Day 12 - Charters Towers to Clermont

It's Wednesday and I had my usual call with Trish down in Sydney to start the day. It was a shorter call than usual because we'd plan to have breakfast with Wayne this morning before we set off to Clermont - the next stage of our trip. We ate at the Salt Lane Cafe which was quite good; it had been recommended by the person who checked us into the motel yesterday and since the recommendation for The Rix had worked well, we decided we'd try the Cafe also. 

 If we hadn't, we would never have seen the biggest coffee mug in the world being served to brave souls who obviously needed an almost bucket-load of caffeine to keep them going! I know I like my coffee, but I'm not sure I could try it - partly because the bowl it came in would not keep it hot to the very last drop! We settled for 'regular' mugs of coffee with our pancakes for breakfast.

There's a big K Depot next to the cafe so we went in to have a look at their Christmas decorations – yes they're out already - and other things that might have wanted to come home with us including a neon write-on board for trivia (watch for that AM) and also some new bowls for Nigella.

After we dropped Wayne back at his caravan park, we set off for Clermont - via The World and it's big WELCOME TO CHARTERS TOWERS sign. They didn't have this here 50 years ago, and I don't think that they've ever mined as much gold as they had at the park. 

Today's drive was longer than I'd hoped. It was only 240 kilometers or so but there were only two or three toilet stops along the way and certainly there was only one place to buy fuel if you needed it or to have a snack and a cold drink. You wouldn't have wanted to have a hot drink because chances are they'd be making it with long-life milk rather than real milk and nobody wants that.

We're in the Grand Hotel Motel and while we had been concerned about the quality of the room we shouldn't have been. We're actually pleasantly surprised - and yes, it's not Best Western but it has a comfy bed and we're not assailed by noise from the pub.

Sooz had her customary afternoon nap while I went out taking photographs at Hood's Lagoon. I always find it relaxing to photographs and today was no exception. I was lucky enough to get some nice shots of corellas and some wedgies - and another hooked-beak predator I couldn't identify while I was down there.

I didn't see the piano up the tree - a remnant from a major flood that the Claremont area had some time ago but we'll look up exactly where it is and hopefully will be able to see it before we drive out of town tomorrow.

After what turned out to be a surprisingly good Chinese restaurant meal at the hotel we finally bit the bullet and decided that we would go back down the coast for the trip home - and our next stop will be Rockhampton. We'll have plenty of fuel to get most of the way there: in a first today we were just shy of the $100-mark at the bowser when we were filling Ravi. Thank goodness he doesn't drink much.