Rubybvale to Yabalu

Bushy Parker Lagoon Rollingstone

Start of the Single Lane Road from Bellyando Crossing to Charters Towers.

Glad to move out 0f Lake Maraboon, to enjoy a good time here you need a boat as there is not that much to do unless you are into fishing.

Happily we are now in Rubyvale at the Central Queensland Gem field's. Sandra & I went on a Tag - Along Fossicking Tour today out to Glenn Alva about 20km West of Annaki, we were there from 8/30 am until 2pm,it was a long and tiring day, digging with shovel's and pick's to see if we could dig up some Sapphire's, and other precious stone's. We found 5 good Sapphire's that can be cut, and a lot of smaller one's that we will take home to the Grand kid's for show and tell.

The Tour operator "Steve" had an Enormous Sapphire in his pocket that he had dug up in this area, it is valued at $30,000 and a smaller one valued at $20,000, no such luck for us but we are happy with our find, we will be glad to get back and have a swim in the pool and than a Hot Shower to ease our aching bone's from all that digging.

After a few day's rest our ache's and pain's settled, then we went for a walk through the gem town, there are a lot of shops selling gem's, we came across "Pat's Gemstones" where for $8.00 you could fill a bucket with virgin soil and wash it and hopefully find some Sapphire's ?, we were lucky and found 2 Star sapphire's that can be cut and a handful of smaller one's that are to small to be cut, that sure beat's digging for them.

3/8/06. Today we drove further North to Bellyando Crossing. What a place - we did not expect this, Petrol station - General store and Caravan park all rolled into one, a sad event has taken place while we were there, a Lady with a suspected Heart Attack was waiting for a Helicopter to take her to Hospital, she has been lying in the back of her husband's car for Three hours, when the chopper finally arrived it could not land in front of the petrol station but in a paddock about 100 meters from from our van.

After a night here we left for Charters Towers on the Gregory Developmental road which has a stretch of single lane that go's for about 50km. I was a bit nervous about traveling along this road as a lot of Road Train's use it as well, they are over 53mtrs long with 3-4 trailer's on the back, you have to move over and let them pass by - they have right of way, once back on 2 lane's of bitumen the trip was uneventful with only Ant Hill's as scenery to look at, there are thousands of them they look like grave site's in a cemetery.

4/8/06. We have settled into Charters Towers today in a nice park with a good pool and a Sauna room which I made good use of. The town is very old and amongst the other building's there is the Rebel's Motor Bike Club.

Charters Towers was built on gold field's, over a hundred year's ago and had their own Stock Exchange. We drove out to look at the old Gold Mine Ruin's just out of town, and I bet there is still gold to be found here, next time we may bring a gold detector and try my luck?.

11/8/06 We are now at Ravenswood for the night and we viewed an open cut gold mine which is huge, the 250 tonne 0re trucks below look like ant's, one load of ore yield's just 2 ounces of gold and one ounce of gold is so malleable that it can be beaten out to the size of a tennis court.

All night long you could here noise coming from the mine as they work 24 hour's a day, next morning we were surprised to find that we were the only 2 people in the park as the staff have gone home.

Now at Reid River for the night, drove into Townsville the next morning and stayed at Bluewater Van park at Yabulu 35 km north of Townsville, the site's are quiet large, there is room to spare even for big Motor homes.

Townsville is a City where you can get lost if not careful, we have spent a week here but don't like big towns, so we moved onto a free stop just out of Bluewater, we spent five day's here due to car repair's, we have made more friend's who we will keep in touch with, 2 of them are John and Eileen from Tasmania, a couple of Poms, they are terrific company.

Tomorrow we are going back to Bluewater Park to recharge our battery's as lighting and fridge power is running out.

24/8/06 Left Bluewater and went to Bushy Parker Free Stop for three days. John & Eileen have been waiting for us to get here, this free stop is one of the best we have stayed in there is a lagoon at the back which we swim in daily (no Crocs) .