The Count around Australia, travelling in a Morris Minor.: 12 Jun 2014

Well today seemed like another long drive though in all it was only about 390 kilometres, though seemed a lot further as there were a number or road works going on and the road in places is in fairly poor repair, Additionally there are a lot of trucks that use the road and it gets a bit time consuming getting out of their way so as not to hold them up. That said it was a great drive and plenty to see along the way.

From the start leaving Emerald, I drove back the way I had come the day before out to the airport and the Ansett liveried aircraft had gone, despite speculation about my hallucinating it had definitely been there the day before so no idea what it was all about. No it wasn't a ghost plane! Ok then back into and through the town onto the highway to Clermont, which is about 66 kilometres away. You know your heading in the right direction as the highway comes to a roundabout where left is to Clermont and right is onto the Gregory Highway (or the Gregory Development Road) for Townsville or Mackay, you turn off onto the Peak Downs Highway about 10 or 15 kilometres then for the coast and Mackay, straight through the roundabout is just a minor industrial area.

Anyway I went into Clermont and it is quite a nice little town, somewhat larger than I had imagined, but laid out well with really wide streets like country towns here have. It was a goldfield in 1862 and gold is still found in the area today. Clermont was actually the first inland city in the topics of Australia. Hmmm what else? Well as I say it is a nice small town and well worth a look. Mind I think it must have a lot of people coming through it (I haven't seem many other small towns of this size with a night club), I think there are a lot of folk working at the mines nearby that rely on the town for their requirements.

There are a couple of other towns along the Peak Downs Highway, though actually you have to turn off the highway to get to them so are they really on it? There are a lot of mines and it would seem that each of the mines have their own "Villages" as well. Certainly some of the accommodation sections that can be seen from the road look quite well put together and fitted out, they are the size of small suburbs. These mines sure have a huge number of staff running them. Nebo and Coppabella Township are probably the only two places I came close to. Nebo is built just off the highway and is a small town, though to be honest I didn't turn off the highway to go and investigate, so basically it was a petrol station and a park to me on the side of the highway. Coppabella I pretty much passed by as well, the closest I got was the "monument" at the side of the highway, it is a coal cart with a few placards along the side given stats about the town and the haulage and carts. The whole township is owned by Queensland Rail.

Driving through the Peak Range National Park was good and the countryside is quite something, dry and colourful. The most obvious "Peak" from the highway is the Wolfgang Peak, well perhaps not as I am having quite a bit of trouble finding out which peak is Wolfgang. It would seem that Ludwig Leichhardt named the thing in 1845 when his party crossed the range on the way to Port Essington (near current Darwin). I can't find why he called it Wolfgang and to be honest some references are made to Wolfgang Peak being a "fang" like peak where are others refer to it as being a dome like peak (this one is not all that far away). The Peak Range National Park page of the Isaac Regional Council could be a little more helpful on that perhaps I think. Enough digressing, it is a good area to see all the "peaks" though if you wish to climb any of them permission must be sought. They (the Isaac Regional Council) say that the Wolfgang Peak is the most popular and takes about an hour to climb. I am sure the exciting part, as if just climbing it isn't enough, is that there are a colony of bats in a small cave, oh and even more exciting you will need to look out for the giant St Andrews spiders near the summit. The good news is that the St Andrews is considered low risk as they are non-aggressive and their bite is non-toxic to humans, Yah! I took a picture from the road and drove on by, thanks.

Areas of Mackay have changed a huge amount since I was last here, though there are still some areas that I recall and don't seem to have changed much at all. It is amazing how big the city has become and how many housing estates are where I remember cane fields having been. The road out to Eimeo is huge now and there are houses almost the whole way out there, that is a huge change. Oh and there are huge amounts of shopping centres and shopping warehouse areas too, its vast, guess that is progress for you, wow how old am I sounding. I'll try to get some pictures of Mackay tomorrow if it's not raining like they are predicting, should have stayed inland where the sun is maybe :)