Wed 18th June – Day 39: Jervois to somewhere on the Plenty Highway!

Again up for the pre-dawn, when the moonlight turns everything shades of grey. Sitting on the bush dunny gazing upwards the dollops of white clouds splashed across the grey sky was quite entrancing. It is very beautiful out here and I can understand how you come to love the bush/desert. Sitting in our city houses and high-rise offices we miss so much of nature – I can’t remember the last time I watched the coming of a full moon. The kids found the Southern Cross, mars, Saturn and Jupiter all by themselves last night. they will never forget these lessons.
Some school work done this morning and Chloe wrote a great acrostic poem entitled “Bush Toilet” which I have included at the bottom of this post. Toby loves his maths and delights in all his assignments – today he is graphing the number of times each person leaves the car!
The road out here is a corrugated mess and once again the aerial snapped off, not at the same place as last time but I think Mr ARB will have a lot to answer for – luckily we saved the parts from the last one and between the 2 now broken bits we think we can piece together a functional one. Pete has organised a new windscreen to be delivered to Longreach so we will add ‘UHF aerial’ to the next list of repairs also.
We passed quite a few travellers today and at one stage had to pull up next to a dead roo for a road train to pass. It was then I discovered a large hairless Joey still alive by his mum’s side. The kids ooh’d and ah’d and then I quickly got Pete to run the car over him as there was little we could do out here to keep him alive and a slow painful death awaited otherwise – so a lesson about the harshness of nature was rapidly learnt.
Passing more ‘drought master’ type cattle now instead of the previous Hereford types, and although the nursing cows are very skinny the calves look to be in quite good condition.
Tobermorey Station has obviously closed down as all signs relating to its existence have been erased. We drove on past forlornly and then found a cleared flat spot by the road for camp. The kids gathered up stones for the fireplace and I got the camp oven (brought in Alice) ready with roast lamb & vegies. Another clear night, warm by recent standards and we sat around the fire eating dinner by headlamp and marvelling that we could be the only people on the entire planet.
Plenty Highway roadside stop (about 15m inside the Qld. border)



Bush Toilets (by Chloe Wilson, Age 7, 2008)
Bushes all around
Underneath the stars
Scratchy plants on your bottom
Hiding behind the gum trees

The Dingo’s howling in the night
One hole in the ground
Insects buzzing all around
Light from my torch
Each time I am scared
Terrified by the night
Stinky, smelly toilets