1 June
It was a short leg in our journey today. Leaving Bluff we passed several coal laden megatrains, each 1.7 klms long as well as a coal loader, pouring black streams of coal into waiting coal trucks.
We paused at the Blackwater Coal Mining Museum. My favourite display was a train driver control simulator. There were nearly as many dials and switches as in the cockpit of a plane.
https://bicc.com.au/australian-coal-mine-museum/
We stopped for morning tea beside a pretty park in the town of Comet. I wonder how they came up with that name!
Rain has been forecast for the next few days. By the time we reached the town of Emerald the rain had arrived. After I popped into the big Woolworths to top up supplies, we decided to ring around the nearby gemfields to book a site for a day or so. It is school holidays and there are many vans, trailers and cars as well as lots of trucks flowing along the road with us. Van parks everywhere are very busy and even many of the free camp sites fill up early in the day. After a couple of calls I found a spot at Anakie. There is a lovely couple, Sue and Lindsay managing the van park. They squeezed us into a site behind the noodling area and across from a small cabin where an an old chap, Don lives. He seems to be the local expert on noodling. Don sits in his chair on the verandah and hands out the occasional bit of advice to the noodlers. He told me he is 88 so I bet he could tell a tale or two.
ON THE ROAD 