Far Cue Bar

 

Cue Caravan Park, Cue. 

On route to Cue, cruising along the Great Northern Highway listening to Bruce Springsteen and surrounded by scrub bush and endless sky (except it is shocking how much rubbish is on the side of the road - clearly people just throw their rubbish out the car as they drive along, very hard to fathom).

Last night was our first ‘sleep’ in the campervan. The bed is barely a double (about half the size of our super-king at home), requiring coordination when one person turns over, gets in or gets up. It reminds me of what we used to call the ‘campervan dance’ in our previous trip: the need to carefully orchestrate movements so that when one person is in the ‘bedroom’  the other must be in either the ‘bathroom’ or the ‘dining room’.  Decades of marriage probably helps (yes, Melissa, we are still married) and yoga is definitely off the agenda until its warm enough to set my mat up outside.

We even managed to cook breakfast successfully this morning -when I say we I mean Mark- with no gas explosions, fires, or lost tempers (although admittedly Mark is looking on the edge).

We drove straight up the Great Northern Highway several hundred km's more, with just large oversized vehicles as entertainment. The further north we go the more trailers get added to the roadtrains. 

Actually I trialled sitting in the back and doing mosaics, whilst Mark drove and sang. It worked perfectly! 

Mark driving and me doing my mosaics in the back

Enjoyed the views of open pit gold mines at Mount Magnet. I picked up some red rocks for my mosaics. Alas no gold.

Rock collecting

Open pit mines at Mount Magnet, viewed from lookout

All the towns seem strangely deserted – lots of boarded up beautiful old buildings. The only place not deserted is the local pub, that tends to be full. Every town seems to have a huge “Discovery Tourist Park (also deserted), we think likely built as part of the Royalties for the Regions scheme. Went to the strangest hardware store ever – thousands of fan belts for all sizes of trucks and a million other weird things (but no speaker cord for Mark).

Rural towns around here often quite deserted

Lovely old building in Cue

And now we’ve arrived in Cue. Had our second counter meal in two days. I was very brave and got my money back from the big tattooed bar man because my barramundi was uncooked. Mark avoided all eye contact.

The Far Cue bar

It is bloody freezing. Where is that northern sunshine?