Day Eight - Bowen to Charters Towers

A bit clearer today

Before we left Bowen this morning, we drove up to Flagstaff Hill Lookout so Sooz could see the ocean view. Except for the drive up the side of the hill (who needs a guard rail?), she enjoyed it very much. It is a spectacular view out to Gloucester Island (thank you Google!).

The other thing we did was to take a pic of the front of the Castle Motor Lodge. Unfortunately the pic does not show the moat!

The drive to Charters Towers took about three and a half hours - we weren't looking to make/break any speed records - which would have been difficult with the road construction works, our comfort stops and the vehicles in front of us that could sit 5km over the speed limit in the overtaking places, and 10km under everywhere else. Some were vehicles towing caravans, so we could understand them sometimes being a little slower - but some were not! And a big shout out to that big black RAM ute who needed to sit about a car's length behind us for several kilometres, and then didn't overtake when it could. Maybe the driver had just seen the Facebook clip from the start of "The Tourist" (the series not the movie) too. I don't recommend looking at it if you're going to be driving outback any time soon.

Home Hill comfort stop

This afternoon I went for a drive around Charters Towers. We lived here 50 years ago and I wanted to see how much I could remember. In the three (?) years we were here we lived in at least three houses - and I think I found two of them. How suspicious did I look taking photographs of one of them? The other one was not on a main street so I decided not to stop and get out of the car to take pictures, but based on the size and build, and the huge boulders in the yard, I'm fairly sure it was where we used to live across the road from the cycling family (they were always going off to the Velodrome) and down the road from Trevor whose house burned down one Saturday night while they were away in Townsville.

The Rush Festival is on in Charters Towers this weekend. I'm not sure what the rest of it is but there is a music component and performers including Wendy Matthews and the Chantoozies are at the Goldrush Concert this evening.

There's an Amazing Race Style Scavenger Hunt tomorrow which is billed as 'fun for the whole family', but I'm hoping we miss it. We want to make a relatively early start for Hughenden in the morning; I'd like us to be there in time for lunch with my brother Wayne. I'll take the pics and maps of Charters Towers and see what more he remembers - because he will.

This looked familiar.