You can’t go to Charleville without doing at least one or two of the official ‘eight things to do in Charleville’. We chose the Cosmos Experience at the Cosmos Centre.
Arriving early, we walked around the interesting displays of all things planetary. We learned that if we could put a mirror far enough away in space, we could see reflected images of what we were doing 100 years ago on earth. Seemed a lot of effort when we could just read a book about it.
Dinner was a better than average quiche and salad in house, surrounded by space junk. Actually, it was souvenirs on display, but the made in China stickers on the bottom suggested what we originally thought.
At precisely 6.30pm we were beckoned out of the building into what looked like a tin shed. Soon, with pounding music to build drama, the roof slid open to reveal the sky. We couldn’t help but think we had seen it before somewhere, despite having paid good money to see it this time.
Two young blokes ran us through 30 minutes of star gazing, appropriately COVID distanced. Each of the audience had a crack at identifying theJewel Box, Pluto and Jupiter, through a telescope. When questioned, we learned from the knowledge base at our end of the shed, that Mars did not pop its head up until the 9.30pm show, and that the bright light screeching across the sky was the International Space Station.
Bursting with star knowledge we headed back to camp for what was a pretty cold night.
Morning came, as did tea and coffee before we packed and said our good-byes to Charleville for a while. We headed north something to Augathella before turning off the tarmac onto Mt Talbot Road. The plan was to take the back roads over to Injune, then slip up to Carnarvon Gorge for a few days.
Our confidence in the Carnarvon adventure was low as we had phoned, e-mailed and texted each of the available accommodation providers in the area for over a week with no return contact at all. Still we plugged on ever eastward via Wetlands, Redford and Womblebank, with Puma lapping up the bush environment.
This trip was more than planned. The road varied between brilliant hard pack atop ridges overlooking stunning grass lands, to horrid corrugations for kilometre after kilometre. Wildlife was acutely absent save a few clean skin cattle. Most of those were so tame however, you could take one home, pat it and call it a dog.
After a fair few hours, Injune came into focus. We immediately dropped in to check out the amenities as it was indeed a fair few hours in the saddle. Heading then to the information centre, we were assured that Carnarvon accommodation providers were terrible at getting back to people and the web sites were really hard to negotiate! We were assured however that if we dropped up to the gate, we might get a spot. If not, however we could camp in the nearby gravel pit, but that would be illegal. We did consider dropping the 150 kilometres up to the gate but then opted to head the 90 odd kilometres south to Roma and a fresh batch of mums scones with cream and jam.
A couple of days in Roma went quickly as did the 530 kilometres home.
Our trip had been at different times, full of excitement, expectation, dismay and disbelief. Mostly however it had been full of friends and adventure. We had missed Innamincka and the Strzelecki Track, but apparently, they aren’t going anywhere in the next few years so we should get to say gidday.
Time to plan the next one.
