We arrived in Sydney Monday afternoon with a hotel reservation for Wyong (about an hour North of Sydney). We had no other plans except ‘get to Cairns by Sunday’. We thought we’d go inland as 1) google maps said it was faster by 30 mins (on a 25 hour journey), and 2) we knew we’d be coming back via the coast.
After a bit of research it turns out that path is a tourist route called the Inland Way, with highway signs to match and suggestions of things to see. Excellent!
Day 1. Tuesday we made a big push to St George, about 8 ½ hours drive. We passed through the gorgeous Hunter Valley which Bron liked for the 500+ mares and foals at stud farms. Soooooo many!!! We could have watched them all day.
We found there were excellent rest areas about every 20 minutes with picnic tables and bathrooms. We picked up some salads and snacks from the grocery store and stopped at one of these rest areas. As newly arrived tourists, we gingerly walked over the dirt looking for snakes and spiders carefully before eating a quick lunch glancing around for threats. There was nothing around except some colourful parrots and cockatoos.
We stopped for a quick beer at Nindigully Pub (Brent only – Bron was the driver) as it is reportedly the oldest continuous pub in Queensland. It certainly had a lot of character. Something amazing happened at about 3:45pm – we call it the Rooing hour. After seeing 1000’s of dead kangaroos/wallabies on the side of the road for hours but no live ones, they all suddenly come out and they were everywhere. It seemed like they had all set their alarms in sync…. It was a moment/feeling that we won’t soon forget. While we didn’t hit any, we certainly learned that it’s wise to be finished driving by 3:30 unless you have kangaroo bars on your vehicle (which we don’t).
Nindigully Pub 
Day 2. We started the day with no firm plans on our destination. We’d heard Carnarvon gorge was a must see, but we weren’t sure about weather or accommodation availability. Luckily – we decided to go for it and booked a cabin at the campground by the park gate. On the way we checked out the Cobb & Co Changing Station museum in Surat and ‘the Largest Bottle tree’ in Roma. The landscape changed significantly once we were past Injune (the last town where we topped up on gas), and we saw a lot more wildlife such as cows and an enormous eagle stuck in the grill of a Road Train (huge triple trailer trucks for those not familiar).
Within a few hundred meters of the turn off for Carnarvon the safari started. An emu and chicks crossed the road just in front of us, and there were hundreds more wallabies. The campsite was fantastic, and the owner told us that there was nothing in the park that would harm us when asked about snakes. Phew! They had cheap drinks during a happy hour, served by a fellow Canadian from Nova Scotia, and an excellent park orientation video. After the orientation we popped down to the platypus pool and caught our first glimpse of these monotremes – Bron was super excited. Then at dusk 20,000 flying foxes (aka bats) flew over to their roosting area. This was accompanied by cannon noises (the bats belong in the gorge but were displaced last year by a bush fire and they are trying to encourage them to return now). It was quite a spectacle.
1000s of flying foxes 
Platypus – it’s small but it’s there!
Day 3. No driving! We did a 14km hike in the gorge to The Art Gallery, Ward’s Canyon, The Amphitheatre, and the Moss Garden. Counter to the camp owner’s assurances, the park info ranger told us that there were heaps of poisonous snake in the gorge, but just to look where we were stepping and we’d be fine. But if we DID get bite, don’t move the victim while the other person ran back to the visitor center so they could send a helicopter with anti-venom. Good news: it was an overcast day with a ‘low’ high of 28 degrees. Great news: we didn’t see a single snake. The hike was fantastic – the trails were very well maintained and the 4 sites were spectacular. In particular the Amphitheatre just had a ‘feel’ to it that we’ll never forget. Once back at the campsite we mustered the energy to go back to the platypus pool and were rewarded with a much longer viewing than the previous night, as well as spotting an echidna digging around (hilarious – fyi).
Day 4: We wanted to check out Emerald so made this the objective of the day even though it was only ~ 3 hours driving. We got an early start and did a 2 km hike in the gorge before the drive. We got to Emerald by lunch time and picnicked outside the visitor’s center. Then we decided it was time to do some fossiking (fossil-licking as Bron insisted on calling it) and find some sapphires. After a short drive to Sapphire, we discovered our dream of just getting a $12 fossiking licence and renting a shovel to find huge bounty wasn’t really practical. Everyone recommended we buy a bucket of ‘wash’ from a store which also shows you how to sieve/wash/sort through it for gems. It turned out to be pretty fun and we had a good time and a good laugh. We didn’t find anything worth faceting, but we have a souvenir bag of tiny sapphire shards.
Day 5: We started the day with a walk in the Emerald botanical gardens – managing about an hour before needed to return to the air conditioning of the car. We also checked out the famous fossilized tree outside the Town hall before heading for Charter Towers. This drive was more like what we expected to find in the outback. For 425km between Capella and Charter Towers there was one (1) ‘town’, population 5. It was a small store and cluster of trailers….. And there was….. nothing……else…… But we appreciated the desolation and it felt quite ‘outbacky’. It was nice to arrive in Charter Towers (booming metropolis of >8000, but which was the 2rd largest city in Queensland during the gold rush of last century) and have a cheerful pub meal.
Day 6: The last day of our Inland Way adventures. We checked out the historic buildings in downtown Charter Towers and went up to the lookout. There was a lot of info about the mining history and the role Charter Towers played in WWII which Brent really enjoyed. While the Inland Way route continued inland, it appeared the next many 100kms would be just as desolate as day 5, so we quit and dodged out to the coast at Townsville. It was then lush landscapes and many sugar cane trains for the few hours to our home for the next week in Cairns!
Brent And Bron Abroad 