Oh oh! Spots of rain – 5:50 am – that’s lovely! Our respective reactions were – Let’s get up and get moving (that was me) Oh no! Let’s sit and wait to see what happens (Helen). Is it enough to worry about? (Marye – meaning “do I really have to get up?”!) However, I decided to keep my bedding dry and if it should decide to come down we would have to move anyway, so up I got – the others then decided to follow suit.

While we were breakfasting, several cars and trucks went by which made the prospects for travelling on the black soil road to come, much brighter. Helen stopped a truck coming from the direction of Tambo and asked what the roads were like – “you should fly through!” was the reply – so now we were optimistic again. The rain, as it happened, did not eventuate so we were in luck’s way.

With our early rising we set off in really good time. Country was much prettier from here on – more trees about, including fir trees (pines!) and boabab trees (bottle gums). Roads not too bad really and then whacko – bitumen. Oddly enough that was the scene of our next strife – Bang! a blowout. Another wheel change – team work is really excellent now, if we only had a decent jack we could probably win at gymkhanas!

Nothing terribly exciting – oh yes! the pretty Barcoo River with the avenues of bottle gums on the approach to the bridge. Refilled our water containers and set off once more. Saw some more goannas and wild pig and then two emus – we have just about seen the lot as far as wild life goes – it has been wonderful really, especially for Marye.

Next town Tambo – a little shanty town – not particularly attractive – filled up our water bags and thermos and drove on. Bitumen, beautiful bitumen again. Somewhere between Tambo and Augathella we came upon a mob of cattle and a real cowgirl and her family. Actually, the family were not with the cattle but had stopped to chat to the “pack and saddle job” as she preferred to call it. She was a member (about 15 year of age) of a family of 8 (6 boys and 2 girls) who had been on the roads droving for three years. She was fascinating – an almost Texan drawl, and used all the droving language such as telling us that “we all go crook when the Boss (Dad) ‘holds up’ around the Reeserves” – that meant delaying around the reserves near towns to spell and feed the horses – she hates towns, she said! We were all sorry later that we didn’t speak to the rest of the family – would have been most entertaining I think!

Continued on uneventfully to Augthella – the town with the bottle trees – in fact, quite a few of the towns have had bottle trees in their streets. Stopped for a lime and cold water (Melbourne Beer 7/- a bottle!) and continued on to Charleville. Reached there just after the Post Office closed. Helen read us a story over the last 5-10 miles of bitumen. Made enquiries about Helen’s wireless and unfortunately it had not arrived – hope it catches up with us.

Decided to do ourselves proud and have a shower at Corones Hotel and go to the pictures &ndsah; Alas! Thursday night is the only night Charleville does not have the pictures! So we settled for dinner at the Hotel instead. Felt very smart all dolled up in our skirts after a civilised shower! (bath for me!) Did a little bit of window shopping and after another cool drink made for the River where Miss Corones had told us was the usual camping spot. When we got there, there appeared to be about 4 or 5 permanent campers there. However, we cruised through their “back yards” and rolled out our swags. Slept like a log, as usual.