunately, we were in a decent size town that had a battery world and the people that work there dropped us over a new battery to reinstall into the motorbike. Once we got that in, we were all good and so we had it on our way.

Thankfully it happened in a town that was easy to get a new battery.

Once we finally left Rockhampton we join the procession of trucks caravans and motorhomes on their way to Emerald. Today we passed more vehicles then we have for the previous two days! We also passed our first road train which had three trailers, I wonder if we are going to see bigger road trains as we get closer to Longreach.

We got to Emerald later in the afternoon but it was still too early to finish for the night so we continued on and arrived in the town of Alpha at around 5 pm and set up camp.

Tomorrow we head onto Longreach, and that will be the halfway point of our journey.

Today again we saw a lot of traffic. Still lots of caravans, but our most frequent sight were road trains today. \240We lost count of the number of them we saw; and didn’t even bother counting the B-Doubles.

Along the way, we came across a rusted out old vehicle so we stopped and explored. It was a cool old truck; missing some of the key components, but interesting anyway.

We stopped in Barcaldine for breakfast and a short break and went and visited the ‘Tree of Knowledge’ which (ironically) is where the Australian Labour Party was formed. \240I wonder if they realised the misnomer the name would be in modern times... ALP and knowledge don’t usually go in the same sentence 😛.

We rode through Ilfracombe, last all the preserved historical machinery and onto the Matilda way to Longreach (and more and more road trains).

The thing that these photos don’t do is give you and idea of the buffering of wind that hits a motorcycle when a road train goes past. It is crazy how much you get thrown around - \240be it on a sports bike like Nick, or and adventure bike like me. \240So far though we’ve managed to stay upright when they’ve gone past and we made it to Longreach.

Longreach is famous for two main attractions... the Stockman’s Hall of Fame, and the birthplace of QANTAS and their museum. \240We only had time for one today, and since I’ve been to the Hall of Fame we decided to go to the QANTAS Museum.

Arriving a few minutes early, we walked in the door to find a massive queue. \240Now we realise this is probably as a result of the COVID19 measures in place, but we thought it was funny that it was just like being at the airport waiting for a QANTAS flight.

It was probably more like a Jetstar flight, because we were delayed well past the scheduled 12:30pm departure time!

The museum was quite very interesting and had a lot of exhibits to walk through. \240We enjoyed walking around the beautiful old aircraft and seeing part of Queensland’s history.

Once we left the museum we headed into town to get a late lunch and walk around the business district of Longreach. \240We had a drink at the Longreach Tavern, and after looking at their prices, decide to make other plans for dinner.

We went to the butchers and bought some nice looking rib fillet steaks and the headed over to the bottle shop to get some drinks for our celebration of being halfway through our trip.

Back at the caravan park we used the camp kitchen and made our steak & (2 minute) noodle meals... they turned out really well and we spent less on the steak and beers for us both tha. We would’ve for one steak at the pub!

It was also the first morning we didn’t have few covered tents to try and pack up so we started the day on quite a high note. \240To top that off, we decided to ride back into town to the Bakery (opened at 5:00am) and have a good breakfast.

We filled up with fuel (the price of $1.309 per litre did annoy us a little since we’ve been paying $1.179 so far).

We had to repeat part of yesterday’s journey back to Barcaldine, however just as we got into town we turned right towards Blackall.

Today was such beautiful weather for a motorcycle ride! \240We left Longreach when it was 17 degrees and sunny, and it got as high as 28 degrees but the wind was just cool enough it made for a really nice day to be in all our jackets, helmets and other gear.

We stopped for a mid-day rest and a lunch in a little cafe in Tambo called ‘Fannie Mae’s Cafe’.

We stopped for fuel at Augathella, and as we pulled into the petrol station we saw a sign for a ‘Augathella Bull Ant Park’??? \240So we had to go and check it out!

It turns out Augathella’s local football team are the Bull Ants, so the giant ant is dedicated to them... but we certainly didn’t take off our boots while in town just in case!

From Augathella it’s only a one hour ride to Charleville, and we got there around 4pm. \240We setup camp at the Cobb & Co Caravan Park, and went back into town to look around before we head out to the Cosmos Centre & Observatory tonight.

Not sure how photos will go in the dark since we didn’t bring the big SLR camera, but we will see how we go!

Our plan was to stop at the Great Artesan Spa. Neither of us have ever been here before. I’ve driven past it numerous times on our holidays, but not really looked into it, but for $8 entry it was amazing!

The place was very clean, the staff were friendly as were all of the other travellers at the spa. \240There were a couple of young people, and of course the caravanning community as well.

The facility has two pools; a cold pool which was about 17-19 degrees, and a hot pool which was 40 degrees. \240Savouring the idea of soaking in the hot springs, we paid our entry fee and got changed into our swimmers and jumped in the pool 👍

We ended ok spending over two hours in the Great Artesian Spa... it was just so relaxing and exactly the right thing for the second last day of our journey.

We left Mitchell begrudgingly around 12:30pm to make our way to Roma and onwards east. \240We had lunch in Roma; some amazing steak, bacon & cheese pies, and then filled up our water bladders and took off again... the next destination: Wallumbilla & the Federal Hotel.

I have been to the Federal Hotel before; when we started our Central Australia 4WD trip we spent our first night here and it was practically a different place. \240The Federal Hotel is where they filmed the current Iron Jack Beer commercial and we were there at the same time back then.

Today was quite different. We walked into the bar, with Nick determined to have an Iron Jack Beer and perhaps reenact the ad (we’d have to have the panniers in the bike to play the dog though.

There was only 4 locals in the bar, plus the staff member. We ordered our drinks, but they didn’t even have Iron Jack Beer!!!

After our slightly disappointing beer at the home of Iron Jack, we rode on to Miles.

We pulled into the Caravan Park to realise that where we were supposed to camp was closer to the highway than the amenities block! \240If we went to the other campsite option, it was right next to the railway line. So... we opted to check into a motel for the night (twin beds people!).

Just down the road we had dinner... and it was not the same as our Tuna Mornay.

From Chinchilla it was a quick and easy ride through Dalby and on to Oakey. \240It’s funny, because before we started this trip I don’t think either of us would’ve said a 130 km ride for 94 minutes would be quick and easy. Normally riding for an hour is the most we would normally do, but by the end of this trip and the number of kilometres that we done that was nothing!

We decided to pull into Oakey because we noticed a sign on the highway for the Australian Army Flight Museum and neither of us had been there before.

The sign said it was only 2km of the highway, but it was a lot further than that! We eventually found the museum only to discover that it was closed and only operate a couple of days a week.

So we continued on to Toowoomba, had a quick bite to eat for lunch and then rolled down the Toowoomba range to meet up with everybody in Fernvale.

Our journey took us 2,878km from Brisbane, north to Rockhampton, west to Longreach, south to Charleville and back east to Brisbane.

It was a really cool adventure and both of us enjoyed our outback journey. \240Sadly now it’s back to the reality of work again.