Goodness me, imagine my surprise when I awoke at 7 am to find Helen breaking off little twigs to start the fire! Today was to be a big day – I knew someone in town and that called for skirts all round. After breakfast – what a difference it makes when we are all up together – we washed out our clothes and went for that swim. Ah lovely – quite cool too – compared with our Winton swimming pool, and I must admit much more refreshing!

Dolled ourselves up in our “town finery” and set sail for the big smoke. So it happened we were all quite pleased when we reached town to be dressed in skirts rather than shorts, Longreach is quite the largest town we have come to.

Looked up Gordon Reid and Pat Shaw for a few minutes chat. Had puncture repaired, positively gorged ourselves on fresh, beautifully mixed and iced lemon squash, had sandals repaired and left Longreach at 1:35 pm.

Had lunch by the roadside and changed back into our travelling rig – roads much improves, country still flat but quite a reasonable amount of timber now – black soil, unsurfaced roads of course, quite a bit of Road Works in Progress on this stretch but detours were freshly graded and in good condition.

Stopped at Barcaldine for two beers – seem to be getting the taste for Cairns beer – or is it just our raging thirst? First six miles from town bitumen but early part rather rough.

Passed through some very pretty timbered country – almost looked like parklands. Roads patchy, weather threatening; all went well until sunset – which incidentally was beautiful. The sun was a huge red ball as it sank below the horizon. We were just in the midst of our sunset admiration when down came the rain - just lightly at first but we travelled into it.

Suddenly, Alfred started to crabwalk like a young unbroken colt – we had struck the greasy yellow clay! At first we thought we had a puncture but after a quick inspection we realized that the sloppy clay under foot was the cause of his skylarking. And so we travelled the next 10-15 miles into Blackall. Helen did a stirling job at the wheel, spinning it back and forth madly in an effort to keep us to the centre of the road, and facing in the right direction. One blessing being the very wide road, so we didn’t have to worry about collecting any trees.

Just before we reached Blackall the moon rose – and that was at least some compensation for our rather torrid trip – it was the most wonderful sight – a huge blood red ball – I can’t ever remember seeing the moon that colour before – it was fascinating! Surely there must be some “old wives’ tale” about a red moon!!

At last we reached Blackall but I can’t say it was anything to rave about, in fact it seemed the last gasp of all of it. After another glass of Queensland’s extraordinary beer – Balimba this time – we spoke to the local policeman (a baby-faced youth) about the roads ahead. He advised us not to camp around town because of the large number of “hoboes“ about. Our observations certainly confirmed his view, so after some perfectly ghastly sandwiches and tea we set off down to the end of the bitumen, about 20 miles out. The weather still looked threatening, although it was not actually raining.

Heaven’s above! Lice once more for camp mates and lots of burrs – bathurst variety. Found a small part which had been scraped clear by a grader so decided to make that our sleeping place – away from the lice! We hope!